Grace Exchange

I spent yesterday morning meeting with an old friend who has agreed to become a partner in my web design business. I have 45 clients. I host their websites on a server I rent from Rackspace.com and maintain the content for most of them in return for a monthly fee. I have spent a number of years as a pastor and web designer, always wondering how I was managing to get everything done. For the last eighteen months I have added a third job. Writing.

There is no way I can keep this up.

Hopefully, this partnership will allow me to slowly evolve into a pastor and a writer with most of the web hosting work done by others. We’ll see how it all works out.

I came home from the meeting and sat down on the couch with my youngest daughter, Lillian. She sat in my lap and we watched "Sponge Bob Square Pants." I forgot about the time and drifted off to sleep. Falling asleep with Sponge Bob droning in the background is rather surreal and can produce some pretty unusual dreams. I'd rather not talk about them, if that's okay with you.

Anyway, I forgot about the time and I forgot that I had agreed to meet a couple for dinner at 6:00 pm. They have been visiting the church and wanted to talk to me about joining.

I have a long standing problem with calendars and schedules. I have the hardest time keeping up with them. I really need to check my calendar every day, but for some reason I sometimes relapse and think that I can remember everything I have to do. Inevitably I get mixed up and forget something very important and feel horrible about it. When that happens I make all kind of wild promises to myself and swear that I will look at my calendar first thing every morning from then on. I'm sure this behavior has some kind of pop psychology label. "Self Destructive Shame Cycle of Addiction," or something like that.

They called at 6:30 and asked where I was. I made a frantic apology. I was groggy and just coming out of the Sponge Bob dream, so I probably sounded rather pathetic. The man was very kind. He said, “We’re at the restaurant. Don’t worry about it. Why don’t you come on and we’ll wait for you.”

I arrived at 6:50 pm. I asked them to forgive me, and they said they did. They had such nice smiles that it was obvious they meant it. I forgot our dinner and made them wait, but I was forgiven and it was clear that our new friendship was not in danger.

During the meal they told me a tragic story. Their family history includes some very difficult things, and they wanted to tell me about these things before they joined the church. They were worried that their past might make us hesitate to accept them.

I told them that the church is a sanctuary. If you walk through the church doors and call out, “Sanctuary!” then you are allowed to start a new life. They have a past, as do we all. Their past will likely continue to affect their present, but we in the Church are called by God to accept them as they are now and walk with them into a new future. In “the world” they may have many debts to pay, but not in church.

I could tell that they were greatly relieved. They plan to join our church sometime in the next few weeks.

Grace is something that can only be given and must be received with a certain amount of humility. Last night I needed grace and so did they. We exchanged our graces at the table like a private communion meal.

I think this is a great way for us to begin sharing the journey we call "Church" together.

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