Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

Head wounds bleed.


A lot.   


In Friday's contest between gate and girl, the gate won.

When I picked up my 9-year-old, she hadn't cried yet. The tears hung on her lower lids until we left the school. Away from the sympathizing and/or curious stares of her peers and just a few feet from the family van, the trembling started. 


"Anything but stitches. Please don't let the doctor give me stitches."

For the next 45 minutes, she fretted. How bad would the stitches hurt? How long would it take? Why did that gate latch have to be so sharp? Would the blood ever come out of her new jeans and shirt?


Amazingly though, after a few winces when the doctor injected some numbing medicine, the actual stitching was easy. No crying. Three stitches. All better.
   

"See, it wasn't so bad. You did all that worrying for nothing," the doctor said. The mother said. The teacher said.
   

And then there's what God said in Matthew: "Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?   

"
In these difficult economic times, vestries are fretting. It is stewardship time, and we've spent a lot of anxious meetings wondering how people will respond.
   

Sometimes we've already anticipated the cuts we'll have to make, the painful changes in store. We've already calculated our decline. 

But I wonder: How would the lives of our churches change if we worried not about the possibility of pain but rather spent our time imagining in abundance?