Merianna Harrelson: Serving Together

Ordinary Miracles 2015, , ,

me-and-jeff-225x300

This Sunday, we served communion after we participated in #chimewithcharleston as a way to remind ourselves not only of Jesus’ sacrifice, but also the sacrifice of the nine people who were following in his footsteps as they welcomed the stranger into their community. It was a holy time as we remembered their broken bodies and their blood shed and as we remembered Jesus’ broken body and shed blood. And we remembered that the Lord’s table invites us all in. We remembered that the table is also a symbol of hope and reconciliation.

As I walked away from the table, I realized that it was a powerful image to have my serving alongside our summer intern Jeff who has just finished his first year of seminary.

A black man and a white woman ministering to a congregation might seem odd to a lot of people. In fact, as I have introduced him to people as our intern, we have gotten responses like, “Oh that’s great, so now your congregation is multiracial.” Even though the person didn’t know anything about Emmanuel or the makeup of our congregation, the underlying assumption is that we wouldn’t be serving together.

We could have brushed off the comment as ill-informed or misguided as it certainly was, but there is a deeper issue for us baptists who consider ourselves moderate or progressive. What are we really doing to try to serve together, as men and women, black and white, and people from all different kinds of backgrounds. Are we really challenging ourselves to connect and serve together or are we much more comfortable serving ourselves?

What if it didn’t take nine deaths to bring churches in the same city together? What if partnership were our natural inclination rather than competition?

I’m guessing the world would look a little different if we as leaders in churches and we as leaders in our community served together.

NOTE: This post originally appeared at http://merianna.net/2015/06/serving-together/. 

2011-11-20

Rev. Merianna Neely Harrelson serves as pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Fellowship and is stepmom to two wonderful children.

Danielle Glaze: Ordinary Miracles: “Through It All”

Ordinary Miracles 2015, , , ,

The chorus of this hymn has been playing in my head the past several weeks. As I have had time to be still since school has ended for the semester, I can only say “through it all…” The chorus of the song says “Through it all, through it all, I’ve learned to trust in Jesus, I’ve learned to trust in God; Through it all, through it all, I’ve learned to depend upon His Word.”

The reason I keep reflecting on this chorus is because I have had a tremendous year, but when I think about it, through it all God has performed ordinary miracles over and over again.

Ordinary and miracles don’t typically get phrased together because “ordinary” means normal and “miracle” means wonder, phenomenon, amazing, marvelous. There seems to be nothing ordinary about miracles. But if we stop and think, we realize that so many things we take for granted as “normal” in our lives are, often times, great miracles.

As I think about “through it all,” I realize that God performed so many miracles in my life over the past ten months. As I drove up and down Interstate 40 four times a week for Divinity School, God performed the miracle of keeping me safe and accident free. This wouldn’t seem to be a miracle but when you think about a vehicle traveling well over 70 mph in darkness, driving rain, ice, and sometimes amazing lightning storms–but was accident free–that’s a miracle.

Colleen Kelly, CUDS graduate, and Daniele Glaze, CUDS first year M.Div. student
Colleen Kelly, CUDS graduate, and Danielle Glaze, CUDS  M.Div. student

It was truly a miracle because sometimes I was so tired that I don’t know how I stayed awake! It was a miracle because I witnessed overturned vehicles and accidents, but through it all, God kept me. Thank God for the miracle.

Through the economic shift from full time employment to part time employment, God performed a miracle in my household and finances. Just like the widow who didn’t run out of oil until she had more than enough, God performed that miracle in my home. My expenses remained the same, and even increased.

But through it all I learned to trust in Jesus, I learned to trust in God. Miraculously every household bill was paid, I always had gas money, my children had what they needed. And not only did we have what we needed but we always had it right on time. Oh my, what amazing provision! What a phenomenon to seemingly not have enough, but to have God miraculously provide. What miracles . . .

The greatest miracle I experienced in this past ten months was that God blessed me to spend time with my dad before he left this earth. Yes, it was a miracle because I live fifteen hours away.

