Coffee Time
I got back to my home parish this week after weeks away. It was good to be back home, and my family had signed up for a fuller morning than I expected. A reflection on Romans 12:3-8.
Romans 12:3-8
Phrases that spoke to me today:
• to think with sober judgment
• individually members one of another
• gifts that differ according to the grace given
• the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness
Applying the Word to My Life:
Paul warns the Romans not to think of themselves more highly than they ought, then lists what sober judgment actually looks like: prophecy, service, teaching, exhortation, giving, leading, mercy. None of it reads like a résumé. It reads more like a parish bulletin.
I got back to my home parish this week after being away a while, and that's exactly what I walked into. I was on sacristan duty with two of my sons, who then served up at the altar. It was our new priest's first Sunday Mass, so we were there to help him through the specifics of how we do things here - I told him that God already had it under control, we were just his backups. Stacey worked coffee and donuts after Mass, and the whole time I got to catch up with people I hadn't seen in weeks, what they'd been doing, how their families were, connecting back with their lives.
Not one part of that morning was showy. Nobody was doing anything you'd put on a résumé. My sons weren't preaching. Stacey wasn't running anything from the front, just keeping people fed and caffeinated while they talked. It was walking with a new priest through unfamiliar territory, coffee poured, small conversations picking back up exactly where they'd left off. That's the whole list Paul gives the Romans - service, teaching, exhortation, mercy - just wearing ordinary clothes.
What struck me most was how little any of it depended on me having been there the last few weeks. Nobody kept track of my absence. I walked back into a body that had kept functioning fine without me and made room for me anyway, the same way it would have for anybody else who'd been gone.
That's what sober judgment actually produces, I think - not lowering your opinion of yourself, just seeing correctly what you actually are: one part among many, doing the ordinary thing in front of you, not measuring yourself against the parts doing something else.
My Response for Today:
Today I'll thank one person whose part in my life rarely gets noticed.