Intentions and Outcomes

Beloved of God,
    This Sunday, during the Sunday School hour, everyone is invited to an exposition of our various church ministries. No church functions well unless they can have “all hands on deck”. Each of us must be willing to find ways to serve and ways to grow within a gathered body of disciples. I sure hope you’ll stay after the service, and explore some ways you might do both.
    Please make sure that you who are members have planned to attend our upcoming congregational meeting on August 20th. I believe that we make wiser decisions as a congregation when we have the benefit of each other’s council. There will be several important matters to consider, and I hope you’ll be there to help us consider them.
     Our Scripture reading this week is from Genesis 37:12-28. It’s early on in the story of Joseph, where his older brothers hatch a plan first to kill him, and then to sell him. Of course, this almost never happened at all. Joseph arrives in Shechem looking for his brothers but does not find them. He only knows where they are because of the intervention of a stranger. It’s the first in a series of events that play out on a very thin margin. Had the brothers killed Joseph as they initially intended, he’d never have wound up in Egypt. Had Reuben rescued him from the cistern, Joseph would not have made his way to Egypt either.
    One of the lessons of the Joseph story is about the gap between our intentions and the result of our actions, especially when God is involved. It reminds us that we’re not quite as powerful as we’d like, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Recognizing the gap between what we intend and what we’re able to do can help us to focus on what is more important for disciples than results: being faithful.
    Effectiveness is a bad measure of discipleship. It can de-center God from a story in which we play a meaningful but contingent part. Joseph lives a whole life where intentions and outcomes don’t always match up. And yet, God is faithful to him. If we want to be like Jesus, maybe learning to be faithful is more important than our own intentions and outcomes as well. Surely God can take care of the rest. 


Please join me this week in praying for:

• Teachers, students, and staff at our local schools as they begin a new year.
  
• Those who respond to emergencies on our highways, in our wildlands, in our communities, and even in our homes.
• Our Associate Pastor Search Team.
• Those who are facing grief and loss.
• Those in need of healing and help.
• In praise for recent rainfall.
• Those in positions of public trust at the federal, state, and local levels. 
• Friends and neighbors, who Jesus loves, but have yet to love him back.
• Each other (please email [email protected] if you’d like to be added to our prayer list)
  

You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world,

Marshall

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