a poem about coffee

my son pretends to serve it from his plastic kitchen. "daddy likes coffee," he says. i drink the invisible blend of aromatic flavor carefully from the tiny red, plastic cup he hands to me. i burn my damn tongue anyway, spilling some on my trousers before going off to another evening meeting. my wife laughs because i managed to avoid staining the new carpet, because there is no coffee. there is only imagination and memory to taste, burn, and stain. but that is enough. as i walk out the door jonah says, "mommy drinks tea."

Where I was

I have been busy.

Team Ministry

As I work here, I realize that a team ministry concept is good. So, I have helped establish two teams already. Worship and Music team is an ongoing and well functioning group with good leadership. That leadership may be changing since our chair resigned. We are also entering some new territory with the Vigil and with Sunday morning liturgy as we consider going to one service for the entire Easter Season!
We have developed a mutual ministry team and a stewardship team. Now we will redevelop ministry board and, finally, an outreach team. Mutual ministry, stewardship, and ministry board will look at the gaps in our mission and get us focused on some key tasks. hey will also help us discover and deploy our God-given gifts and assets. I hope that we can begin to engage every person in some part of the mission in 2006. We really need to get some resources into outreach. I would like us to expand service opportunities too. A mission trip is in order.
Also, there is the potential for cooperative ministry among Lutherans in the area; something I am very excited about, and also anxious about. Am I called to lead something bigger in Ephrata area? I don't know yet. We pray.

At a holy site outside of Mecca, Muslim pilgrims stampede toward a series of pillars at which they hurl stones, as a symbolic purging of sin. In 7 of the past 17 years, people have died in the mob. This week, it is reported that over 300 were killed in the scene. What a tragic outcome of peoples’ desperate religious ---and impossible--- attempts to approach the holiness of God. It seems that these pilgrimages always end in violence and death. Despite attempts by authorities to encourage order, chaos ensues and people die. Do not take this as a jab at Islam. I mean no disrespect toward people’s beliefs. I do, however, contrast these religious efforts with our own faith perspective in this season of Epiphany.
Sometimes I think American Christian apathy, lukewarm-ness, is worse than the passionate stampede. Its either that or we tend to get hot about foolish matters and end up beating each other up anyway. How many times have people stomped off from a congregation over this issue or that?
I, for one, am grateful everyday, that the only deadly journey that is pat of our faith, was the journey of Christ Jesus to the cross. He allowed the world to hurl their sins at him.
In Epiphany, we are hearing gospel stories about discipleship. What we discover there is that for us, the only one whose religion matters, is Jesus. His passionate mission to die for us is a gift to the world. Discipleship acknowledges this gift. We point beyond ourselves and our own religious practices, beyond our institutional habits and rituals. We point to the one whose coming makes us whole and holy. We share His journey from life to death to resurrection. We share His ministry as His people. But we needn’t sacrifice ourselves for the sake of attaining what was already bought for us.