A friend of mine became Senior Pastor at a large church. The church had a crushing debt; it was near bankruptcy. He was not responsible for creating the financial debacle, but from the day he became Pastor he was responsible for cleaning it up.
Another friend has a son that made some stupid mistakes. As a father, he’ll be involved in working through the challenges.
In the course of life, we’ll become responsible for finding solutions to problems we did not create. Sometimes, we’ll have a choice whether or not to accept the challenge (like my pastor friend), but often we won’t (like my friend whose son made poor choices).
It takes firm resolve, optimism, and tenacity to stay the course in these situations—my friend pastored the financially troubled church for 20 years. It is also a deep expression of love: to suffer with a person or group of people in this way is an act of unselfish, even sacrificial love.
Christ is the personification of what I’m talking about in this post.
Like maybe passing the offering plate, conducting communion with cups and bread and an order of worship?
Clyde, well…we’ve reinstated two out of three of your suggestions. We’re now offering a printed bulletin and we distributed the elements on Good Friday. I doubt if we’ll ever go back to passing the plates for the offering. I hope you are doing well. Don