Tag: Bless

Your Caring Matters: a YMCA Child Care Services Devotion

If you’re anything like me, sometimes you get in a “woe is me” place and you wonder – does it matter if I show up, if I care, if I put in the effort?

Yes, you matter – it matters how you show up, how you prepare, how you play, and how your pray.

Your loving presence and prayers matter to the children and youth in your life.

Your caring matters.

The attention and attitude, your presence and posture matter to the children you serve before and after school.

Here is a story of Jesus blessing children that reminds me of how much it matters:

“Then Jesus came to Capernaum.”
And when He was in the house He asked them, “What was it you disputed among yourselves on the road?”

But they kept silent, for on the road they had disputed among themselves who would be the greatest.
And He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them,
“If anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.”
Then He took a little child and set him in the midst of them.
And when He had taken him in His arms, He said to them,
Whoever receives one of these little children in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me, receives not Me but Him who sent Me.”

[‭‭from Gospel according to Mark‬ ‭9:33-37‬ ‭NKJV‬‬]

Take a few moments to soak in the loving attention and caring presence of Jesus with the children.

Imagine that is you being drawn close, embraced by the safe and strong kindness of Christ.

And if we take Jesus at his word, when you care for children “in his name” – inspired by his presence in your life – God is present to that little one.

Whoa.

Your caring matters.

You showing up matters.

You being present matters.

You being attentive and safe and trustworthy matters.

Your work matters.
The children you care for matter.
You matter.

If you’re anything like me, sometimes you get in a melancholy attitude and you wonder – does it matter if I show up, if I care, if I put in the effort?

Yes, you matter – it matters how you show up, how you prepare, how you play, and how your pray.

Your presence and prayers of love matter to the children and youth in your life.

You praying for the kids in your care matters.
You praying for their families matters.
You praying for your family matters.
You praying for your coworkers matters.
You praying for your self matters.

If we look around at the world as some kind of guide for how much children matter, how much our caring for them matters, if you based it on wages or prestige or fame, you’d have to conclude that there’s a lot of “talk” but in reality it’s a low value.

But when you listen to the words of Christ, when you see his example, when we believe his instructions, we can conclude that caring for children in the way of Jesus is bring Heaven to Earth, is how God is present to the little ones in our life.

Whoa.

When we care for children with the tenderness and strength with which God loves us, when let children into our life the way we let Jesus into our life, the way we “receive” children is a way for us to “receive” God.

Being with children is a holy, sacred, beautiful, joyous work that requires us to be humble, forgiving, loyal, trustworthy, open, and playful.

It requires lots of love.

St. Paul in his letter to a church failing miserably at honoring each other, he wrote a memorable, provoking, lyrical poem to inspire them to love like God loves them.

It includes this reminder: “love is patient, love is kind.”

It’s a very practical and concrete example.

You know when you have been irritably impatient with a child, when you have spoken unkindly in exasperation and weariness.

It’s easy to defend our impatience and unkindness: if “their” behavior was better, or if we weren’t so tired, or…etc.

But: patience and kindness are acts of love precisely because we are usually irritated by something, generally weary and easily exasperated – it’s in those dreary moments that love is needed most.

When you are at your best with children it’s usually when you’ve chosen patience while still irritable, choosing kind words instead of snapping back – you know when you do it, you sense it in your spirit, and even if no one notices or compliments you on it, it matters, God sees it, and it is significant.

Keep doing the work of patience and kindness when you are tired and stretched thin – it’s good for your spirit, it’s healing for the spirit of the children in your life, and it’s a way that God is present in our midst.

I invite you to meditate on this artistic images of Jesus, to see the patience and kindness in his presence with the children.

See yourself as one of those children, receiving his patience and kindness.

See yourself as being one with Jesus, giving patience and kindness to the children in your life.

Take a moment to text a friend or send a note in the post mail, reminding them that they matter to you, to God, that their caring and kindness to children matters, and that their work matters to families in our community.

May the Grace and Peace of Christ Jesus be with you, always.

Christian Leadership & Hope Amidst Choas

A brief reflection on the difficulty of Christian leadership, of sustaining hope while caught up in the chaotic whirlwinds of life these days, inspired by the life and writings of Henri Nouwen, who writes: a Christian leader is a man of hope amidst chaos, a woman whose strength in the final analysis is based neither on self-confidence derived from his personality nor on her specific expectations for the future, but on a promise given by Christ Jesus.

