Pastor's Column January 2006

Learning from Our Difficulties
by Emily Peck-McClain

In a city where we are allowed to be just as anonymous as we want on usual days, the transit strike helped to reveal our faces to our neighbors. I was watching the morning news one day and a cab driver was being interviewed. He said that no one would ever want to share a cab with strangers or talk to strangers under normal circumstances but that the strike was just like 9/11 - "Everybody.s sharing!" He grinned into the camera. And I thought, "What would it take for us to use the best from difficulties every day?" What would it be like if everybody shared every day?

The Book of Acts begins with the ascension of Jesus into heaven and the day of Pentecost. Peter and John are working on how to manage this new group of people, gathered together in Jesus. name. Chapter 4 tells us: "Now all of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possession, but everything they owned was held in common... There was not a needy person among them" (verses 32 & 34a). I have always read this and thought, "What a great community to be a part of!"

We have probably never looked around our city and thought, "There is not a needy person among us." And yet we often think, .What a great community to be living in!. SPSAers love our neighborhoods. We love our church community. We love our delivery restaurants and our corner bodegas. New Yorkers love New York. But does it really take a terrorist attack or blackout or transit strike for us to remember that all of our lives are connected? That nothing we own really belongs to us as individuals? That we have the ability to create a system where there is not a needy person among us?

Of all the lessons to carry with us into the New Year from Christ, whose birth we just celebrated, I believe we are challenged to take the lesson from this first Christian community and from ourselves as we function during difficult New York City times. Let us believe in our hearts and souls that we are all one people and that all we have we hold in common with all those neighbors around us. Let us move through 2006 always striving toward a time when there is not a needy person among us. This would truly be making real the kingdom of God even when subways don.t run, pension plans seem evasive, tempers flair, and we have to leave our comfort zones by showing our faces and sharing our lives with others in an anonymous city.