Living the Faith, Part 2

This is the second in a series of five posts that are together a sermon I delivered at Milton UMC.

One of the reasons I’m telling you this story is because there was a moment, sitting at the bottom of the stairs, literally holding a piece of my tooth in my hand, when I thought to myself, “OK, I’ll get cleaned up and go on to work, and get started on my list.” I think we are resistant to change. I had my plans, and I couldn’t imagine – for just that moment – that something was going to get in my way that would prevent me from carrying them out.

The other reason I’m telling you this story, is that after the visits to the dentists, I was on my way to work, and I called to talk to my mom, to give her an update. We were talking about the fall, and she said, “You were lucky. You could have broken your neck.” I think that was very unlikely, but the truth of life is that we never know what comes next. I’ve thought about that as I prepared for this sermon (when you hear the scripture, you’ll see why). We have our plans, and we plan our lives, but the end of life is reality for all of us.

We rarely talk about death in church; in my church, we rarely even talk about change, and how to successfully navigate it. It’s a shame, really, because Christianity is a faith that is centered on transformation – how we change in life, and how we change through death. And mainly how God is at the center of all of that.