“Who here comes from a two-parent family?” Many hands raised. “How many of you went to college?” Most hands in the room raised. Monika Grasley from Micah 6:8 * (see information below!) asked a couple more questions to those of us at Classis Central California ** (see information below), then told us we may think we are normal, but we actually are the ones that are not normal, Most people in the world do not come from families and homes similar to what most of us attending this meeting do.
As she walked up to the front of the room, Monika set two balls on the table. One was a tennis ball and the other looked like a steel ball bearing about the size of the tennis ball. As she talked, Monika bounced the tennis ball. She told us a story of a group of churchgoers who went into the city to evangelize. They saw a group of guys and a little girl, maybe around 9 years old, and approached them. They shared the gospel with them and were thrilled that everyone in the group said they accepted Jesus.
Monika told how the evangelizers came home excited to report that this little girl and the guys with her were converted, their lives were changed, hallelujah! “But in reality, you know what happened to that little 9 year old girl? She was probably raped at home.” Lives are often not changed by a conversion experience.
Then Monika explained the reason for the two balls. She bounced the tennis ball -- catching it and then letting it go, up and down, up and down -- and talked about resiliency -- how when you have resiliency and hard things happen to you, you can bounce back like that tennis ball. But for many people, they are more like the ball bearing. She let that drop, and PLOP, there it stayed. There was no bouncing back.
What good things to remember as we live and share our faith with others. For many of us, certainly bad things happen. We struggle, we grieve, we lose people we love, we don’t always get what we want or need, but we have resiliency. We are able to bounce back. How do we live with, love, and share our faith with the many people who are like that ball bearing, who do not have resiliency, who cannot bounce back?
* Micah 6:8 is a team within Classis to equip our churches and individuals to develop a deeper heart for our marginalized community members, to address issues of injustice and bring tools to help our churches to be stewards of our resources by not only doing mercy ministry but also by looking at systemic issues of justice.
Monika Grasley
LifeLine CDC (Community Development Corporation)209-201-2905www.lifelinecdc.org
** The Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRCNA) has a governance structure that deals with matters such as doctrine, ethical issues, and church life and practice. This structure involves the church assemblies: the council (local assembly of the elders, deacons and minister(s) of a congregation), the classis(regional assembly), and the synod (bi-national [Canada and U.S.A.] assembly). The structure is as follows:
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