JourneyOnline
WHAT’S THE similarity between marriage and mowing the lawn? There are catches in both, but sometimes both are done out of love and some days they’re chores.
Twenty-seven years ago a youth worker told a young man considering marriage not to always expect to feel “in love”.
“There will be days when you wake up and you won’t feel all the romantic stuff,” he warned.
“That’s OK because those are the days you dig deep and remember the commitment, the public promises, you made.
“The feelings will come around again.”
In church, as in marriage, sometimes love is about keeping your promises.
During the Christmas period congregations loudly proclaimed God’s love for humanity.
In Moorooka the John Knox Uniting Church sang along at the local school carols event. The Charleville Faith Community moved their Christmas Day service to the Waroona aged care home to spend time with residents.
In Townsville the Mt Louisa House of Praise congregation spearheaded the Stable on the Strand event.
Thousands of Queenslanders experienced the loving feeling, that warm glow, as churches held out the joyful promise that God is with us.
Then, during January, the happy holiday feelings may have been replaced by emotions associated with ordering school books, going back to work, paying off credit cards and mowing the lawn.
It’s time to keep the promise.
In the big picture, the Edmonton and The Gap congregations are preparing community garage sales, funding local ministries and making connections with their communities.
The UnitingWorld support group faces the aid agency’s big challenges. Frontier Services patrol ministers are waiting for rain soaked roads to open.
On a smaller scale, one sweaty young man from a Uniting Church congregation probably didn’t feel especially loving as he pushed the mower and wielded a hedge trimmer in the yard of a sole parent recently arrived in his congregation.
Still, the Church had promised to look after things while she took her son to see his grandparents over Christmas.
The wow factor came when a neighbour asked who had mowed her lawn.
“One of the men from my church,” was the reply. “Wow! That’s lovely.”
Photo : Photo by Andrea Kratzenberg, Germany