It was a miracle to get the call that my dad would not be here much longer and to ask God to allow me to say goodbye. It was a miracle to get a flight out within ten hours, to have amazing friends to help me get there, and to spend seven precious days taking care of my dad and being blessed with some moments of lucid conversation with him. Oh, what a miracle!

The most outstanding aspect of this miracle was to have God empower me so much that I was able to stand and deliver my dad’s eulogy. It was so beyond me. It was the hardest sermon I’ve ever preached, the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but God’s miraculous anointing power strengthened me and used me to bring words of hope and encouragement and salvation to others.

Oh, what miracles I have experienced in my life! Through it all, I’m still standing through the grief, the financial struggles, Divinity school, single mommy-hood, and just plain old life. Oh, through it all, I’ve learned to depend on the Lord. Through it all, because I’ve learned to trust and depend on Jesus, God has performed so many miracles in my life–too many to count. I’ve only highlighted a few.

Despite living on auto-pilot for months on end, not getting enough sleep, through stress, challenges, and grief, I can say, I’m still standing because of the outstanding ordinary miracles that God has blessed me with. Through it all, I’ve learned to trust in His Word. His Word that says He will never leave or forsake me and His Word that says He will supply all of my needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Through it all!

320819_2077562105573_1535990944_n

Reverend Danielle Glaze serves as Director of Christian Education at Macedonia Baptist Church in Wilmington, NC, and us a frequent retreat leader and speaker. She is mother to a daughter in college and a son in high school–all while attending Campbell University Divinity School in Buies Creek, NC.

Jenny F. Call: Ordinary Miracles: Grace Upon Grace

Ordinary Miracles 2015, ,

Of the many words that could be used to describe me, “graceful” would not be at the top of the list.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the most common usage is a way of moving or behaving that is controlled, smooth, and attractive. This is not my gift. I have often bemoaned the fact that I didn’t take dance lessons as a child, which surely is to blame for my clumsiness and poor posture. But perhaps it’s innate as years of (somewhat sporadic) yoga practice and chiropractic visits have not remedied the problem.

I’m also not so good at showing grace (in terms of offering mercy) in my family life. I’m quick to judge and find fault and can hold on to a small slight for years (just ask my husband). It is difficult for me to accept things as they are in reality when I have already envisioned how it “should” be in my head.

I’ve held on to scars from spiritual hurts as well. There’s the church were we worshipped for some time whose tagline “a place of grace” makes me cringe. I’m still healing from some of the wounds that were inflicted there.

But grace keeps inserting itself into my life.

First it was a friend, a spiritual sister from Jamaica, whom I met last summer in my D.Min. cohort. Grace is not her given name, but is the perfect chosen name for one who is so full of spirit and so full of God’s hope. Her words and the way she carries herself are such pictures of God’s favor. She is a reminder to me to trust in God to be my strength and salvation.

Then there’s the new “member” of our family, an American Girl doll named Grace Thomas, who reminds me of how my daughter is learning this virtue of grace as she navigates her way through relationships and becoming who she was created to be. While I see dollar signs and more clutter when I look at this Grace, the doll is a companion that my Maryn favors, one that enlivens her imagination and allows her to dream about who she will be.

Maryn loves nothing more than when we are drawing pictures of Grace Thomas together or creating recipes like the ones that Grace would make in her bakery (sold separately, $500). Styling the doll’s hair gives us time to sit together and just be, to talk about whatever is on our minds. That is a grace that I don’t indulge as often as I would like.

11159552_10153159530145490_682536037669364566_n

Last night at bedtime, I was running out of energy and patience. After a long day of work, household chores, and wrangling two kids hopped up on the energy of a school-free summer, I didn’t have much left to give.

But Maryn found me in my bed where I was hiding out until it was time to get them upstairs to bed. She asked in her sweet voice, “Want to read me a book?” That mini-me knows the way to my heart.

I looked at her selections and smiled, wondering at her emotional intelligence and insight. Perhaps it was unintentional, but regardless, it was grace. They were good reminders for me and for the one who follows in my footsteps.

1908145_10153284293275490_8716529328366454950_n

In these encounters, I’m learning more about the other dimension of grace as unmerited divine assistance, a virtue coming from God, or, as I learned in church growing up, an undeserved gift. “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace” (John 1:16).

