The Power of One
The cynic tells us that one person is not enough to make a difference but we know from our faith and experience that this is not so. It is often one person who makes all the difference in the world.
Perhaps one of the primates attending the conference this week in Dar es Salaam will be the one who makes a decisive difference, for the better, in the life of our church, our communion, and our world.
What would such a person look like? What would the person say? We might get 100 different answers if we asked enough.
One answer might be that the persons in attendance at the primates meeting have such a poor track record of ensuring and expanding the sacred deposit entrusted to them that any hope of anything useful and good coming from the group, much less from just one of them, is fanciful and foolish.
We hope that we hear a better answer than that.
Let us make no mistake about it. The Lord Himself sees and knows our every move and He will no doubt be watching every move made by the discordant and dissimilar group meeting in Dar es Salaam to promote and protect the community He has given us.
The issue is whether they will see Him.
They all proclaim Him as Lord and Savior. Many pride themselves on what they consider their intimate knowledge of and relationship with Him. Very good. Perhaps secure in such knowledge and faith, they can then forego some of their prerogatives and bombast, and look for Him one more time, in the hearts of their fellows gathered there because they feel precisely the same way.
If not, then He will forgive them, and us, if we ask it and are truly sorry. But to the billions of unchurched around the world who by a more fruitful and humble conference of primates might one day have come to know the grace and power of the One who has given us life, that will not make any sense at all.
Perhaps one of the primates attending the conference this week in Dar es Salaam will be the one who makes a decisive difference, for the better, in the life of our church, our communion, and our world.
What would such a person look like? What would the person say? We might get 100 different answers if we asked enough.
One answer might be that the persons in attendance at the primates meeting have such a poor track record of ensuring and expanding the sacred deposit entrusted to them that any hope of anything useful and good coming from the group, much less from just one of them, is fanciful and foolish.
We hope that we hear a better answer than that.
Let us make no mistake about it. The Lord Himself sees and knows our every move and He will no doubt be watching every move made by the discordant and dissimilar group meeting in Dar es Salaam to promote and protect the community He has given us.
The issue is whether they will see Him.
They all proclaim Him as Lord and Savior. Many pride themselves on what they consider their intimate knowledge of and relationship with Him. Very good. Perhaps secure in such knowledge and faith, they can then forego some of their prerogatives and bombast, and look for Him one more time, in the hearts of their fellows gathered there because they feel precisely the same way.
If not, then He will forgive them, and us, if we ask it and are truly sorry. But to the billions of unchurched around the world who by a more fruitful and humble conference of primates might one day have come to know the grace and power of the One who has given us life, that will not make any sense at all.
posted by The AoM at 2/13/2007 10:30:00 AM
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