"Outreach........"

My daughter has enlisted me again to join her team that will be participating in the annual five kilometer jog/walk raising support for the battle against breast cancer. She was lucky to have discovered its attack on her early enough a few years back, a month or so of treatments plus regular check-ups giving her hope of a long life. Others were not so fortunate, death not the only threat this disease imposes. In reading a friend’s blog recently, a woman with a tale to tell concerning her own journey down this path, I took note of some advice shared from a book just devoured. The author presented three “facts”, theories developed from childhood, but still being shaped through experience, a crisis of any sort tending to make us re-examine the evidence. The first, the idea that we’re in our present calamity alone, whatever it may be, speaks truth to me, at least in the sense that “free will” is more than just a relationship held with our Creator. Nobody else can manipulate our mind. The choice is always ours to make, although it does appear that some of us are more easily led than others. Her next two points seemed, to me, linked together, suggesting that identity is always under construction, living better accomplished by forging a future rather than dwelling in the past. Within the context of such thought, though, was a reference to “generous people, true practical saints, some of them boring as root canals” who are always eager to advise your best path. I’ve known a few of those well-meaning types and no doubt, along the way, at one time or another, have fallen into such classification, this journey, for all of us, a lesson learned as we go. It might help, however, if the Church better taught its flock that ministry is more than being an “imitation” of Christ. We are vessels meant to produce the “real deal”, His Spirit alive within us, flowing from us, and accomplishing the task at hand. He, alone, is the Balm of Gilead……