Just a Seed

John Gibson

Every time I hear a testimony, I am amazed at the wonders God can accomplish through ordinary people. I must admit that I was always a little jealous of some of the testimonies I heard. Some people find Christ at the lowest possible moment in their life. We hear many stories of people who, after a life of addiction, reach out to the Cross and find the nail-pierced hands.

Others go through life with an emptiness that they can't fill with money or power, only to realize that the only thing that can fill that hole is God. Then there’s me. I never drank or did drugs, and I was a normal guy. I had friends and a great family, but I stayed to myself most of the time; I guess you could say I was a loner. I never let friends get too close, because that would mean that I might have to talk about my feelings or risk arguing with them, or even worse, risk losing them as friends. I was afraid of being hurt. As I got a little older and started high school, I became even more of a loner. I would spend my days buried in books and barely going out. I wasn't just a loner – I was lonely, but still too afraid to reach out to anyone. Then I came across a copy of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by the great C.S. Lewis. It brought back some good memories. I remember reading the stories of the kids going through a wardrobe to a magic land ruled by the mysterious Aslan, a mighty lion. I remember being especially drawn to Aslan. I never knew why, but I just wanted to be close to him so much that, as a child, I tried to get to Narnia through my mother’s closet. I am sad to say it did not work.

I started thinking about other times as a child, and my mind went straight to my grandfather. The more I thought of him, the more I came to realize how great he was. My grandfather was a simple man who fell in love with a woman with six children, with whom he also fell in love. He treated them as his own, and none of them would ever call him a step father, but rather, a father.

He was a father in the truest sense of the word. He was a simple and humble man who loved his family and above all loved his Savior, and he lived out that faith. I do not think he knew how much of an influence he would have on his stubby little grandson. As I thought about all of this, I came to realize that the loneliness I was feeling never existed when I was a child.

My grandpa took me to church every other Sunday, and when I stayed the night with him, he always said his prayers – true prayers from the heart for his whole family. I still did not realize all of this until my sister came into my room one day and said, “Grandpa is dead.” All I could say was, "What?" And then the tears came. I realized that this man was my first Bible; he was the planter of a seed of faith, a faith that would be watered by the stories of Narnia and blossom at a time of loss. It was in a humble man I proudly call “Grandfather” and a place in a wardrobe, that I met the risen savior Jesus Christ.

Then, God led me to the Anglican Mission in America. I go to a movie theatre every Sunday morning to worship my Savior and God. The first Sunday I went into Christ Church in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, I knew I was home. I count the people of that church as my family. I feel so close to Jesus when I am with them. My church is filled with sinners, who have turned to the only one who can forgive them. I see Jesus in that church; I see Him in everyone that comes through our door. He is real to us in His Word and in the Sacrament of the table. I spent a week volunteering at our Vacation Bible School. As I watched the kids sing and raise their hands in praise of God, I could only pray that we could plant a seed in their hearts and pray that it grows into a true faith.

God at Work in Everyday People

As we travel through life, God uses all kinds of things to try to reach us. Today, looking back over my life, I can identify many times where He knocked at my door, perhaps constructing the fundamental basis of what today builds my faith. I can clearly identify three key people who I believe God used to come closer to me. Until then, I don’t think I ever considered Christ as a solution to my needs. Rather, it was when I started considering Christ, that I discovered I had needs.

I grew up in Brazil as a Catholic; however, my family did not attend church regularly or practice Catholicism. In my mind, the Bible was something too sacred to actually read. During my formative years, it was great Aunt Dinda who introduced me to Jesus through the Gospel narratives. It was by her influence that I decided to make my First Communion when I was eight years old. Unfortunately, her death from cancer one year later represented a distance from Christianity.

Prayer was sporadic throughout my young adult years. I went through life accomplishing things and being responsible for decisions in my life without acknowledging that God had a plan for me.

Shortly after coming to Raleigh, N.C., I met my boyfriend, the second person who became a key figure in my spiritual life. He was the “knock on the door” God used to lead me to Him. He challenged me to see that being a Christian is more than church attendance.