It is easy for me to think of what I lack (patience, time) and hard for me to remember the gifts I receive in grace every day. For these ordinary days are full of demands and mess, frustrations and disappointments.

But they are so full of beauty as well. Perhaps grace is not being delivered from the things that stress us, but it is receiving them with gratitude, understanding that the grace is in the mess of our daily lives.

11202581_10153200476920490_6985782411563504085_n

Jenny Frazier Call is wife to John, mom to Brady and Maryn, and university chaplain at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. She is working on her D.Min. in Educational Leadership at Virginia Theological Seminary, and when she has time, enjoys writing at www.hopecalls.blogspot.com.

Ka’thy Gore Chappell: Ordinary Miracles, Call and Real Life

Ordinary Miracles 2015, , ,

I came late to the combination of “ministry & motherhood!”

While I have served in full-time ministry as a vocational calling since the age of 24, my husband and I dated when I was in my late 30’s and married when I was 41. One year later–on our first wedding anniversary–I was 7 months pregnant.

So at the age of 42, I gave birth to our daughter. She was healthy & beautiful!

Even though we were older parents, we were still “new” parents. It took us 10 minutes (not exaggerating) to get her in her car seat when we left the hospital to go home. (We have a video to prove it!) And I am always quick to say that our daughter would not have received a bath the first week of her life if it had not been for my mother who stayed with us that very important first week.

To this day, I still reflect on how quickly one’s life can change and sometimes joke that I am still catching up.

11041734_10153271263894009_8722131786810778173_n

From the first weeks of her life, our daughter–who is an only child–grew up “with” me and my husband. She was present where we were. She participated in college cook-outs, weekend retreats and mission trips. She worshipped God at church, on campuses and at state and national assemblies. She picked up trash with “Adopt-A-Highway” saying she “wanted to help change the world.”

She attended so many weddings of college students, she knew at age 4 how to find the family place cards at wedding receptions. She fell in love with Sunday School classes and the people in them. She experienced staff members as her dearest friends and called them by their first names.

She knew when times were tough with church. She noticed things. She heard things. She experienced the joys and the sorrows of church life. She mourned the passing of those who died and experienced the pain and struggle when life was not right at church.

While my husband and I were always intentional in how we loved, communicated and nurtured our daughter, we did become concerned that perhaps, she knew too much about church life. I was anxious that she would never want to be active in church as a young person or college student or adult. And of course, I thought she would never want to work or serve in ministry.

We underestimate our children, don’t we?

Imagine my surprise, when our daughter came to us to say that she thought she was being called to ministry. Part of me was not certain that I wanted that for her. Then, I experienced a God moment.

We underestimate the power of God’s call, don’t we?

Real life provided the space for God to call and for her to respond. Today, our daughter has graduated from college and is now pursuing a Master of Divinity while serving a local church congregation in ministry.

When did that happen? When did she grow up to be old enough and mature enough to have her own youth group? And how did God’s call on her life penetrate the good and the not-so-good parts of ministry that she experienced with me, our family and church?

The answer is that God’s call is greater!

From Isaiah 6:1-8, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of God’s glory. Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!'”

photo

Ka’thy Gore Chappell is the Leadership Development Coordinator with Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Prior to service with CBFNC, Ka’thy was the Associate Dean of  at BTSR in Richmond and served North Carolina Baptist churches for over 30 years.

Starlette McNeill: Ordinary Miracles: “He Speaks”

Ordinary Miracles 2015, , , ,

We knew that it was coming. This was the reason why we had begun reading to our son John in the womb.

McNeill 22

He had a bookshelf and a personal library before he could hold up his head, much less turn a page. I purchased flash cards before he could walk. I asked people to talk to him using real words. No baby talk.

So, that last one might have been a bit of overkill but I was serious. OK. Full disclosure. I still am.

Words are important to me. I know how powerful they are. So when I took my then three month-old son to daycare after returning to work, I would say all of the good words that I could think of.

“You are an intelligent man, a righteous man, a kind and compassionate man, an honest man, a faithful man, a gentleman.” I wanted him to know how much I loved him and believed in him. I shared how proud I was to be his mother and how thankful I was to have him as a son.