Indeed the paradox of Christian leadership is that the way out is the way in, that only by entering into communion with the suffering Christ and the chaos of hurting humanity in your midst, can hope and any sense of relief be found.

adapted from Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, p77

In the YMCA, in the church, in the community, there is a great need for leaders who can sustain hope, goodness and solidarity amidst the upheavals, violence and even abuse throughout the world.

But it gets tiring, there is too much information to process, too many people to help, too much complexity and ambiguity in each situation. How to do what is right, how to make a difference for the better, how to help heal when so much is uncertain, shaky and even dark?

Henri Nouwen’s little book The Wounded Healer, is a continual fount of wisdom and encouragement in these difficult days of leading and serving.

May these quotes from his chapter on “Ministry To A Hopeless Man: Waiting For Tomorrow” provide some needed perspective on how to be a Christian leader of hope amidst chaos.

For hope makes it possible to look beyond the fulfillment of urgent wishes and pressing desires and offers a vision beyond human suffering and death.

Nouwen, Wounded Healer, 76

A Christian leader is a man of hope amidst chaos, a woman whose strength in the final analysis is based neither on self-confidence derived from his personality nor on her specific expectations for the future, but on a promise given by Christ Jesus.

This promise not only made Abraham travel to unknown territory; it not only inspired Moses to lead his people out of slavery; it is also the guiding motive for any Christian who keeps leading in hope towards new life even in the face of chaos, corruption and death

adapted from Nouwen, Wounded Healer, 76

Leadership is not called Christian because it is permeated with optimism against all the odds of life, but because it is grounded in the historic Christ-event which is understood as a definitive breach in the deterministic chain of human trial and error, and as a dramatic affirmation that there is light in the other side of darkness.

Nouwen, Wounded Healer, 76

Every attempt to attach this hope to visible symptoms in our surroundings becomes a temptation when it prevents us from realization that promises, not concrete successes, are the basis of Christian leadership.

Many ministers, priests, and Christian workers have become disillusioned, bitter, and even hostile when years of hard work bear no fruit, when little change is accomplished.

Building a vocation on the expectations of concrete results, however conceived, is like building a house on sand instead of on solid rock and even takes away the ability to accept successes as free gifts.

Hope prevents us from clinging to what we have and frees us to move away from the safe place and enter the unknown and fearful territory.

It is an act of discipleship in which we follow the hard road of Christ, who enters death with nothing but bare hop.

Nouwen, Wounded Healer, 76-77

…it has become clear that Christian leadership is accomplished only through service.

This service requires the willingness to enter into a situation, with all the human vulnerabilities a human has to share with one another.

This is a painful and self-denying experience, but an experience which can lead a woman out of her prison of confusion, a man from his chains of fear.

adapted from Nouwen, Wounded Healer, 77

For me, in navigating changes in my home, the constant changes in my work, the turmoil of our culture and violence throughout the nation and world, it is easy to despair, to give in to the belief that it is all cause and effect, that the forces out there are too powerful, there is not much we can do about “it” and we are just pawns, and that we are only standing in shifting sand when we try to make a difference for the better.

These quotes of Nouwen are timely, disturbing, and refreshing- it may not alter the reality “out there” but I am encouraged in my spirit, to trust in the presence of the suffering and strong Christ, who is with me, with us, and at work to restore and reconcile all things, in his time and way.

In whatever way I am called to lead, care and serve, I am striving to be attuned to Christ’s brilliant, persevering, and merciful work in the world he loves and holds together.

This is a way my hope as a Christian leader is sustained amidst the suffering and chaos within and around me.

This Is a Day of New Beginnings for the YMCA / by Harold C. Smith

Vision-casting at the turn of the millennium on the legacy and future of the YMCA, it’s Christian faith and works in our modern age:

“For the essential genius of the YMCA does not concern techniques, management, buildings, but reaches by God’s grace, into hearts, minds and bodies and strengthens them in wholeness and offers a unifying purpose that is needed and longed for.
 
God created something unique in the YMCA and works uniquely in the YMCA in spite of all of us. Again and again God has reshaped and renewed this organization, and it is my prayer that we, who have this great gift in our lives and time will be open to ways God will make all things new in this new century and always.”

“This Is A Day Of New Beginnings”

By Harold C. Smith / September 6, 2000 / Silver Bay YMCA, NY

Reproduced and Distributed at Springfield College to the inaugural OnPrinciple cohort by Mike Bussey, Chair of Friends of the Jerusalem YMCA

“The faith that brought the YMCA into being is a faith of ever new beginnings.