At first, his involvement in Bible studies and small groups seemed foreign to me. I equated being a Christian with believing in God and fulfilling a duty to Him by going to church. An intimate relationship with Christ was something I had never heard of.

He introduced me to Church of the Apostles. For the first time in my life, going to church was something meaningful.

After visiting Apostles, a church staff member called to ask if I would like to meet and talk about any questions I might have about Christianity. I was surprised by the quick, personal response from the visitors’ card I filled out the previous Sunday. My answer was “yes,” since I indeed had a lot of questions.

Coffee conversations with another church staff member became the third way God came knocking. Apart from the content of our routine conversations about Christ, what struck me the most was the feeling of joy and peace I had every time we met.

Those conversations led to an invitation to attend a small group, something that felt new and foreign, since I was not familiar with the dynamics of Bible studies. One evening at the Small Group, we talked about how the church might help us to be a community and to be there for each other. I realized that independent of what happened in my life, there were people in that group who were truly friends and truly cared about each other. For me, who always thought that I had to do everything myself if I wanted to succeed in life, this was no small finding.

As I drove home, something special happened. For the first time I felt the close presence of God in my life. My perspective changed from being completely dependent upon myself to realize that no matter what happened, He would always be there for me.

I still have questions, and doubts. There are still days when I do not feel so close to God, but no matter what happens, I do have the assurance that He is with me and that I am not alone.

I am thankful for every knock at the door of my life that came in the way of faithful people like my Aunt Dinda and the people at Church of the Apostles. Their faithfulness to Him helped me to see that it was God knocking all along.

Adriana de Souza e Silva is a University Professor in Raleigh, NC.

God at Work in Everyday People

Out of the Mouths of Babes

by Daniele Jackson

“For he who is least among you all—he is the greatest” Luke 9:48b.

I see the old man often, weekly at least, always at the same intersection, always holding the same sign: an explanation that he is a veteran, lives in the woods, needs money, etc.—I never look long enough to read the whole thing, as I wouldn’t want to seem to be staring and certainly wouldn’t want to look as if I had a handout for him, either—and, on the other side, a smiley face and the Spanish word for “smile”. He hobbles on one crutch, holding a cup and humbly asking the drivers stopped at the light for spare change. Today was no different, except that, owing to the warming temperatures (and much to my chagrin), my windows were open.

The red light seemed to last for an eternity. I knew it was only a matter of a few seconds until my budding three-year-old reader in the backseat, who was waving happily as the man approached our car, asked me to help him read the man’s sign or started asking why he was standing in the median, why he had a crutch, what was in his cup…any number of questions I didn’t want to answer. In fact, I was doing my usual uncomfortable act of a half-nod, half-smile, and quick attempt to look away, be distracted by something else terribly important, all the while wishing the light would hurry up and turn green and wondering if I could close the windows without Luke asking why I was shutting the man out.

I always wish, when I’m in these circumstances, that I knew better what to do. So many “words of wisdom” run around in my head: don’t give him money, or he’ll just spend it on booze; give him a Rescue Mission pamphlet and pray for him; watch out for strange men if you’re a woman traveling alone; pack an extra sandwich and bottle of water to offer…I’ve never known whom to believe. If I thought about it more than just at that moment, if I really had compassion and thought of this old man—or the several other homeless people I see regularly around town—more than just in the uncomfortable moment, I might have known how to help him, how to reach out to him without jeopardizing my safety, Luke’s, or his, how to actually help relieve his burden a bit and touch his soul.

But, of course, I don’t think about him. Usually, as soon as I escape the moment, as soon as the world’s-longest-red-light turns green, I continue on with my comfortable life and forget all about the old man. But not today.

“Hi, buddy. Be good,” the old man said to Luke through the open window.

“He’s a nice man, mama!” said Luke, still waving and smiling. “He’s the greatest man I’ve ever seen.”

Thank goodness Luke was sitting behind me and couldn’t see my face; thank goodness I was wearing sunglasses that hid my eyes. Otherwise, how could I explain to Luke why his words brought tears to my eyes; what would the other drivers at the light think of my crying as I waited for the light to change? “For he who is the least among you all—he is the greatest,” (Luke 9:48b) said Jesus.

