five minute friday: beloved

Here we go again with another “Five Minute Friday” post!  To learn more about “Five Minute Friday” (FMF), check out the linked image here.  Basically, each week there’s a word given for you to write about.  You start writing, no back-tracking, editing, etc.  At the end of 5 minutes, you stop.  Then you post it, and share in the community of words that were birthed during these 24-ish hours.  It’s cool stuff.
So here’s this week’s response to the word: “ beloved  ”

“Dearly Beloved” – the words I speak at the beginning of some very important moments.  A few months ago, at the beginning a marriage ceremony, uniting two as one.  Tomorrow morning, at the beginning of a funeral service, gathered with friends and family to mourn and celebrate a life together.  Moments that bring me to a place of awe, and humility as a pastor.  I love what I do.

I love these moments of illustration.  These moments wrapped around something divine.  These specific times, of marriage and mourning, do not guarantee those in attendance love God.  But these occasions of marriage and approaching the topic of death together – are incredibly important to the life of the body of Christ.

We are the bride of Christ.  We are frail humanity in need of something beyond ourselves.  We are joined in life and love to Him, and are called to be faithful.   Our bodies are limited, prone to disease and eventually to death itself.  But God has promised there is a wedding feast yet to come.  There is a resurrection in store that has taken away the powerful facade death itself once held.  We scoot a little closer to each other in the pew.  We invite our neighbor over for coffee, and our kids run together down the sidewalk.

We have hope, and live out this loving hope in the midst of an anxious world where there is no guarantee of what will happen tomorrow.  And why?

Because we are a community that is “Dearly Beloved”.   We live out as God’s beloved, proclaiming to a world unaware that they, too, share this identity.  May our lives, and the out-going of our family into the world this week declare to those we live with….YOU are dearly beloved…

Done.  I like it. 🙂