Some would argue that he couldn’t have understood what I was saying, that it was a waste of time. But the affirmations continue.

And while at the park one day, I overheard my now two year-old son introducing himself to a new friend by pointing to himself and saying, “Hi. I genius.” He told his teacher, Miss Heather, the same thing and she now calls him “Genius John.”

Yes, I told him that he was a genius. But now he speaks for himself.

His first word was mama. I jumped out of bed when I heard it. I knew that it was coming. Every child says it unless deformity or disability prevents it. It is predictable and to be expected.

Still, It was no less a miracle for me. I had been speaking to him and now he speaks to me. I was speaking for him and now he speaks for himself.

It was a holy moment. Selah.

But, not only do I have a speaking son but I am in relationship with the speaking God, the Word-God. Sure, we know that God has spoken, that God has messengers. We have a personal library, sixty-six books to prove it.

But, we are quite surprised when He speaks—present tense—and more so, when God speaks to us directly. God doesn’t call me “Mama” though.

When the God that we have been speaking to speaks back to us, we might just jump out of bed like I did when my son said his first word. It is in these moments that we become aware that we are living epistles, that God is not only talking to us but writing on us, that we are being touched by the finger of God and becoming Word-people.

I knew that God’s word was coming but I might have only been prepared for baby talk, not the pure and righteous words that He spoke over me.

“You are a blessed woman, a highly favored woman, a holy woman, a called woman, a priestly woman.”

I am discovering more and more that it is in God’s speaking that I am revealed. Like my relationship with my son, what God says about me discloses who I am. So, I only repeat after God in my introductions, confident that He speaks for me.

smcneill

Reverend Starlette McNeill serves as the Associate Pastor at Village Baptist Church in Bowie, Maryland. She is a wife, a lover of reading, writing and Starbucks and the mother of one amazing son, John.

Leah Grundset Davis: In the Interim

Pentecost 2015, , , , ,

I finished up my second semester of doctoral work in the Doctor of Ministry program at Candler School of Theology a few weeks ago. I jokingly made a Facebook posting that I wondered what I would do with all my free time and noted— “oh right, I’ll have a baby in a few weeks.”

It’s true that these few interim weeks between finishing school and welcoming our second daughter into the world offer brief glimpses into restful, quieter summer days. I’m savoring them because I know they do not come all too often.

The pace continues at work and I’m still chasing around a very busy almost-two-year-old, but without school thrown in the mix, I’ve had a few mornings where I can breathe deeper, a few afternoons where I can linger on my afternoon walk and even a few evenings, where I’ve (gasp!) read for pleasure without the impending deadline of a paper or a book to read for class hanging over my head.

It’s odd to consider not being in the pulpit again until the beginning of October. When my mind would normally be swirling with thoughts of Pentecost and summer lectionary texts, I instead find myself remembering, “oh yes, we need to put together that crib” and “where DID I put all of my older daughter’s clothes?”

The slowing down that comes for some ministers in the summer is like a breath of fresh air. (I know if you work with youth or children or have a busy summer schedule, then summer is not a slowing down, but a ramping up). I’m considering as I slow down, both intentionally and because I’m starting to waddle, ever-so-gracefully, where God might be new to me these days.

Where might I see the holy in the ordinary once the Spirit rushes in on Pentecost? Where might the Incarnation be real and tangible and how might I live that out because I have a few extra moments to inhale?

I know the busyness we all encounter hits at different moments throughout the year for all of us and it will be real again for me in about eight weeks when we welcome another child and then again when I return to work and school six weeks after that.

But I think I’ll linger in this space until then and claim it for what it is—a surpising gift.

leah grundset davis

Rev. Leah Grundset Davis is the communications specialist at the Alliance of Baptists and a member at Ravensworth Baptist Church, Annandale, Va. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband John, daughter Lydia, Moses the dog and is looking forward to welcoming second daughter in mid-July.

Alicia Davis Porterfield: Kitchen Table Pentecost, Take Two

Uncategorized

“In our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deed of power.” –Acts 2:11
kitchentablepentecost

The kitchen is the heart of our home.

