Remembering Our Past

Saturday, February 16, 2013                          Deut. 26:1-11

Stephanie Hardcastle

            When I was growing up, I longed to belong to a church.  I occasionally attended mass or Sunday school with friends, but rarely did I go to church with my family.  My parents did grow up attending church but finding a church where they now lived was not a priority.  I was not even baptized, and everyone that I knew was baptized, including my older sister.  It was quite a burden on me in my early years to figure out how I could be baptized and be part of a church.  I don’t think my parents knew what it meant to me until I told them one Sunday morning when I was thirteen that I was being baptized that evening at a church that I had attended for a few months with friends.  After continuing to search for a church home, I eventually ended up at Westminster where I have been blessed in so many ways.

A few years ago I was asked to recount my spiritual journey as an exercise in spiritual development.  In remembering my story, I was able to see where God was present in people and in places along the way.  I saw that I was not on the journey alone and that I was not the one who initiated my search.  God was already with me and I was responding with the desire to know and experience God more fully.  It was not until I relived the entire experience that I was able to understand what had happened.

            The Israelites are instructed to give first fruits of their harvests to demonstrate their gratitude to God for the bounty they were about to enjoy.  As part of this ritual, they are also told to recite the story of their ancestors so that they may be reminded that God provided for and saved the ancients just as God was now with and providing for them.  This sharing of common spiritual history further binds them together in community.  In professing our faith, we are also made part of this history, and by continuing to revisit our personal and collective spiritual histories, we witness God’s presence and are bound together as the body of Christ in the world.

Prayer:  Holy God, help us to see your presence in the people and events of our past and to be mindful of your continued presence in our future.  Amen.