Father Along

I love it when you are living your life, making decisions and trying to follow after God, and all of the sudden you sense growth!  It almost sneaks up on you and surprises you!  Like finding a $20 bill in your jeans that you did not know you had!  haha
This past weekend, "growth" snuck up on me.  Several churches this past weekend canceled their Sunday a.m. services to turn out for the Santa Clara Aids Walk.  Not to protest or demonstrate, simply to come along side this worthy effort of raising funds for the research and relief efforts around this terrible disease.  There were over 800 registered walkers who collectively raised over $30K from Team Beautiful Day (the church team)!  And, we did it w/o the pomp and circumstance that sometimes follows the church when they decide to care....w/o the, "hey, look at me, i'm here now!"
At the end of the walk I was enjoying the sandwich provided and relaxing in the grass and realized the whole thing happened w/o incident or problems.  No well meaning Christian got into a debate over Prob 8.  No arguments about the gay lifestyle that is usually associated with the HIV/AIDS pandemic.  It was wonderful.  We just showed up and said this issue matters to us and we care.  And we showed up BIG!
Little steps.  Baby steps towards becoming the community Christ is calling us to be.  Wow!  It's good to grow!