where we live

Monday June 3^rd, 1 Kings 17: 13 Elijah said to her, "Don't be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small cake of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. 14 For this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the LORD gives rain on the land.  We have as a nation learned not to trust, and for seemingly good reasons.  When I grew up, my parents and I were going somewhere one day and for some reason that has since slipped from my memory, we decided to lock the house.  Try as we might, no one could remember where the key was, or if we even had one.  The car keys were never hard to find, they were in the ignition.  Even after my parents retired off the farm and moved to town, the house was never locked.  That kind of trust is born out of knowing relationships.  It is the stuff of small rural communities. It was those same relationships that caused the Lutheran church service in that small town to start late one Sunday.  My father was not in church when it was time to start, and being a small town, everyone knew he was in town and therefore would be in church.  When it was time for worship to start, most of the people were outside wondering if they should go look for my father before church started.  He was not the minister, just an old retired farmer who was always in church.  There was a sigh of relief and a shuffling back into church when he came walking down the hill.  He had been up at the Catholic Church for the pancake breakfast and got talking to one of the other retired farmers in town and forgot the time.  Somehow, I think God is calling us to try to build those kinds of trusting, and intimately relational communities where we live and within our churches.