Chuckwagon Grace

 

Derek Jensen (Tysto), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

              I think we all have experienced those sermons where something clicks, I hesitate to use the phrase but “the word becomes flesh” for us. A professor from seminary tells a story of his mother considering a sermon she’d heard and realizing halfway through her commute home that the truth preached was true, for her, and it being transforming. Similarly, CS Lewis has his famous bike ride that was a conversion to the Faith.

              For me it was at our annual Chuckwagon Service in Cheyenne Wyoming. It was an outdoor service that corresponded with Frontier Days—the week of the big rodeo. We were out there under the sun, it was an especially hot Sunday, and Pastor Sarah was preaching on giving the little ones a glass of water—the small kindnesses that genuinely have transformative power. And then she passed out cups of water to us all, us parched people, and the kind act of water given to the little ones, was true for us… at least for me, decades later, I still feel the heat on my skin and the cool on my tongue. I still relate that experience to God’s kindness, God acting on my behalf—salvation being a concrete thing. I was moved both by God’s grace and by God’s calling to be part of that generousness to the whole world!