Folk have started to give me events for the calendar for the coming year. We are an active congregation.  However is it all worth the effort?  I will stand out and look at the stars and wonder If all the work we do as a congregation makes a difference. 

Sometime in a vain moment I wonder if I make a difference. or if I will ever make a difference in the world.  

The ability to make a difference.  Can We?

 The familiar parable of the mustard seed. 

“With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it?  It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown 

upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth;  yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade

The smallest thing can make a difference. We may not know how but it can. We are reminded what it is to have faith.  

Faith that enables us to know that what may come we will have the courage and strength to face it  We are assured of God’s companionship, presence, and power.  Faith is that which sustains those who suffer, Faith is a means of Grace, even when a cure is not forthcoming. 

I remember the wisdom of the grieving women at the graveside in the movie Steel Magnolias “ That which does not kill us makes us stronger” out of difficulty is potential for us to become bitter or better.   

We can have faith that God works in the world, through us in his love, in Jesus’s teaching, in the power of the Spirit. Or we can just accept that we are powerless to make a difference.    One makes us better the other bitter.  One makes us Christian the other makes us atheist. 

 We are heirs of the cross we are Christians. As the Rev Samuel P. Rose preached in his sermon entitled  The Cross at the Heart of Life at the inaugural service of the United Church of Canada on   June 10, 1925,  

Jesus did not discover the law of the Cross, nor was he the first to practice it, though never before nor since has it been obeyed so perfectly and with such glorious consequences. The law is universal. The grain of wheat that does not die perishes and I would add neither does the grain of mustard remain small.  The life governed by the maxim “safety first” is a lost life. He who is willing to accept salvation selfishly for himself alone has already become a castaway. You and I find ourselves as we seek not our own but the good of others. And this law is binding upon the Christian community as certainly as upon the individual believer. Only insofar as The United Church of Canada owes her birth to obedience to this law, only to that extent that she is loyal to it in the future, may she vindicate her right to live and grow. There is no prayer so fitting to this hour as the humble petition for pardon for whatever of vanity, or self-love, or self-will has mingled with loftier motives in bringing us together as denominations into this new fellowship. There is no sacramental oath so appropriate as the promise by divine grace, as individuals and as a Church, to follow Christ all the way, for, believe me, thus and thus alone shall we find the way of life.

The seeds of hope and faith will never grow if we don’t plant them. The seeds we plant may be small but they have the potential to be so much more. 

Rev Rose continues and reminds us 

we must admit that institutionalism runs too readily into selfishness, and comes too easily to think of itself as essential. Against this tendency, fatal to the realization of the highest good, may God preserve us! What an ideal for the United Church of Canada to set before herself, willing as a grain of wheat to die, if thus she may enter into a larger life; ready to be “lifted up,” that she may draw men [sic], not to herself, but to the Christ, who, loving the world, gave Himself for our salvation! Such was the Master’s free, unforced choice for Himself; and if to be a Christian is to be Christlike, there is no alternative choice for ourselves as individuals, or for the Church as a whole, if we are truly to bear His name.

We are blessed and we need to have faith that in our blessedness in our privileged lives that we can make a difference that we can be healers. If we are blessed we may be healers of the body, but we all can strive at being healers of the soul. 

Amazing things happen whenever the faith of the seeker and the grace of God touch each other.

   We are not going to impact the world in a big way but we can and do make a difference in the world that we live in. 

I want you to know, it is my sincere belief that you people in your faith have made a difference in the lives you have touched through this place.  You have been healers, and miracle workers

Is it all worth the effort? Oh yes. Every once in a while, we get those glimpses of Grace. 

For the most part We may never know who it was that may have touched the hem of our work in faith but we know that God is here with us in our in the faith work that we do.  For we are not alone. Thanks be to God