Friday Greetings — February 3
Dear Centenary friends,
Two or three years ago, my husband and I sat at Sunday lunch with friends of his parents, an older couple whom
he hadn't seen in decades. There was a lot of catching up, of course, and a lot of "remember when." In the
midst of the wonderful time we had together, the wife made a passing reference to the career she had pursued
for 30 some years of her life, and then said, "Of course, now my mission is different. Since I do not know when
the Lord will call me home, my mission now is to nurture relationships with my family and friends, so that I
can share the Lord with them."
Wow, I thought. That's a mouthful. Those are words worth remembering. Although I would take issue with some of
what she said (after all, there is no point in our lives when we CAN say when the Lord will take us home! And
shouldn't what she called her mission "now" be our mission throughout our lives?) nonetheless, the core of what
she said got under my skin and made me think. Specifically, it made me think about whether I could state my
mission so clearly.
As I've read and reread the Gospel lesson for this Sunday, I've mulled over her mission statement, and I've
compared it to the mission statement Jesus gives for his life in the closing sentences of this reading. There
was no doubt in his mind about what he had been sent to do, and Jesus' clarity of purpose propelled him AND his
disciples forward on their journey. So says the gospel of Mark, and that's what we'll be exploring in worship
this Sunday.
So, come to worship scripturally prepared! This Sunday's readings are: Isaiah 40:28-31 and Mark 1:29-39. Read
them both, and ask yourself, If I had to express my life's mission in one sentence, what would that one
sentence be? How is my mission related to Jesus' mission? Does my mission statement need revisiting and
revising at this point?
See you on Sunday!
In Jesus' love,
pastor susan