Not in the HGTV sparkling stainless steel, open concept, granite countertop kind of way. More in the stove from the ’70’s, cups all over the counter (because every time a boy needs a drink of water he also needs a new cup, saith nobody ever!), jelly on the floor kind of way.

At our kitchen table, three boys, ages 8, 10 and 12, discuss their days, the current sport of the season and entertain each other with displays of certain bodily functions. Belatedly, they tack on a mumbled “excuse me” when given the parental stink eye.

Yep, raising them up in the way they should go. That’s us.

The recent table talk is all about the NBA post season, which seems to last a legion of weeks, by the way. As some know, I am not a sports fanatic.

Every sports interview ever. - Imgur

I never learned to speak basketball.

Usually, the boys’ chatter washes over me at the table. I interject only to add, “Please chew with your mouth closed,” and “is your napkin on your lap?” and other such vital contributions.

Our middle child sometimes tries to include me.
“Mom, who do you like best: Kevin Love or Chris Paul?”
“Uhhhh . . who’s Kevin Love?”
“Mom!! Only my favorite player (this week, I add silently)! He’s on
the Taco Bell commercial. Chris Paul is the State Farm guy with the fake twin,
Cliff Paul.”
“Oh, right. Chris Paul. He seems like a good sport and his little boy is just
precious.”

But mostly, waves of baller-speak wash over me. I’m tuned out. Thinking about the Weight Watcher points in this meal and the list of chores between me and bedtime.

Pentecost is this Sunday, when the Holy Spirit swooshed down (get the Nike reference?!) and Jesus’ followers suddenly proclaimed the good news of Christ in languages they’d never before uttered. Passover travelers from all over the Mideast stood in Jerusalem’s streets hearing God’s good news in Christ in their own languages for the first time.

All they had to do was listen. The Spirit was speaking.

And so it is at our kitchen table. Baller-speak winds around me, telling me something important about each child and his perspective, his hopes, his burgeoning faith. With the language of courts and rosters and predictions, each one shares a subtle dialect, unique to who God is shaping him to be.

Sports-speak is not my native tongue. I may never learn to speak it well.

But if I open myself to the movement of the Spirit, I may just hear “God’s deeds of power” right there at our battered kitchen table. All I have to do is listen. Amen.

IMG_0482

This is an edited encore version of a post from Pentecost 2014. 

Rev. Alicia Davis Porterfield is fluent in Mom-speak thanks to the three boys she raises with her husband, Eric. The moderator of this blog, she is currently serving as interim pastor at FBC Carolina Beach.

Starlette McNeill: My Flesh and Blood

Easter 2015, , ,

“My flesh and blood.”

I looked at my son as he lay sleeping one morning and those words came to mind. More than my next of kin, John is the closest person to me because he is the closest to being me.

I am not merely talking about resemblance and certainly not gender, but he is my flesh and my blood. We have shared a body and he has walked in my shoes before he took his first step. He knows what it is to be me because he came from me. I am his entrance into the world, his mother-door.

McNeill 22

While I understood the phrase “my flesh and blood” before becoming a mother, it became more evident after having a child. I was clear on the fact that my womb would become his first room and my ribs his bed. I accepted that I would share my food and drink, that his vote would become the majority when determining my taste buds, moods and sleeping patterns.

But, when he was born and I looked into his eyes and saw mine, I realized that I had given much more.

And as much as I am attempting to capture this realization with words, the alphabet does not possess enough manpower to catch the enigma. These characters fall short of explaining the revelation. They are inadequate to express the mystery because it is a deep knowing, a certainty shared with one who was tied to me by navel string.

My son knows me in a way that no one else ever will.

Sure, he knows which buttons to push and how to get his way but there’s more to it than that. A veiled knowledge, I can’t even tell you all that he knows. We have shared an experience that cannot be taken away from us. You would have to be my flesh and blood to understand it.

And so it is with Christ.

We are spiritually carried and reborn through the womb of baptism. Born again, Jesus is our Door. How amazing that he would make room for us in his body–that no one has to scoot over, that we don’t have to share, but that God has a place for each of us.

How remarkable that Christ, who is the living water and the bread of heaven, would share the divine delicacy of his word with us. We do eat from the very mouth of God. Growing in the Body of Christ, we are his flesh and blood.

