This morning I read about the prodigal son in Luke 15. If you are familiar with the story you know that the father pours out abundant grace and forgiveness on the younger son who had left and squandered his inheritance on wild living. The older brother though is jealous and upset with his father for so quickly forgiving his little brother.
The story that Jesus tells is a powerful one of grace and forgiveness and challenges us to be willing to forgive others. We have to realize that even though we may "appear" to be more righteous at times, the fact is that we are just as in need of God's forgiveness as the one who is blatantly sinning. It isn't about who is more righteous, it is about God's grace that is available for everyone.
This video is a beautiful picture of God's forgiveness that this pastor and his church are trying to extend to the people who stole the church's trailer with most of their gear. I hope that you are challenged to examine your own willingness to forgive this day.
The year was 1996 and I was fresh out of high school. That summer I moved to Coeur d’Alene Idaho to live with my brother Dennis and work on the resort golf course. During those years, Dennis was not attending church and so I was on my own when it came to finding a church. Now I am not saying that I was a spiritual giant at 18, I had plenty of issues in life, but it had been ingrained in me from my parents that you were to attend church on Sunday morning. I had noticed a Baptist church on the road that drove to get to work, about a mile from my brothers house, and even though it was a southern Baptist and not a conservative Baptist church I decided it was safe enough to try.
Now even though I had attended church my entire life, I think I could count on one hand how many Sunday mornings I had missed, this was the first time I had attended a church without knowing a single soul there. As I came in, I shook a couple of hands and received a bulletin from an usher and then found a seat in the small sanctuary. Everything seemed normal it was just that no one really acknowledged that I was there. It wasn’t that they ignored me they just didn’t stop from their routine to really notice that there was someone new. That is until a young college student came over and introduced herself and invited me to sit with a group of students that attended the church. Because that one person reached out to greet and invite me into a circle of friends I attended that church the entire summer that I worked there.
The impact of that simple act didn’t stop there. In the fall when I attended Western Oregon University I started attending the Campus Crusade for Christ group. At one of the meetings, the request was made for people to help greet other students as they attended our meetings. I thought about how welcome that one student had made me and I decided that greeting and welcoming other students to the meeting was a significant way to serve. This led me to sign up as a greeter which led me into student leadership in our Campus Crusade ministry. As a student leader I was challenged to consider serving God on a mission trip for the summer, which I did serving in Anchorage, Alaska. The following year I continued as a servant leader now directing the entire weekly meeting for our ministry. It was during this year that I felt God calling me to serve him in full-time Christian ministry. The following year I began working as a youth pastor at my church and have been doing ministry in the local church ever since.
It is now twelve years since that summer right out of high school, and I don’t even remember the girl’s name that had invited me to sit with the rest of the college students. I never returned to Coeur d’Alene to work and my brother doesn’t live there anymore. I doubt that she has any idea that the simple act of greeting me, and inviting me to be a part of their group was one of the steps that God used to lead me to be a pastor.
I know that sometimes it is difficult to see how the “little” things make a difference in people’s lives, but I would imagine that you could, like me, look back in your life and identify people who were faithful in those “little” things in your life. God can use the little things that we do each and every day. The tragedy is when we stop doing the “little” things because we don’t think they matter, but trust me they do.
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