Faith Stories

I found this post by Joe at Canterbury Tales:

Emily over at Hazelnut Reflections recently did a post about something that many of us missed from the last General Convention:

Does anyone remember that the last General Convention encouraged every Episcopalian to tell their faith story? (Does
anyone remember that anything else happened at the last General Convention?)

She's off to a beautiful start in telling her own. What if we responded to this charge from GC by doing a series of cross-blog posts on our own stories. What might we learn about each other? Ourselves?

I plan on starting mine tomorrow.

Thanks for the inspiration Emily!

Grace and Peace,

Joe

I do remember when the General Convention asked for Faith Stories. We even got a few people at our church to write them down. We had them share their stories during the service and we posted them on our church Web site.

I have read (most of) Emily's story and it is a long Faith Journey. The ones we have are short stories by lay parishioners about an event that affirmed their faith.

I will share my story:

There is a marvelous story of a man who once stood before God, his heart breaking from all the pain and injustice in the world. "Dear God," he cried out, "look at all the suffering, the anguish and the distress in the world. Why don't you send help?"
God responded, "I did send help."
"I sent you."
Usually I just delete these kinds of e-mails. I was not going to forward it to 10 friends within 10 minutes no matter what prize I would get. But I wasn’t quick enough with this one. This one stopped me in my tracks. Before I knew it I had copied the message into a Word file, with a huge font and a fancy border,
and I hung it on the wall of office at home.
You know those stories or e-mails you come across that touch your heart? Well, this one grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and opened my eyes. I was embarrassed at the lost opportunities. But it made me hopeful for what was still yet to be. He had sent me!
This all happened about 5 years ago and I kept looking at that message on my wall. But I couldn’t think of any ways that I could help. Outside of my prayer, worship and activities within the church, what else could I do? I decided that if I tried to keep God in my heart every day, He would take care of the rest.
I have a coworker who is a Methodist Minister. When I learned this about him I slowly started talking to him about “God stuff”. At work I always felt I needed to be sensitive about how much religion I talked about in my professional life. But Jim is a minister so I knew I could talk to him. And I knew I could learn from him.
I had taken the story off my wall and brought it into work because I wanted to type it into my computer again. You see, I
wanted to submit it to the Webmaster. I was hoping he would put it on the Web site. (He did, by the way. It’s on the home page. I have a special relationship with the Webmaster!)
The story is sitting on my desk and Jim comes in to say “hi”. I pick up the page and show it to him. He read it. He paused. Then he looked at me and said, “Gulp!” He paused again and then said, “It’s a big responsibility.”
It had happened again. I was stopped in my tracks. He was
right; it is a big responsibility. He then asked me for a copy. He said he had just found the cover for his Sunday bulletin that he had been looking for.
Does God touch our lives? Yes.
Does He do it in small ways that we don’t notice until after it’s happened? Yes.
Did He send me to help? Yes.
Did He send you to help, too?
Whenever I feel like I’m not doing a good enough job for God, I try to remind myself that if He wanted to send someone to help
with all of the suffering, the anguish and the distress in the world He would send Jesus. Meanwhile He sent me to do the little bit that I can.
I also believe my faith ties in with a song that has been following me for most of my life. The song is by Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull and says:
“So I asked this God a question, and by way of firm reply, He said, ‘I’m not the kind you have to wind up on Sundays.’”
I invite you to share your faith stories whenever you can. Big or small, they all ‘help.’

I hope this will encourage other people to share a moment of faith that has happened in their lives.

Emily and Joe: Thank you for your posts.

Peace,

MarkT