Dave Fretz / Finance Director
I recently completed a small group study entitled “Truth Rising” from Focus on the Family and the Colson Center. In the last lesson, we discussed how we know what God’s calling is on our lives. The study challenges us with four questions to ask ourselves: What is good that I can celebrate and protect? What is missing that I can create or contribute? What is evil that I can resist and oppose? What is broken that I can help renew and restore?
Roxy and I did a hike in Letchworth State Park to see the fall leaves and waterfalls. William Letchworth was a Quaker businessman in Buffalo in the mid-1800s. He first saw the Genesee River gorge from a railroad bridge. What he saw below was spectacular but badly scarred. The surrounding land had been heavily logged to feed sawmills and the railroad, the hillsides were stripped, and mill debris and industrial clutter sat along the river near the falls. He started buying land, built a home called the Glen Iris, and spent the next 50 years spending over a half million dollars and planting thousands of trees. He saved the gorge from a proposed power company dam by donating his property to the state for use as a park.
The study reminded me that God’s invitation comes in a particular time and place. My calling is not abstract. My family, my church, my community, and the wider culture I live in are all places God has assigned to me. So, for me, calling isn’t mainly about some dramatic public mission. It’s about faithfulness in the spheres I’m already in.
Standing on that trail, my first thought was, “But I’m not a Letchworth!” I don’t have a fortune or a thousand acres. Then I realized I’m not responsible for fixing everything, only for faithfully doing my part. For me, that part is youth ministry.
The high school boys I work with are growing up in a post-modern world that often tells them truth is whatever they make it. That is one of the broken places I can see from where I stand. I can’t fix the culture, but I can help them grow into young men who face it with a Christian worldview. Like Letchworth’s saplings, it is slow work, and I may not see every one of them reach full height. But it is the piece God has placed within my reach.
Your piece will probably look different from mine. It might be a thank you note, a visit to a lonely neighbor or someone in a nursing home, mending a family relationship, or showing up at a school board meeting. What is broken within your reach? What can you protect and preserve?
If you are interested in “Truth Rising”, visit truthrising.com or speak to a Colson Fellow.