The Long View

A quote from today's entry in Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals 

Oscar Romero, a bishop assassinated in 1980:

"It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view.  The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts: it is beyond our vision.  We accompish in our lifetime only a fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is the Lord's work.  Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us. No sermon says all that should be said...No program accomplishes the Church's mission. No set of goals and objectives inclues everything.  That is what we are about.  We plant the seeds that one day will grow.  We water seeds already planted knowing they hold future promise.  We lay foundations that will need further development.  We provide yeast that affects far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everthing and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.  This enables us to do something, and to do it very, very well.  It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.  We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the Master Builder and the worker.  We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.  We are prophets of a future that is not our own."

It is a great pleasure to serve along with so many of you, with great hope.