How incredible that we are an expression of his flesh that was crucified and his blood that was shed for humanity. When Jesus, the Savior of the world, looks at us, he sees his next of kin.

This relationship is not one of fans or even followers. We are not in the stands cheering him on or standing in line to shake his hand or walking behind him but seated at the table with him. We are family members and the fact that we resemble him at all is a miracle.

I looked at my son and said, “My flesh and blood.” How utterly confounding that Christ looks at his Church, that Christ looks at you and me, and says, “My flesh and blood.” What amazing grace. Amen.

smcneill

Reverend Starlette McNeill serves as the Associate Pastor at Village Baptist Church in Bowie, Maryland. She is a wife, a lover of reading, writing and Starbucks and the mother of one amazing son, John.

Nikki Finkelstein-Blair: Family Album

Easter 2015, ,

Acts 4:29-35

old_photo_album1

Acts reads like a photo album of the first days of the church; the way I took monthly photos of my babies as they grew, the way I painstakingly notated their sleeps and eats and… such. Here, in the very earliest days of the church of Christian believers, we receive snapshot after snapshot of the life of the church; a scrapbook of moments that shimmer with the presence of the risen Lord, milestones of the Way we are still tracing today. The photographs become clear:

For the early church, as for us, the world’s powers threaten.
Prayers are raised.
The Spirit moves.
We give, and share, and care for one another.

The story of the church didn’t happen TO it—though it was initiated by Christ, gathered around the wondrous good news of his resurrection and shaped into flame at Pentecost—but when the early believers first lifted their voice to God, in one heart and mind, they didn’t just pray for God to work magic.

The pictures of the early church aren’t exposures of God’s mighty hand, reaching down from On High to solve problems and smooth paths in God’s best deus ex machina fashion. Instead it’s a scrapbook stuffed with the pictures of people who have prayed to be changed, so they may help change the world. They prayed to be bold in their words of witness and in the works of their hands.

Maybe they didn’t know what they were asking when they prayed for God to make them bold; who ever does? (My instinct says it’s one of those “be careful what you wish for” deals, like praying for patience… that’s just asking for trouble!!) But when they could have prayed for God to just take care of business–as I so often do–they prayed instead for God to work in them.

Then they went on to operate in a way that I can barely imagine, setting aside individual concerns and any “I got to do for me and mine” attitudes, and instead giving everything to their fellow believers. There was no need among them, because they saw each other as “me and mine.”

In the pictures of this church, everybody looks like family—and not because they share the same nose, or hazel eyes, or pattern baldness. In these snapshots, the family connection comes through in the way they link arms and lift each other up. It shines in the way they use their stuff: as if what matters isn’t the stuff itself, but the people. As if what matters isn’t only the people who are related to me by blood, but those who are related to me by faith. As if other people’s needs have become my needs, and as if caring for those needs is the very same as caring for Christ’s own self.

And–most shocking of all–as if when I am in need, I too will be embraced, lifted up, made whole in the family.

This is the story of the church. And this is the Gospel of our Lord.

The early church, and we, are still (are always) growing up, snapshot by snapshot. We’re stumbling and finding our feet, learning what life together means as we practice familyhood and faith everywhere we gather in twos and threes and more.

And whether we realize it or not, we too are filling albums with the pictures of this story, just as the earliest believers did. In the scrapbook of our testimony, the world can page through the stories of our growth, can watch us speak and act in boldness and with love, can examine our faces for family resemblances.

What will they see?
————

Blair pic

Nicole Finkelstein-Blair became a U.S. Navy spouse in 2000, graduated from Central Baptist Theological Seminary and was ordained in 2001, and became “Mom!” in 2004. She finds ministry wherever the military and motherhood lead: in five states and two countries (so far), as a parishioner and a pulpit-supplier, as a sometime blogger and devotional writer, and at countless dinner tables and bedtimes.

Melanie Walk: Guilt and Resurrection

Easter 2015, , , , ,

1 John 3:18-24 (The Message)

18-20 My dear children, let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love. This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly, living in God’s reality. It’s also the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism, even when there is something to it. For God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves.

