Goodwill at the USPS

I wonder if the U.S. Postal Service has felt an unexplainable surge of goodwill this week? I'm wondering this because I estimate that our MCC Austin family has mailed somewhere between 400 and 500 postcards this week to people that we love. All those love letters are bound to be spilling their positive energy onto unsuspecting people everywhere!

If you weren't able to worship with us last weekend, let me describe the postcards I'm talking about. They were created in keeping with our Epiphany theme "Love Letters from God." On the front of each card is a heart resting in a swirling flame of orange and red and yellow. Upon the heart are written Mother Teresa's words: "I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world." On the back, each card says simply: "I was thinking about you in church today..."

After each worship service, we invited you to take as many postcards as you wanted and send them to the people that the service moved you to reach out to, especially your parents and children, biological or chosen.

Well, you took over half of our 1,000 cards home with you, and some of you dropped by during the week to pick up more...wonderful! We asked David to order 1,000 more, and if that's still not enough, thanks be to God that we are blessed with so many people that we love and are thankful for!

This week, we will explore thelema, the "desire to do something" or "the will." We'll focus on the amazing possibilities that arise when we join our human will to the will of God, either intentionally or unintentionally.

Specifically, we'll look at two people, Harvey Milk and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I feel pretty certain that both of these men were in lockstep with the will of God insofar as their work for human rights was concerned. Dr. King once wrote that as he prepared to speak, he would always remind himself to "keep Martin Luther King in the background and God in the foreground and everything will be all right. " We do not have nearly as extensive a record of the speeches and writings of Harvey Milk, a Jewish man, nor was his faith as prominent a part of his platform, but I have no difficulty in accepting that the hope and dignity he offered to gay people everywhere generated within the will of a good and gracious God. Whenever we help to raise people up, not above God but toward God, I believe we, too, are resting in the will of God.

Come worship with us this weekend! Be inspired by the love of God and the lives of two remarkable people. When you leave, send a postcard or a dozen to people who have inspired you.

Next week, I'll check in with the Postmaster General and see if my theory about goodwill at the post office has any merit. Anybody know the number?