Richmond's Rumblings

Richmond’s Rumblings

After a hot summer and into a hot autumn, we are again in football season. While many of us grew up with baseball as our favorite sport, we have come to be more intense about our football teams from our children’s teams through our favorites in college of the National Football League. I find myself raising my voice much more now for my teams (Top Two: the University of Memphis and the Minnesota Vikings) than I did even before “my” Boston Red Sox won the 2004 World Series. There is something within us that gets attached to the spectacle of competition, skill, and strategy which we tend most easily to associate with sporting events, which to me is generally a good thing.

There are occasions, of course, when our intensity skews what is finally important for all of us. I plead guilty to letting that happen during the 1986 World Series, and I perhaps will share that with you down the road a bit. I also realize it is easy for the Pastor to raise the issue of “priorities” and remind all of us (me included) that what we are doing as a congregation in Neosho is serving the One God, Creator of heaven and earth, and his Son Jesus Christ, our Lord (in paraphrase of an early Church statement from roughly 325 AD). At the same time, all of us have other matters in our lives which are vitally necessary such as taking care of our families, and even finding time for ourselves as individuals. Both pastors and the Church always need to keep the need for a reasonable and faithful balance in mind. Too much intensity, as we know from sports, is just as problematic as too little. We all are continuing to strive for what serves God, our neighbors, and ourselves (in perhaps that order).

 That sense of striving which recognizes our limitations and commitments is, I think, where we will continue to be reminded how God is actually helping us to do our striving. We will never fully achieve that balance we seek, but we will realize as we go along that we have been given and are continuing to receive God’s power of love. The love which will, unlike our sports teams, never disappoint us. May God’s love and peace be with us all, now and forevermore.

Shalom, Live Long, and Prosper,

Richmond