What is on your church shopping list? A convenient time, good sermons (of course!), children's ministries, praise songs, hymns? Maybe it is a certain feeling rather than any one item. The Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship has had as many as 300,000 visitors over the last 20 years according to Wikipedia most were probably looking for the "Toronto Blessing" where folks are overcome by laughter and other sounds and motions rare in Presbyterian congregations.
When the serious shoppers come home from a trip, I get to be an appreciative audience of all they have uncovered in their expedition. I've been told I'm wrong by them, but shopping for me is usually not a final goal, but a way to a goal: clothes to wear, food for a meal, parts for a project, gifts for giving. So once the church shopping is finished and we have what we are looking for, what then?
Abraham was a famous church shopper. He went seeking a blessing, leaving the religion and country of his youth for our God's blessing. He is told what to do with the blessing he seeks: "be a blessing...in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed".
Whether you have found a church home or our still shopping...I hope you share what you have found with others. For God wants to bless you to be a blessing to others.
Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." -- Genesis 12:1-3 (NRSV)
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