Your Church Can Grow

Reuben Job’s A Guide to Prayer for All Who Seek God (2006) designates Matthew 5:13-16 as the reading for today. This familiar passage encourages followers of Jesus to be salt and light to the world. Reading from Eugene Peterson’s The Message, the passage includes this exhortation as part of verse 16: “Keep open house; be generous with your lives.” Shining our light as Christians means keeping our doors open to others. It means being generous with our lives. In today’s culture, might that mean that we are to make time for others? In the midst of busy schedules, commutes and many demands, how can we keep our doors open (when so often we are not even home) and how can we be generous with our lives and time?

This is a particularly important message for me. While I might prefer to ‘cocoon’ in the warmth of my home, here I am invited to keep my door open. While I might guard precious free time, here I am invited to be generous with my life as part of the charge to be salt and light for the world. Is it possible to slow down enough to allow such generosity to bloom? I take the message to heart. As scripture so often does, it challenges me to ask: What must I change in my life to follow Jesus today?