You may or may not believe me, but I had a moment of clarity today. You know those times, when you become aware that something meaningful is happening to you. I had that.
I had just finished lunch with a person attending Faith Framingham who buried his wife of decades jus a month earlier. He is devastated, trying to make sense of his life without his life long love, facing the mountain of grief and a lifetime of separateness. We ate lunch, spoke about deep things, minor things, a host of topics but just being together. The time with him was good, and I couldn't quite understand why, until that moment of clarity.
As we ended our time together, and made a decision to meet again in a couple of weeks, it struck me what was good about it. I was doing what I was called to do - pastor. And that's when this verse struck me:
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world - James 1:27 (NIV) .
Pastoring is when people allow you to walk with them through the hardest and most painful times of their lives because they trust you. The verse says that all those who call themselves Christians are called to look after the powerless, hurting, grieving people of this world in their hardest times. This person let me do that for them today. It was a deep privilege, one I do not take lightly.
And it made me think of how many hurting people out there would just love for someone to give them an hour to talk, listen, laugh, cry and just be together. Do you have an hour to spare this week for someone in your life who is struggling? Give them a call, take them to lunch, have a cup of coffee. Let's perform some pure and faultless religion this week, TOGETHER.
Now about that "...keeping oneself from being polluted from the world..."
Ahem! I think I need to fold some laundry!
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