HRPC Office

Matthew 5:1-13 1.7.23

As we begin a new year, I would like to issue a challenge to us all. Can we make a commitment to live generously this year? I define living generously as the kind of living that involves my whole self—my attention and focus, my relationship with God, my interactions with others and my care for this earth. It involves careful stewardship of resources I have at my disposal: bank accounts and tangible items like clothing and household items, as well as my body parts like eyes, legs, arms and mind. Living generously means living the kind of life God desires for us— sharing and serving, self-care and spiritual health.

Last week at our brunch worship I shared that I prefer to set commitments rather than goals or resolutions at the beginning of a new year. For me, a commitment makes my intention clear to me and to God while at the same time recognizing that commitments or intentions are always a work in progress, part of the overall trajectory of my life. Use the word that makes the most sense to you—commitment, goal, resolution.

Should you choose to accept my challenge, I suggest that you first define for yourself what living generously means in your context and stage of life. Then you might take some time to reflect on why living generously is important to you. There may be something that catches your attention in this very familiar list of beatitudes found at the very beginning of Jesus’ sermon on the mount in the gospel of Matthew. Let’s take a look!

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1 Cor. 3:5-15 2.12.23

Dan and I learned the absolute necessity of a strong foundation in a painful way. The home we bought in Hickory, North Carolina sat at the low point of our block. It sat on a lot where the builders had deposited trees that were cut down to build the homes and then covered them up with multiple feet of soil. Our home was built on top of the pile of buried trees in the 70’s. Over the decades, those trees decomposed, as any tree does. We were unaware of any of this…but when we were ready to sell that home, an inspector saw jacks in the crawl space which had previously been in place to stabilize parts of the house. If that was not enough to make us question how the inspector had missed them when we bought the house, apparently the house had shifted so much that some of the jacks had been knocked out of place. Of course, we had noticed that our living room tilted down, sloping away from the rest of the house. And we had seen a crack in a couple of walls of the brick home. We learned that our foundation was so unstable that at least 10 large pylons (very large, strong supports) were needed, pylons which had to be drilled down into the earth in order to stabilize the house. Several of the pylons had to go down 15 feet or more to reach solid rock, and the price was by the foot. The cost was overwhelming and took away any profit we might have made on the sale. The builder had not built our house upon the rock, but on unstable ground!

Perhaps you remember the parable Jesus tells in the gospel of Matthew about the importance of building a house on solid ground. That is what the wise person does. In contrast, the foolish person builds on unstable ground, or sand, and the house can not withstand rains and winds. Remember that a parable is a short story with a lesson to be learned. He was making it clear that we need a solid foundation if we are to expect that we will be able to withstand the torments which blow upon us in life.

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