Discernment: Attentiveness and Discrimination

This last week as I prayerfully began to discern my call and the church’s call at SCPC I began rereading from some of my favorite authors on discernment and mission. And I was drawn back to some of Wendy Wrights insights. And what insights they are!

Wendy writes, “Discernment requires that we pay attention. We must attend to both what goes on around us and within us. . . . Ideally, this attentiveness goes on much of the time, constantly spiritual sifting of the data of our experience. but there are times when discernment become much more focused, when a crossroads is reached or a choice is called for.”

This is such a time! A time to pay attention to what God is doing around us in our church family, in our community of St. Charles, and in the world in which we live. And for us to pay attention what God is doing within us, discovering who we are in Jesus Christ and to what God is calling us do.

By joining as a church family each Sunday to share and listen to God’s word and touch, by prayerfully reading and responding to the Mission Discernment scriptures each week, and by taking the on-line survey - we will begin to understand our mission as God’s people. It is a Lenten journey that promises to reshape us as God’s beloved and to move our church into a new and exciting mission. But we must take seriously the discipline of discernment by our collective attentiveness and discrimination. Or as Wendy has said, “Discernment is . . . assessing weight, watching the plumb line, listening for overtones, searching for shards, feeling the quickening, surrendering to love.”

May each of us during the next few weeks of Lent, surrender to the Love of Christ, as we journey to the cross and beyond!