"Learning to let the light of Christ

shine in your life"

Epiphany Sunday, Jan 9 2011.

Written for a  Lenten  Daily  Devotion for  St  Mark  UMC, Atlanta, GA

Philippians 3:17-4:1

FOLLOWING DAD

One of the sweetest posters I ever saw was of a father walking on an empty beach. Close behind him was his son who was trying hard to fit his feet into his father’s footsteps. The son was trying to follow with the assurance that he would not get lost and that his Dad’s example would not lead him astray.

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.

For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's foes will be members of one's own household.

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

Matthew 10.34-39

We are all, individually and collectively, on a journey. In our United Church context, we openly name - confess - the things that separate us from God and one another. We struggle, however, with our own stuff. How do we share our own dysfunction, our own brokenness? I am not talking about some trite opportunity to weep our woes and beat our chests in a competition of whose issues trump the others. I am talking about safe spaces to share what needs to be shared, in order that we might heal, to move toward wholeness.

This journey, when entered with intention, is about discipleship.