Church Family,
The college edition of This American Life called “How I Got into College” tells the surprising story about an admissions officer who received an email from one parent inquiring about their engineering program for his son. The email reads: “My second grader has decided on a career in electrical engineering. He is leaning towards MIT, but I do not find them helpful and would prefer a Southern culture.” The second and third acts are about Emir Kamenica, a Bosnian-born professor at the University of Chicago, and how he came to America as a refugee through a series of “accidents” and good fortunes. It’s a story he loves to tell and includes a particular high school teacher who changed the course of his trajectory, so that he became a student at a prestigious private school, eventually at Harvard, and then a young, brilliant scholar of economics. The twist is that the way he tells the story is different from the way his teacher, Ms. Ames, tells it. She knew he was destined for great things. He thought he got out alive by the skin of his teeth. But she says, “It’s as if the more he told the story, the more grateful he became.”
It’s easy to get lost and overwhelmed by all the voices around us, especially the ones that try to shape our perspectives on our own stories — both helpful and destructive. But there’s no way to avoid the inevitability that there are always going to be difficult voices around us — those that we disagree with, those that are frustrating, those that convict us and force us to see differently.
What do we do in this day and age as we seek to hear the voice of Jesus? How will we respond?
I hope that you get a chance to read through Luke 4:21-30 this week. The more we begin to see our story in the context of God’s grand narrative, the more thankful we will become. The more we know the voice of Jesus, the more thankful we will become. The more we share the good news of Jesus, the more thankful we will become!
I hope to see you on Sunday as we celebrate communion together.
Blessings,
Pastor Hayley