The attitude of some people that exudes forgiveness, flexibility and kindness sometimes astounds me.  It is Monday, June 2nd and the youth plus 6 adults (including myself) are in McLean, Virginia on the second leg of our music and mission trip.  To make a long story short…in the first 6 hours of our visit, we broke two glass objects in the church.  Both of them will be expensive to replace.  Both of them will take some time to replace.  It is a source of embarrassment for us that these accidents occurred.  But placing myself in the shoes of those who have to fix our accidents and fix them in their own house, makes me wonder if I would have been as forgiving and easy going as the staff at McLean Baptist Church.Cam Edgar, Associate pastor and former Smoke Rise member, along with Dianne, the church administrator, have opened the doors wide for our youth to stay in their space, do some local mission work and see the sights of DC.  We have been demanding by just being there, not to mention dealing with the accidents.  Their graciousness is overwhelming and we cannot thank them enough. 

It really got me thinking about the body of Christ, how we help ourselves out and how we teach each other to act as Christ acted.By no means am I equating the actions and attitude of the McLean staff with the suffering of Christ.  We were a slight pain…nowhere near the devil in the desert.  But I know what it is like to work in professional ministry, to have to deal with unexpected situations, to have to fix problems that I didn’t cause and all in a day where I already have a full plate of responsibilities.  I also know I would not have been as gracious and kind.  I would act as expected:  Annoyed, frustrated and impatient.  These feelings, coming from the staff at McLean Baptist Church, are not evident to me this week.I believe this kind of patience and grace comes only from God.  It is not typical human behavior.  And if it is present in the staff, it must also be prevalent in the church body, as the two usually run hand in hand.  I wish for all who experience the gift of grace this week to accept it and learn from it.  We see a good model of a church willing to welcome strangers.  I hope Smoke Rise will return the favor to someone else down the road.

Awesomeness Abounding!

Lee

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 9:17 am and is filed under Lee's Lines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.