Kelly - Luke 12

Do not worry - God will provide. I have found these words much harder the past 9 years than I did before that. Jesus is a single man without any attachments speaking to 12 other men who have left their ties to their families in order to follow him. Somehow the responsibilities of family life get overlooked. It was so much easier to trust God for the basics when it was just me - but now that we've accepted the responsibility of raising 2 children and need to budget for coming orthodontia and college and all the rest....these words are much harder to read.

In the United Methodist Church, clergy are "fully itinerant" - which means you serve the church within the conference (Synod) that the Bishop tells you to...similar to the Roman Catholic Church. I learned a good deal about trust and obedience to God in that process. Every year, about March or April, a call from the Bishop's office could upend your life...all pastors begin their new pastorates on July 1. The amount of uncertainty in that time period of where you'll be living and what you'll be doing in the next months is pretty high. And though there are some very good reasons for itinterancy (theologically and adminstratively), the issues become overwhelmingly more complex for the modern family. Trust in God - though in practicality this is not the same thing as trusting in the church - the lesson in relinquishing personal control is the same. God will provide good things.

It is hard to trust God with my life, it is much harder to trust God with my children's lives. And yet God loves them more than I do.

So what sort of treasures am I teaching them about? I do not believe their education is focusing too much on monetary gain. Our family tends to focus more on academics and "well-roundedness." But today's scripture is a reminder that faith trumps all that. That their faith education is paramount.