It is never enough and it is all we've got...

One of the paradoxes I embrace is living fully into the counter cultural vision of Jesus as part of a local church.  That means my energy, focus and resources are given to a small circle of people in the trust that God will multiply her miracles in ways that are faithful. And even though I have seen and experienced this blessing in action, when I pause for prayer and quiet reflection In the face of all the hurt and fear that surrounds and invades us, this never seems to be enough even though I know it is all we've got.

Such is yet another aspect of the foolishness of the Cross, yes?  I Corinthians 1 puts it like this:

The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out. It's written,

I'll turn conventional wisdom on its head,
I'll expose so-called experts as crackpots.

So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn't God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation

(NOTE:  I sense it wise to alter the text here because of the way Christians and others have historically used this and other verses to validate anti-Semitism and wage war on the Jewish people.  What Paul is trying to say in his context - and context is always essential - is that the old religion (Judaism) has one set of expectations that are shattered by the Cross while the philosophers (Greeks) have another rulebook that keeps them equally blind to the upside down wisdom of the Cross.)

While Jews clamor for miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle—and Greeks pass it off as absurd. But to us who are personally called by God himself—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God's ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so tinny, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can't begin to compete with God's "weakness."

But to those who are personally called by God (to Christ) the Crucified and Risen one is the ultimate miracle and wisdom of the Lord all wrapped up in one.  That's part of what it means to serve God in a local congregation: it makes no sense, the evidence of conversion and transformation takes a life time to observe and often it isn't clear that anything we do matters.  And yet...

... the church is one of the only places that shows us how to take "the crushing losses and defeats" of real life and offer them to God and one another in such a way that
these experiences, rightly held, can make us more compassionate and receptive, deepening our engagement with others and opening us to new life. The powers of the heart that transform personal anguish can also transform the way we do politics. For the suffering that undermines democracy by driving us into foxholes and fragmenting the civic community has the potential to also open us to each other, to hope and to the hard work required to sustain" the common good.  (Parker Palmer, Healing the Heart of Democracy, p. 20)

Peterson writes that we don't trust the work of God in our small communities most of the time because (a) we mostly refuse to listen to the Lord and (b) because we have been convinced that the Christian life has something to do with what we do rather than what God has done. (His following words make this clear...)

+ Christian spirituality does not begin with us talking about our experience; it begins with listening to God call us, heal us, forgive us.  This is hard to get into our heads. We talk habitually to ourselves and about ourselves. We don't listen.  And if we do listen to each other it is almost always with the purpose of getting something we can use in our turn. Much of our listening is a form of politeness, courteously waiting our turn to talk about ourselves. But in relations to God especially we must break the habit and let God speak to us. God not only is:  God says...

+ (Consequently) the Christian Life consists in what God does for us, not what we do for God. The Christian life consists in what God says to us, not what we say about God... we are not to use the word Christian to disguise our narcissistic and Promethean attempts at a spirituality without worshipping God and without being addressed by God... Given our sin-damaged memories that render us vulnerable to every latest edition of journalistic spirituality, daily re-orientation in the truth revealed in Jesus and his Cross - and attested in Scripture - is required.  And given our ancient predisposition for reducing every scrap of divine revelation that we come across into a piece of moral/spiritual technology that we can use to get on in the world - and eventually to get on without God - our daily return to a condition of not-knowing and non-achievement is required.  We have proven, time and again, that we are not to be trusted in these maters.

No wonder the apostle writes:  No prolonged infancies among us, please. We'll not tolerate babes in the woods, small children who are an easy mark for impostors. God wants us to grow up, to know the whole truth and tell it in love—like Christ in everything. We take our lead from Christ, who is the source of everything we do. He keeps us in step with each other. His very breath and blood flow through us, nourishing us so that we will grow up healthy in God, robust in love.

Feeling small, wondering about the value of serving and sharing together in a local church, doing most things without ever seeing the fruit of my labor and all the rest is part of both listening to the Lord and being converted to the ironic, upside down wisdom of the Cross. In this, I am still a child who must regularly renew my commitment to Jesus when he tells me:  Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly.