#93 When I Became a Man, I Put the Ways of Childhood behind Me

Ever since I was a little kid, running in the summer has often meant racing. In my experience, most towns have a run/walk at some point during the year and often during a summer festival. When I five or six years old, my dad would go to a race, and I would run in a kids' run for 1/4 mile or 1/2 mile or something like that. Then, at about nine or ten I started running some 2-mile races and then, just a bit later, the occasional 5k. (That's about 3.1 miles for you metric-phobic types.) And that's how things went through my teens. And then I went to college, where my cross country race was an 8k (juuuust short of 5.0 miles) and in track I ran the occasional 10k (about 6.2 miles, but you figured that out already). A lot of these smaller community run/walks actually have two races: a 10k and a 5k or a 5 mile and a 2 mile (or sometimes the interesting 10k/2 mile combo). Now that I've become a man, I've put my childish runs behind me. I always take the longer option. And it's great. Pretty much all the high schoolers and quite a few of the adults go with the shorter race. Meanwhile, I, being unafraid of the longer distance, have much less competition, leaving me with pretty good odds at picking up an age group award at these little races in little towns. Plus, the longer distance makes me feel like I've done more with my life. It's really a win-win. All it takes is the willingness to go the extra mile(s).

Grace and peace,
BMH

#92 One Loaf

Last week I wrote about church unity, how God brings together all kinds of different people to form His new people in Christ. This week I'd like to follow up on that just a little bit. In 1 Corinthians 10, we read, "Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf." According to Scripture, the Lord's Supper is a sign of our unity in Christ. And yet, I'm not sure there is anything that the church disagrees about more than the Lord's Supper (or communion, or the Eucharist, or the Mass—you can tell we don't agree just by how many different names we have for this practice Jesus instituted). Some of our disagreements are so severe that Christians from different traditions won't even partake together. I think that's a serious problem. Our understandings of what this practice means vary widely from Christian tradition to Christian tradition, but I think we need to find some way to be able to celebrate the sacrament together. Church leaders and theologians, please get to work on this. The World Council of Churches has made some great and encouraging progress with their paper on "Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry." Let's keep working and discussing until we truly do share one loaf so that we and the whole world can better see that we are really one body.

Grace and peace,

BMH