Love...Share...Serve

Well, we did it.  It's hard to believe that I'm sitting in my living room writing this last post.  This trip was truly an amazing experience for all of us.  We shared in something that was much bigger than we were expecting, and our eyes were opened to new understandings of poverty, homelessness, hunger, and social injustice.

We have all said that our stereotypes of homelessness have been broken down and that we will all look at the person standing on the corner with different eyes, and that we know that there is much to be done here in our own town of Grand Forks, but the challenge now is to actually DO IT.  Will this trip and the lessons we have learned stay with us and help us to empower those we meet, or will this be just a fun vacation with some mission work thrown in for us to feel good about ourselves?  Only we can answer that question.

1 John 4:7 (from The Message) "My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God.  Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God."

We certainly lived this way in Seattle. We loved...and we remembered that this love came from the One who loved us first.  And because this Love first served us, we are called to serve Love.  Every time that we help a friend, or reach out to a stranger, we are doing this.  Even though trips like this provide great opportunities to get out and serve, we have to remember that once we are home, back to our comforts, when the needs of our community aren't as easy to see, and we may not understand the importance of sharing what we have, our work HAS to continue in our everyday lives...in our school, in our work, in our play.  This is what we have been called to do.

And so, we are back, safe and sound, and we are grateful for all we have been blessed with...in the community we shared in, in the people we met, in the organizations we served with, and by the God who created us, who claimed us in our Baptisms, who crafted us as unique individuals, brought us together into community, and calls us forth in service to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.

Amen.