I still don’t know what to do for this old man. But I can tell you this: when that light turned green and I drove away, I didn’t forget him this time. Even as Luke, in his three-year-old-with-a-short-attention-span way, proceeded to ask me which way we were turning, what the street sign said, what the speed limit was—himself forgetting the old man even as he waved goodbye—I once again was given a fleeting glimpse of what it means to have the faith of a child, simple yet so profoundly clear, of what it ought to look like if I were to look at people as Jesus does.

God at Work in Everyday People

No Façade

When we sat down together to discuss what seems to be special about this church we both agreed, at All Saints there is no façade. The identity of the church is rooted in the character of the people who are gathered together to worship and serve the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are not a community of fixed people who have arrived. We are a community of people who have been and are being transformed by Christ. We want to make God’s presence known as we worship, serve, work, and live our lives in Chapel Hill and Durham. This is who are, this is what we do, and this is the God we worship.

Initially, we struggled with using the word ‘authenticity’ to describe this community for fear it would sound like some trendy, cliché, buzz word. But we came back to it because authenticity isn’t just talked about here…it’s not a buzz word. All Saints’ authenticity arises from a communal posture of really knowing who we are and really realizing our need for God.

There are two ways authenticity is embodied practically for us at All Saints. First it is in the way the church has emphasized the importance of ministering holistically to the body of Christ. This is a place where our entire family can connect with the Gospel. We don’t want our kids just to be entertained at church. We want them to be in community with others – adults and peers – who share their faith so they may grow into mature believers.

Secondly, we have loved liturgical churches for many years. There is a commitment here at All Saints to taking liturgy seriously – permitting it to be living and active worship of a living and active God. Liturgy is about the community of faith praying what we believe in order that we may also believe what we pray.

If you feel a desire to see what we’re all about, we would say come. All Saints is a group of special people and this is an exciting time in our lives. Come and see what God is doing in our midst.

Used with permission from All Saints, Chapel Hill-Durham.

 God at Work in Everyday People

  A Modern Pilgrim's Progress

T. S. Eliot said that “the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” My church background certainly did not start Anglican, yet something about the liturgy and traditions I encountered when I began attending felt to me like coming home. I felt reconnected to something I had never been connected to before, reminded of something I had never seen. Though new to me, the traditions connected me to my own roots because they were a part of the history of the Body to which I am joined.

I stumbled upon the Anglican Mission in America as a nomadic college student. Perhaps because my family was living overseas or perhaps because our culture is shamelessly mobile and rootless, the rootedness of the traditions struck me as being as potent in my own faith as it was lacking in the culture around me. It spoke to me of a Faith that was grounded, not shifting with changing moods and cultural tendencies, that was relevant in our culture because it was true, not because it was whimsical.

As I absorbed the histories behind the traditions I encountered, I began to realize something that I as a history major had somehow overlooked: the Church had not been invented at a convention or by Jonathan Edwards or the Pilgrims or even Martin Luther. Somehow all my lessons in Church history had given me the impression that after the Apostles died there was a fourteen-hundred-year gap before the next movement of the Spirit. Interacting with these men and women who had passed the Faith down to me was like the day I met my great-grandmother who I had known in theory had once existed but who I was surprised to learn was actually still alive.

Every week I gathered with the Body, a Body that included those in the room and those thousands of years older than me as much as it did the future generations who would rise after me. I would kneel with this company to confess that I had not loved as God had called me to love, I would shake their forgiven hands as I greeted them with the peace of Christ, I would stand with them as we prayed to be forgiven as we forgave, and I would finally file with them to the cross where we would eat of the same bread and drink of the same cup. In a culture that stresses individualism as one of its chief virtues, I was comforted to be absolved of the responsibility of being an individual entity; I was suddenly bound to a living unit of humanity that included those who penned the words I prayed, bound by the Spirit through whom we prayed them.

Used wth permission from All Saints, Chapel Hill-Durham.

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