Open Letter to John

 

Although I'm pretty much wiped out by an 8 day trip (I left the day after the opening and just got back today -- first time I've been out that long in a long time), I have many of the same feelings over the past week.  

 

Interesting, how sacrifice in a common cause not only binds us together with respect to the goal, but even more intimately, as brothers and sisters in Christ.  It's almost like a family that gets together a holidays, forgets it’s own individual interests and concerns for a time, and is so able to renew and restore the common roots and ground they had been overlooking.  Something that in my heart of hearts I know is real and true; something that a part of me never wants to lose sight of again.  

 

How we might achieve this, without clinging to past glory, and so missing the greater blessing of its present expression, I'm not exactly sure. Anyway there was something precious    I experienced amid all the blood, sweat and tears that we shared collectively; something I can't quite get either my mind or tongue around.  “The Unity of the Spirit in the Bond Fellowship is as good a word as any.  One of those things that you can only understand in your head once you've experienced them in your heart.  

 

And that, as you suggested John, is the Inner Spiritual Building -- the Temple made without hands -- that we really build together in the Name of the Lord.  The outer building, as beautiful (and yes miraculous -- a sence that I received over and over, towards the end, as I looked up from my task of the moment to see what God had build out of our individual contributions and sacrifices) as it was, is only an outer reflection and testament to the Inner House that was actually being build by God through our individual and collective hands.

 

For me it was a object lesson in the true blessing of service.  As I recently heard Rob Phelan say to another friend, "Don't miss the Blessing!"   Well, there have been before when I have missed the opportunity to be blessed by blessing.  This, however, was not one of those times.

 

Yours I AM/WE ARE in Christ...Love...Rich and Sandy Hay

 

PS1: The following quote by George Bernard Shaw as it appears in the "Purpose Driven Life" is a recent favorite that does a fairly good job of getting words around what happen, at least for me, "building the house" at ROL over the last four months:

 

"This is the true joy of life: the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself to be a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clot of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."  (the later of which seems to be a wonderful characterization of our present society as a whole  -- or at least as it is reflected in the media.

 

PS2: In a very real way, I believe Shaw, in more secular terms echoed Jesus words when he said, "To this end I was born, for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth."  Ultimately, I believe that is exactly the very same cause we all came into the world for -- to bear witness to the Truth, in and through our lives, and their by express and glorify the Love of God for His Childeren.