And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John the brother of James. (Mark 5:37)
This verse from Sunday’s Gospel reading points to a reality that can be hard to acknowledge: We are not all given the same experience of God’s work in our lives.
From a very early age, most of us are concerned with fairness. Our general conception of fairness is that everyone should get the same opportunity. Offering the same opportunity is important at a societal level, but parents realize that each child needs different things. The reason we should offer the same opportunities to everyone at the societal level is because it takes intimate personal knowledge to rightly change the opportunities and still maintain fairness. You must know the child to know what opportunities he or she needs—in other words, tailoring what you give requires a personal knowledge that is impossible at the societal level, and so we establish fairness by trying to give the same opportunity to all.
God’s sense of fairness is much more like a parent giving very different things to each child than it is like a society giving the same opportunities to all. In fact, the Bible says explicitly that we are given different gifts and even different amounts of faith (Romans 12:3-8). Because he knows us, he gives to each of us differently. This isn’t just gifting, but instead includes experiences and faith itself!
This means that some of us will have an easier time believing than others. Some will have more experience of God’s power than others. Some will have a greater sense of the presence of the Spirit than others. God deals with each of us differently, as he sees fit. Some will receive gifts that others are denied.
This may be frustrating, especially when we look at what someone else received. Why did Peter, James, and John (but not the other disciples) get to see the little girl raised from the dead? Why don’t we have the same blessings as another in the church? But God’s differing gifts to each of us spring from his deep knowledge of us and his profound love for us. Rather than wish that we had received something else, we ought to realize that there is something unique and beautiful that he is seeking to do in each of us.
In Christ,
Steven+
Scripture Reflections
In re-reading CS Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew recently, I found myself identifying with Uncle Andrew—an uncomfortable experience!
Uncle Andrew is a self-centered, power-grasping man whose experiments with magic land him and a few others in Narnia as Aslan is creating that world. Due to his fear and desire to keep control of what is utterly beyond his control or even understanding, Uncle Andrew’s experience of Narnia’s creation has little to do with reality. While Aslan is singing Narnia and its inhabitants into being and then bestowing the gift of speech on particular creatures, Uncle Andrew sees only wild animals and hears only roaring from Aslan and growls and screeches and the like from the talking animals. Some of these animals find Uncle Andrew and, thinking he might be a tree, try to plant him in the newly formed soil of Narnia, soil that is still bursting with life. As Aslan says, “The song with which I called it into life still hangs in the air and rumbles in the ground.” While the animals debate which way up to plant him, Uncle Andrew is held upside down briefly, and the silver and gold pieces from his pockets are shaken out onto the ground. The next morning, those coins have grown into a tree of silver and another of gold, which are later used to forge the crowns for the first king and queen of Narnia. Uncle Andrew, however, has undergone no transformation beyond the muddying of his clothes and further souring of his disposition.
When I look at my circumstances and nod along with the grumblings of my flesh, which can sound remarkably like Uncle Andrew, it’s tempting to think I’m facing reality. After all, the waves truly are huge, and I can’t navigate my boat through them anymore—the boat’s already filling with water! Uncle Andrew judged his experience of Narnia as if he were still in his own world; he’s shown to be a fool in the story because of course he isn’t in his own world anymore, he’s in Aslan’s world. You and I have a similar choice to make—will we judge our circumstances as if we are in the kingdom of this world, as if we are alone in our boat, or will we remember where we truly are and who is with us, in the kingdom of heaven with the King of heaven? We can cry out to the One who loves us, who brought us out of the domain of death and brought us into his glorious light—he is with us! And just as he did for the disciples in our reading from Mark 4:35-41, he will speak: “Peace! Be still!” Or, as he has spoken to us in Psalm 46:
“Be still, and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!”
The Lord of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Every wind and every wave will someday be stilled and all their destruction be redeemed. Today, may your heart and mine respond to our Savior’s loving command, for he is with us and that truth changes the very world we live in.
Hannah
Friday Night Out
A few years ago, we began hosting “Friday Night Out” during the summer. The idea was simple: The church would host dinner and games for kids so that adults could go to dinner together.
We borrowed the basic concept from another church, but added the idea of encouraging both intergenerational dinners and the inclusion of people who didn’t attend Incarnation. We hoped that friendships would form across generational lines within Incarnation and that people outside the church would become friends with people inside the church.
Over the last few years, Friday Night Out has been a success! There have been a bunch of great moments where new people have been introduced to people at the church and people within the church who didn’t really know each other got better acquainted. But over the last few years, the burden has been on the people of the church (i.e., you!) to make these dinners happen. One piece of feedback that we have heard several times is, “Could you help us by arranging dinners? It is hard to arrange dinners with people we don’t already know!”
There is something practical in that feedback, and so this year, the church is going to arrange dinner parties, so that people who genuinely don’t know each other can enjoy time together. (This is increasingly important as the church grows.) Each dinner will have a “host” who will manage a few details (like picking the restaurant or setting up the potluck), but the church will arrange the groups.
To that end, if you would like to be included in a dinner, let us know by emailing Katherine. If you are interested in being a “host,” make certain that you make that clear in your email. You don’t need to have children at home to be involved, but if you plan to bring children to the church, include that information in the email, as well. (Childcare will run from 5:30pm-8:00pm.)
Friday Night Out is coming up on June 21, and we hope that as many people as possible join in!