“Behold I make all things new” God proclaims in the Book of Revelation.

We are to embrace this newness and work with and for it.

That was a motive of mine when I called for this seminar and meeting. I appreciate the response.

It confirms I was not alone in my concern and thinking. I hope I can help move us into the new century in a revitalized and dedicated way.

My concern is the Christian part of our very name.

When I read the inspiring words of the former leaders of the Y, I am astonished by their vision and inspiration.

They envisioned “mobilizing the Lay Forces of Christianity” and “The Evangelization of the World in This Generation.”

They meant it and so did the Y.

When I look at our meetings and publications I don’t perceive vision or fire. That is a bad sign; “For without vision, people will perish.”

Let’s look at what we are and where we are and see if light comes onto the problems.

There is a feeling Christianity compromises our openness.

Yet the Christianity of the YMCA had as its core is John 17:21 “that they all may be one.”

This Christianity has always been inclusive.

Indeed, one of the most Christian aspects of the YMCA as I have known it is this openness and acceptance of everyone.

This said, there are dangers in openness.

We can be perceived, and are, as being all things to all people and ending up as being nothing to no one.

There is also a danger of being captured, shanghaied as it were, because of being open.

This could yield attempts to subvert or reinvent our association, its purpose and its mission.

Still further, there is the danger of assimilation. Of becoming part of a secular culture, or as a part of an American “state religion” in general.

Those who went before us realized this yet remained open.

Because it is in the very nature of the Christian faith as they understood it and it was an integral part of what they hoped for in a YMCA.

It was to be a community rooted and grounded on the love they perceived God had for everyone in sending the world Jesus as the Christ.

Now the YMCA was lay movement. Early on it agreed not to be theological or doctrinal.

But it also agreed to be inspired, moved and illuminated by God’s Word in the Bible as they understood it.

The YMCA wasn’t conceived with the right beliefs and confessions but with Christian action and life: “By their fruits you shall know them.”

And what fruit the Y brought forth and continues to bring forth!

The world is better for the YMCA; lives are better because of the YMCA.

In many ways faith in action worked.

But there are dangers here too.

It is harder to live faith than be doctrinaire about faith.

This is especially true of Christianity, a subtle faith without signs (except the signs of Jonah).

The Y position was: we will live our Christian faith and others will be attracted by that faith in life and perhaps catch it.

The YMCA approach as its best is magnificent and effective and at its worst is a disaster.

It assumes a deep, nourished, renewed and renewing faith on the part of those who would live it.

And this leads to the role association plays.

The YMCA creates community at the same time it serves as leaven in the larger communities it is part of.

For the member the goal is the loving community envisioned by prophets, Christ and the early church leaders.

That community helps people reach their highest potential, and unity of mind, body and spirit (as Luther Gulick of Springfield College pointed out) under God.

Harold C. Smith & Springfield College

What a need there is for this association.

We live in fractured communities living fractionated lives and desperately need the wholeness the YMCA has pointed to, and, at its best, delivered.

But this community is not an end in itself.

It has as its mission to change not only individuals by bringing them to wholeness but by bringing larger communities to wholeness under God.

For the Y serves a God of not only unity but peace and justice.

The function of the Y is not to reflect a community but redeem it; to lift it to new levels and promise.

The Y does this one person at a time, and by mobilizing those touched by the unity and purpose under God the Y can offer to reach out to others.

And what creative reaching out there has been, and what scope there is for more yet to be done, and not just locally.

From the earliest days the YMCA has had a world outlook, purpose and mission.

That mission, the product of the unity of a person under God, had and continues to have an appeal that transcends borders, cultures and historic baggage.

For the essential genius of the YMCA does not concern techniques, management, buildings, but reaches by God’s grace, into hearts, minds and bodies and strengthens them in wholeness and offers a unifying purpose that is needed and longed for.

God created something unique in the YMCA and works uniquely in the YMCA in spite of all of us.

Again and again God has reshaped and renewed this organization, and it is my prayer that we, who have this great gift in our lives and time will be open to ways God will make all things new in this new century and always.”


For more about Rev. Dr. Harold C. Smith (1934-2017)
Chief Investment Officer of the YMCA Retirement Fund (1983-2000), pastor of Unity Hill Church in Connecticut, and the HCS Foundation.