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Write It Down

This Sunday is Confirmation Sunday. At the 11 am worship service, eight young people will join the church.

Over the last several months, our Confirmands have taken an intensive course on Christianity. They have studied the Bible together. They have shared their personal stories. They have served at the Bowery Mission.

Each of them has also written a statement of faith.

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I love that we ask them to do this. I love that they are encouraged to write down what they really believe. I love that their thoughts about God are flavored by the context in which they live.

Bless them. It is radical thing — a counter cultural thing — for a junior high student in New York City (or anywhere, really!) to think about and talk about her faith.

Over the years, I fully expect that our Confirmands will change their minds about some of the things they have written down on the crumpled papers stuffed in their pockets. This is healthy. They are just being Presbyterian.

Presbyterians are forever writing creeds — statements of what we believe.

We write new creeds because we are convinced that God never stops reaching out to embrace the world.

Of course, the world God loves is constantly changing. (Who knew that this week we would be talking about the Ukraine?) All this change requires that we discern, ever afresh, who God is calling us to be and what God is calling us to do.

With that in mind, I have a challenge for you. Write down what you believe about who God is and what God wants you to do with your life. You don’t have to show it to anyone, but you do have to be honest. Brutally honest.

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Then stick your statement of faith in a drawer. Pull it out a year from now, and see if you believe the same things. It is a great discipline, and a pretty revealing one, too.

In retrospect, our statements of faith reveal the way in which our beliefs grow and change and sometimes fade away. These statements also show, invariably, what we are worried about, what we are hoping for, and what things are constants (rock solid) through good and bad times.

They can show, if we look closely, the footprints of God in our lives. And that’s fitting, because the Beatitude we are studying this Sunday is: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

See you in worship,

SBJ

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