The First Baptist Church of Redlands
T A PE S T R Y
June 2019
Wo v e n To g e t h e r I n L o v e : C o l o s s i a n s 2 : 2
BRAVE and AMAZING A Message from Pastor Shawn
Over the years I have led many mission trips. I have developed the practice of asking the mission team members to debrief their experiences of the day. One of the things I ask is if anyone has a quote of the day. This quote can be something said by a fellow team member or it can be from someone we met during the day. Every once in a while one of these quotes takes on a life of its own. One of the quotes that lasted nearly 17 years while I was at Purdue was, “Shawn says ‘No.’” You can only imagine what was the original cause of the quote, though after a while most people did not know. It was used for every appropriate situation. A few weeks ago a team of 8 went from our church to Rainbow Acres for about a week on a mission trip. We enjoyed our stay at this residential community for adults with special needs. We did landscaping and painting lines in the parking lot. We also enjoy spending time with the “ranchers” (name for the residents of Rainbow Acres), eating meals, dancing, playing Bingo, and just hanging out. Every evening our group was split and assigned houses where we would eat with the ranchers of that house. We would go to the same house each night so that we would have the opportunity to get to know a particular group of ranchers fairly well. I, along with Gen, University of Redlands student, was assigned to a house of women. As we sat around the table we had the opportunity to engage in conversation. Each evening as we were finishing our meal one of the residents, I’ll call her “Mary,” would come and tell us about a medical procedure that she was going to have soon. I would guess that “Mary” is developmentally about 5 or 6 years old. She would
Issue No. 6
describe each part of what she was going to experience during this procedure and then she would say, “And I’m going to be brave and amazing.” Clearly she was repeating the words of someone who has been preparing her for the procedure and trying to keep her from worrying. “I’m going to be brave and amazing” has become that quote that is taking on a life of its own. At the recent and untimely death of Rachel Held Evans I have decided that she was “brave and amazing.” I think of different people in the Bible and in history that were “brave and amazing.” And I think that through Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit we can be “brave and amazing.” For “Mary” those words were meant to give her confidence. I believe that the people who were telling her this were reminding her of other difficult and scary experiences through which she has already come and proven herself to be “brave and amazing.” As we consider the things that God is calling us to do as followers of Christ and as a church, may we face the scary, difficult and intimidating with the knowledge that in Christ we will be “brave and amazing.” Not for our sakes but for the Kingdom’s sake. In Christ, Pastor Shawn