21-24 And friends, once that’s taken care of and we’re no longer accusing or condemning ourselves, we’re bold and free before God! We’re able to stretch our hands out and receive what we asked for because we’re doing what he said, doing what pleases him. Again, this is God’s command: to believe in his personally named Son, Jesus Christ. He told us to love each other, in line with the original command. As we keep his commands, we live deeply and surely in him, and he lives in us. And this is how we experience his deep and abiding presence in us: by the Spirit he gave us.

I have a confession. We dyed Easter eggs on the Tuesday after Easter.

I tried to comfort myself by remembering that the Easter season is actually fifty days long on the church calendar, but that was little help. I did manage to gather a pinwheel, a bubble wand, and a coloring book late Saturday night to pass for an Easter basket. Easter Sunday lunch was pancakes and bacon—delicious, but not traditional.

As a Pastor of Music and Worship, my days leading up to Easter Sunday are very full, allowing little time for planning and carrying out holiday traditions. At least, it feels that way to me. I have to admit, scrolling through Facebook and seeing some of the things my amazing friends put together for their little ones left me feeling guilty. I was especially guilt-ridden to see many of my minister friends, just as involved in Holy Week services as I, do some really thoughtful and involved things to make the day memorable and fun for their children.

Many of my fondest memories of childhood are wrapped up in holiday family traditions. My grandmother was especially good at creating meaningful and fun holiday experiences. Unfortunately, I did not inherit any gifts related to coming up with, planning, or carrying out crafty or magical traditions! I’m just not wired that way.

It doesn’t take great spiritual maturity to know that those things are just good fun and not essential (or even related) to helping our children understand the resurrection. Still, I felt guilty on Easter for not being that kind of mother.

The truth is, I feel guilty most of the time about anything and everything. When I’m at work long hours, I worry I’m not being a good mother. When I take time to be with my family, I worry I’m not being a good minister. I constantly feel guilt about not being a good friend.

I waste a lot of time feeling guilty. Guilt is like a quiet unwelcome companion. Sometimes it is so much a part of my life that I don’t notice it or the damage it does.

So, when searching the lectionary texts for inspiration as I was beginning to write, verses 20 and 21 of the 1 John passage jumped out at me. It was as if Jesus was reminding me that a guilt ridden life is not what he wants for me. Guilt keeps me from being who he wants me to be. In fact, the very good news of the gospel is that Jesus came to save us from being guilty!

On Easter Sunday, our sweet little boy sat in worship with his daddy as I led our choir to sing I Know that My Redeemer Liveth and Hallelujah from Messiah. He heard the congregation sing Christ the Lord is Risen Today and Crown Him with Many Crowns. He heard us all say together, “Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!”

My husband is in the process of becoming ordained as an Anglican priest. We were able to be together on Easter Sunday at the church I serve because while his church does have Easter Sunday morning worship, their biggest resurrection celebration happens during Easter Vigil on Saturday night.

During that time of worship, everyone gets a bell to ring when Christ’s resurrection is proclaimed. I was moved to tears as we sang “Alleluia!” over and over again as we all joyfully rang our bells together. Both times of worship were so meaningful for us as a family as we celebrated the good news and as we watched Elijah take it all in.

As I focus on what we did to celebrate the resurrection rather than what we did not do, I can’t find guilt anywhere. As I think about shouting and singing “Alleluia!” with my family, all I see is the joy and hope of the resurrection.

Guilt cowers and runs away when faced with the power of the resurrection. Thanks be to God!

I imagine I am not alone in having guilt as my quiet unwelcome companion. My prayer is that we who struggle with guilt can open our hands to let it go and open our hearts to receive the grace and love God offers us so lavish and free.

For God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves. And friends, once that’s taken care of and we’re no longer accusing or condemning ourselves, we’re bold and free before God!

Melanie head shot

Melanie Walk has served as a music minister, chaplain, and divinity school admission associate. She currently serves as the Interim Pastor of Music and Worship at Lafayette Baptist Church in Fayetteville, NC. Melanie’s husband is becoming an Anglican priest. They have a 2 year old son who spends his time spreading joy and being cute.