Almost every morning, the first thing I do is to drink a cup of coffee. It is such a familiar part of my day that I hardly think about it anymore. I suspect most of us have some kind of morning routine. It might involve coffee, breakfast, reading the news, walking the dog, or simply taking a few quiet minutes before the day begins.
There is comfort in these routines. They provide a sense of order when so much of life can seem uncertain. And there is nothing wrong with that. We need familiar things that help us in our everyday life.
But sometimes we become so comfortable with what we know that we stop noticing what else might be possible.
This is not about our morning routines. We can hold very tightly to our expectations, our possessions, and even our ideas about how the church should work. Sometimes we hold on because those things have served us well. Other times, we hold on because we are afraid of what might happen if we let go.
At our recent diocesan convention, the theme was “Following Jesus: Courage, Hope, and Community.” I have been thinking about how those three words challenge us to think about what it means to follow Jesus in our everyday lives.
Following Jesus takes courage. Not necessarily the kind of courage that makes headlines, but the courage to question something we have always assumed, to listen to someone whose experience is different from ours, or to try something when we cannot be certain it will succeed.
Courage does not mean we are without fear. It means we are willing to act even when we are uncertain.
And that is where hope becomes important.
Christian hope is more than wishing that everything will work out the way we want. It is trusting that God continues to work in the world, even when we cannot see where things are headed. Hope allows us to imagine possibilities beyond what we already know.
But neither courage nor hope is meant to be practiced alone.
Community matters because we need one another. Someone else may recognize a possibility that we have overlooked. Another person may have the experience or ability we lack. Sometimes we need someone to encourage us, and sometimes we are the ones called to offer that encouragement.
This brings us to stewardship, a word that is often understood as being primarily about money.
Financial resources are certainly part of stewardship. They help make ministry possible, support outreach, and provide opportunities to serve our neighbors. But stewardship also includes our time, attention, abilities, relationships, and willingness to participate in the life of our community.
More importantly, stewardship is not just about maintaining Trinity as an institution. It is about how we use what has been entrusted to us to make Christ known through love and compassion.
There is a difference between holding onto something because we value it and holding onto it so tightly that it cannot serve anyone else.
Opening our hands does not mean giving away everything we have. Opening our hearts does not mean abandoning the things that matter to us. Both invite us to think about how what we have received might become a gift to someone else.
As we prepare for our annual all member canvass, I invite all of us to think beyond what we have always done or what we believe we can afford to offer. Think about what might happen if we approached the future with courage, hope, and a willingness to work together.
Maybe following Jesus calls us to loosen our grip on what is familiar, open our hands to what we can share, and open our hearts to possibilities we have not yet imagined.
What might become possible for someone else because of what we are willing to share?
Kevin+
