“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” Matthew 5:14-16
We have all experienced brokenness at some point in our lives. But what do we do with our brokenness is the question. Stay in it and suffer needlessly? Or work to overcome it and move forward in our lives? That’s what we do in Celebrate Recovery – we enlist God’s help and in community, we move through it and move on. As we recover, we learn the value of helping others on their journey. Not content in just serving others, but being deeply engaged with them as we travel this road of recovery, our walk with Jesus.
This leads me to my next opportunity as I walk this road with Jesus. The question for me today is this:
Am I a light only to those in recovery, or my family or church, or workmates and friends? Is God calling me to be a light to everyone? I think he is and this is where opportunity exists to make an even bigger impact for Jesus.
Gregory Boyle (from Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation) put it this way:
It would seem that, quite possibly, the ultimate measure of health in any community might well reside in our ability to stand in awe at what folks have to carry rather than in judgment at how they carry it. Often, we strike the high moral distance that separates “us” from “them,” and yet it is God’s dream come true when we recognize that there exists no daylight between us. Serving others is good. It’s a start. But it’s just the hallway that leads to the Grand Ballroom.
I have some work to do to get to the point that there exists no daylight between my brother and sister and me. In this regard, I have been in the hallway, but I need to open the door wide to the grand ballroom, let go of the biases I have, to see people as my equal, not better or worse, but loved by God all the same.
Reverend Howard Thurman: Co-Founder of the first interracial church in America, circa 1944:
What had I learned about love? One of the central things was that the experience of being understood by another was of primary importance. Somewhere deep within was a “place” beyond all faults and virtues that had to be confirmed before I could run the risk of opening my life up to another. To find ultimate security in an ultimate vulnerability, this is to be loved.
Dana Cramer
Celebrate Recovery // Crossroads Church
CELEBRATE RECOVERY/CROSSROADS CHURCH UPDATES/REMINDERS:
- If you are in need of prayer, please send your prayer requests to [email protected] and we will forward those to our Celebrate Recovery Prayer Team. The Crossroads Church Prayer Team would also love to pray for you, so when you send your email, please note if you are okay with us forwarding your prayer request to the church.
- Fridays at 6:30pm, we are hosting “CR Friday Night Live.” To subscribe to our YouTube channel, please click on the following link and select the subscribe button. CR YouTube Channel Link. There will be a song or two of worship and then a short recovery based dialogue between a couple of CR members. This will be streamed on YouTube.
- On Fridays we will be hosting on-line open share group meetings at 7:30pm. There will be one mixed issues group for men and one mixed issues group for women. Men’s Open Share Group Sign-Up / Women’s Open Share Group Sign-Up. These meetings will take place using the Zoom App. In order to participate you will need a tablet, smart-phone or computer with camera. In order to ensure confidentiality of these meetings everyone who participates will need to find a private room to set up, have their camera on, so others can see that there is no one else in the room and they will also need to wear a pair of headphones so that they are the only ones that can hear. This is a free app and you can download it on google play, apple app store or through your web-browser on your computer. For help on how to join a Zoom meeting please click on the the following link, which will take you to their support web-site Zoom Set-Up Help
