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July 2008 Volume 3 Issue 7 |
Harbor Covenant Church, Gig Harbor WA |
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In this Issue
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GRACE NOTES from Pastor David
The Basin And The Towel
In an upstairs room A parable is just about to come alive And while they bicker about who’s best With a painful glance He’ll silently rise Their Savior Servant must show them how Through the will of the water And the tenderness of the towel.
And the call is to community The impoverished power that sets the soul free In humility to take the vow That day after day we must take up The basin and towel
In any ordinary place On any ordinary day The parable can live again When one will kneel and one will yield Our Savior Servant must show us how Through the will of the water And the tenderness of the towel And the space between ourselves sometimes Is more than the distance between the stars By the fragile bridge of the servant’s bow We take up the basin and towel.
And the call is to community The impoverished power that sets the soul free In humility to take the vow That day after day we must take up The basin and towel Michael Card, ©1994 Birdwing Music, CCLI 84568
This song by Michael Card is about a moment when Jesus gave up on words, as told in John 13. In the face of an ongoing argument about which disciple would be the greatest, Jesus silently got up from the table and washed their feet.
He had always been their servant, as much their butler as their Master. He fed them and risked His life to defend them. And now, on their last night together, He dressed Himself like a slave and lived out His favorite role: that of a servant. If we do not know Jesus as the Servant Lord, we do not really know Him. This is the shape of His life, the desire of His heart, and the pattern He has laid down for us to follow. We are to take up the basin and the towel.
I believe that one of the most significant things God has been doing through this last year at Harbor Covenant is that He has led us through a graduate level course in servanthood. Granted, this church is already filled with servant hearts, and you have a long history of loving one another with the heart of Jesus. No question about it. Yet the Lord has stretched us to take our servanthood up a notch. He has challenged us to face our differences with honesty and grace. He has brought us to together to recommit ourselves as a family to His Word and to share His good news. He has given us a bigger vision for witnessing by being servants to our community and to our world. All in all, I would say that he has helped us to see that we are not a collection of “I”s but a family called “WE.” That unity is the essence of servanthood.
Our gathering on June 22 at Harbor Ridge Middle School, all of us worshipping and fellowshipping together in one place, was a powerful symbol of what God has been up to. The joy, the warmth, and the stories, oh my, the stories! I am sure that any first-time visitor that day would say not only, “God is in this place!” but also, “God has been moving amongst these people, this family!”
I urge you to continue to share your stories with one another as an encouragement to one another’s faith and to our church’s testimony in the community. Better yet, continue to live the stories by serving one another, our community, and the world that Jesus died for. When we as Harbor Covenant Church, empowered by the Spirit, take up the basin and towel, our world will never be the same!
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~ ~ ~ Harbor Covenant Church 5601 Gustafson Drive NW Gig Harbor Washington 98335 253 851 8858 |
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