By Dave Tyler, 11/3/24
According to Ephesians 5:1-2, we walk in love imitating God as Jesus did, offering ourselves in sacrifice to God.
But how we do that is different for each one of us. The Greek translation for love is agape, Agape is sacrificial, unselfish, unconditional love that proves itself through actions. But everyone’s actions can be different, as we all look at stewardship in different ways, so therefore our actions will be different.
As today is the celebration of All Saints Day, I would like to reflect on one of the saints of God in my life, my mom, Caroline.
Mom was a cradle Episcopalian. She was born in Marblehead, Mass. She grew up in a town that was a cradle of independence in the 1770’s, and she grew up surrounded with all that history and went to church in the 2nd oldest Anglian church in the United States, St Michaels, built in 1714. Here she learned and developed her love of god and served her church faithfully, always giving of her time and talent to support the mission of the church.
She and my dad instilled this in my brother and myself and no matter where we went to church, they were always involved in many different ways to support their church
Jump forward to 2021, I get a call from mom, she had a question for me. She had been asked by her priest at her church in Florida to take on the position of Sr. Warden. I have to tell you my first response was “Are you nuts, your 89 years old and not a spring chicken anymore”
But after a long conversation and discussing all the pros and cons, I had lots of cons, she had lots of pros, she told me she was going to take it on. And she served in that capacity literally until the day she died. One of the last conversations I had with her was how she was working on holding the vestry together as the church was struggling financially and their priest was in the process of discerning a new calling. She told me how hard it was, and she wasn’t sure how things were going to be handled. But she was going to hang in there. And she did, working hard for her church and for her love of God with her time , talent and treasure.
So, I guess the point I’m trying to make is that no matter what way you walk in love to support the church or when you do it and what actions you take, whether it be with time, talent or treasure or all of them let us do it with unconditional, unselfish love as beloved children of God.
