We can be serious. Discussions about who has more hair, which of us is developing the Littleton Paunch, or how the Sooners will fare in the upcoming football season alters conviviality in an instant.
“Conviviality”
Recently Paul, the one in the photo in need of a lap to sit, offered the sermon at First Baptist Church, Sasche. Listening to First World Problems reminded me of family and in particular my brothers. The material experience of human relationships trumps any materials we may accrue as beings of dust. Jesus makes clear how much more who we share our lives with means more than what we experience in it.
“Together”
Too often we get the answer wrong because we have not looked hard enough for the right question. I am thinking about the text for Sunday. Jesus’ disciples asked to learn how John’s disciples pray. We too often look for the mechanics of prayer, a formula for the proper content of prayer, or a sense of how long ought we pray. Jesus, on the heels what we find in Luke 10, appears to focus on the for whom do we pray.
I am suspicious that prayer is as much about the Christian Community of Faith training its sights on the needs of others as it is in making our individual requests. Could it be this grows out of Jesus’ own actions that reveal how he died to his own needs in order to fill in what may be needed in the other.
Watching my brothers invest in their families and communities from a few hours away paint a healthy picture of the one thing that may help us be involved in our world problems. When we make others a first order priority – especially our own children – we help put a stake in the heart that things what I have is more important than who I share life with.
Glad for brothers . . . and Fathers and Mothers.
