Prophets Of A Future Not Our Own
Does the Boomerang Effect happen to you too?
Do you come across great passages, one-liners or life lessons that resonate with you deeply… only to then be lost or forgotten? But does the mystic universe then ‘boomerang’ these lessons back to you time and time again….
As if you are meant to revisit them at another time?
The passage I want to share with you today was ‘boomeranged’ back to me recently. Though I will ask you to consider it without its religious context, it has come to be dedicated to the brave and revolutionary Oscar Romero, who was shot and killed in El Salvador in 1980. Romero later became a Saint.
It was first read to me when I was around 21 years old, sitting in a cafe in Sydney’s North Shore, with my good friend Nick. At that time, Nick had begun From the Ground Up, a project set up to provide relief and support to a rural Nepalese village.
It was a time filled with potential, possibility and purpose.
Life is a journey that took me on a winding road at that point. Now I have realised the importance once again of service in my work, and this lesson has returned. I now find it sits with me stronger and deeper than ever before.
For anyone who has the drive to make things ‘better’, this passage might set the very terms for how you approach your work.
Prophets of a Future not our own.
It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent
enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of
saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it 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 not our own.
