3-21-2018

Good Morning All,

        2 Timothy 1:5; “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well.” 

    I watched a movie not too many nights ago about a young man who was trying to come to grips with the death of his father.  The young man and his father had a strained relationship.  They had had an argument and the young man stormed out of the house.  A few years later, his father had died and he returned home to find some answers.

    As he rummaged through his father’s house, he found a whole trunk full of letters which the father had written to him.  As the young man read the letters he saw a side of his father which he had never seen.  In the letters, the father could only praise the young man and all his efforts.  Each letter ended with the father telling himself to be sure and tell the boy about this as well.  The son saw that his father truly loved him but couldn’t express in words, only in the letters which were hidden away.  The last ones told of only pain as the old man died alone and without his son.  It was a sad movie.  But it was about things that rarely happen anymore.  We rarely write real letters any more.  We text or email or do Facebook but we never write letters anymore; Letters which express in wondrous prose, the depth and intensity of human emotion.

    2 Timothy is one of those letters.  Paul writes this letter to his most beloved Timothy.  Timothy is a young man who became a preacher under Paul’s careful tutelage.  Paul fondness for Timothy grows until Paul considers him as his son.  In this letter, his last letter, Paul writes to Timothy.  Paul knows that he will soon be executed so he wrote Timothy with all the passion of a dying father to his son.

    He begins at the very beginning, noting that Timothy’s faith was begun out of the love for him by his grandmother and mother.  It was nurtured by their faith which in turn taught and fed his.  Timothy grew up and his faith was nurtured by his loving family and he grew in faith and became one of the church’s earliest pastors.

   We all have a grandmother or a mother who was instrumental in our faith formation.  Those who filled those roles may not have been blood relatives but within the church; someone filled these roles.  It may have been a Sunday School teacher or a neighbor.  It may have been a kindly member who showed you the kind of love which Christ had for her or him.  It was this encouragement which God used to grow your faith.

    Now many of us have the chance to be the Eunice or Lois in a young person’s life.  Be sure to take that role.  God gives us the opportunity to witness our faith.  For some it is half way around the world but for most of us; it is with the little boy or girl that sits behind you in church and kicks the pew that you sit in.  When God gives you opportunity; go ahead and try it.

Dearest Father, you have given us those people in our life who have formed and shaped our faith and we give you tremendous thanks.  We ask that you help us to serve in that same way for others around us.  In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret