On the second weekend of June, I had the opportunity to attend the Wisconsin Conference Annual Meeting at Green Lake, along with Salem’s delegates, Mary Bender and Linda Bosman (my thanks to both of them for setting the time aside to attend). I thought that the meeting, and its theme, “Why Are You Afraid,” was one of the better gatherings in my history of attending such events. One of the thoughts that struck our delegation over the weekend was that the principles of the Christian life are not complicated to understand: love one another and show respect for one another; practice acts of kindness and justice often; forgive others. What a better place our families, our communities, our churches, and our world would be if people got the knack for this sort of thing.
However, it’s not the ideas that are hard to grasp; it’s putting them into practice which is hard to do. We do not always love others as we should; we fail—by things we’ve done and by things we’ve left undone—to show kindness and justice; and we fail to forgive others. I can tell you, based on pastoral experience that the biggest failings in living out the Christian way of life seem to come from a chronic inability to forgive. That has always puzzled me. If one of the things that we celebrate in our faith is the fact that God has forgiven us and that we are reconciled to God, why are we so stingy with the business of forgiving each other?
Yet, it seems that we are a stingy people that way. People hold on to grudges for an incredibly long time and hold on to self-righteous anger. We stubbornly refuse to let go and offer up forgiveness.
I think that many of us would be a lot happier in life if we just realize the following: 1) To err is human. People will make mistakes and often do so without trying to be hurtful; 2) Life is short and there isn’t enough time and energy to waste re-tracking over old ground and reliving old hurts. Sometimes you just have to let go because you don’t want to be chained to someone by continuing to hold on to a grudge.
So, friends, my unsolicited counsel as we head into the final months of summer is this: Love others and try to see them as God might—with all of their gifts and possibilities; show kindness—it usually doesn’t cost us any money to be kind; forgive others and let go of old hurts.
And one more thing: continue to keep the church and its ministry in your thoughts and prayers over the summer months. While some of our programming goes fallow for the summer months, we are busy planning and re-loading for the time ahead. Your prayers and support are helpful as we engage in that work.
Enjoy your summer and may you find it to be a time of refreshment and growth. And if you have the chance, we’d love to see you at the Church Picnic on July 29th.
Your servant in Christ,
Rev. Jim Hoppert
