Staying Connected to the Source
By Rev. Ethan Brown
Pastor and Minister of Service & Community
Have you ever had a bad day? I had one on Monday. My in-laws stayed with us this weekend and the last thing you want to happen when you have guests staying with you is to have a major appliance break. Our fickle water heater that has given us lukewarm water since we moved in, decided it was finished. We survived the cold-water weekend, barely, and on Monday I called several plumbers to set up quotes for a replacement, just as we had replaced all of the kitchen appliances. The joys of home ownership. But Monday evening our house got cold and a cold shower didn’t make things more bearable, so we broke down and turned on the heat, or at least we tried to turn on the heat. Just like with the water heater, our furnace decided not to turn on and price tags started rolling through my head. This was Monday’s low point. Yet something seemed off that our only two gas appliances weren’t working and after an hour of running around and a phone call with my dad, it turns out the gas to the house wasn’t turned on. For some reason, over the last three months, neither myself nor my dad nor the plumbers I had talked to nor the gas supply company that has been billing us ever thought to check if the gas was on. My Monday got a whole lot better the moment I opened that gas valve.
It’s hard to have fire without gas. It’s hard for anything to function properly when it is disconnected from its source. Perhaps that is why Jesus in John 15:5 says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” Abide—other translations say to “remain”—however we say it, the call is to continue in connection with our source of life and vitality. There can be no wholeness, hope, or fruit without the God from whom all blessings flow.
Today is the fourth day in the week of prayer for CBF Global Missions. Today we are called to pray for the equipping and cultivating of the beloved community. Today let us pray for the field personnel and those they encounter that they will abide in God as the source of life, and that they may bear the fruit of goodness and love. That even as they seek to cultivate community, God will cultivate in them wholeness and peace. To God be the glory forever and always. Amen.