PreacherMike

The ninth Zoe Conference is now history. And here’s my favorite moment.

Last night as we closed, Larry Bridgesmith offered a blessing to everyone. He invited us to raise our hands as a sign of receiving God’s blessing. On the very front row were four little girls who raised their hands and listened carefully. One of them, the smallest one — maybe four years old — was using one hand to drink from her sippy cup and the other hand to soak up the blessing.

Now, again, out into the world God loves so much . . . .

We did a few things differently this year. We’ll of course listen carefully to the feedback and make adjustments appropriately. But we don’t want to be another group that came up with a winning formula and then stayed with it forever — even while needs and opportunities changed. One thing I heard about the leadership conference is that people would have liked to have heard more from some of the speakers. So . . . maybe the sessions could have been the same — fostering interactive learning — but perhaps we could have had one less worship session and one less affinity community session to allow someone like Leonard Sweet a couple chances to challenge us in plenary sessions.

In January, we’ll hold the same conference (”In Christ Alone”) in Fresno. Lee, get the avocados ready, brother!

To balance yesterday’s blog about joy in the journey, I’m thinking today about what lies ahead for most of us. It’s easiest just to not think about end-of-life issues, but the reality is hard to duck.

As columnist David Brooks pointed out recently, 20% of us are going to get cancer or another debilitating disease and will die within a year. Another 20% will have some cardiac or resperatory failure. And 40% will suffer some form of dementia — either Alzheimer’s or a disabling stroke.

Aren’t you glad you came here today?

I don’t want to be someone who obsesses on aging and death. But I also don’t know how to ignore the reality of what lies ahead unless I die suddenly.

Here’s what I imagine may help:

1. Foster the spirit of joy along the way. If we spend a lifetime doing what I wrote about yesterday (finding joy on the journey–even in the midst of pain), then it holds open the possibility of finding joy even with bodies that don’t fully cooperate.

2. Nurture lives of spiritual discipline. If we really believe that spiritual formation is related to the practice of spiritual disciplines, then we can anticipate a time in life when we’ll be forced to slow down (what most of us only dream about when we’re younger!) enough to pray and meditate on the word of God.

3. Stay connected to brothers and sisters in Christ who are aging the way we’d like to. Diane’s way of putting it is that she wants to grow up to be Kathryn Witherspoon. (Highland folks will know exactly what she’s talking about.) The community of faith offers us opportunities to learn from those who are further down the road. We come to depend on their wisdom, realizing that so much of life isn’t just a matter of black and white but a matter of wisdom.

4. Realize that we are, in families and especially in the Family of Christ, fully dependent on one another. We are called into one another’s lives to love, serve, admonish, and encourage. I like these words from Brooks’ column: “A generation ago, all the emphasis was on rebelling against conformity, on liberating the individual. Now the emphasis is on nurturing bonds so sacred they are beyond the realm of choice. Now the individual is less likely to be regarded as the fundamental unity of society. Instead, it’s the family.”

A question for today: Are there models in your life–maybe especially in your congregation–of how you would like to be in your later years?