8 Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 9 Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.
Every year when our third graders receive their gift Bibles from the church, this passage is marked as my favorite. And it probably IS my favorite, but you know how hard it is to pick out a favorite anything…a favorite book, a favorite movie, a favorite meal, a favorite restaurant. There are so many factors involved, not the least of which is the changeability of our feelings at any given time. There is nothing quite as fickle as depending upon feelings to make any kind of decision that holds water across all time and space.
But this verse gets at some sort of spiritual “true north” within my heart and soul and spirit every time I read it, and so I tend to come back to it time and time again when I am asked to choose. (And just so you’ll know, one of the reasons we preach the lectionary is so that I don’t preach on this verse 10-12 times a year. I would gravitate toward this and the Mary and Martha finger-pointing episode in Luke 10 over and over again if we didn’t come up with some way to get a little variety into Sunday mornings.)
A couple of things converged when I was in high school that helped embed this passage into my psyche with some sense of permanence. At the suggestion of some wise and thoughtful Sunday school teacher whose name now escapes me, I began to choose some verses at random and write them out on notecards and work on scripture memorization. This was one of the ones I chose and the memorization thing began the process of “rooting” it.
Also, by the time I was in high school, I had begun to sew and I made nearly all of my own clothes. This was a skill and hobby passed from my grandmother to my mother and then on to me. It was also immensely practical at the time because there were not a lot of discount clothing options as there are now. The advent of stores like TJ Maxx and Marshalls took away much of my financial incentive to make my own clothes.
My grandmother, Mama Payne, loved to inspect my finished garments and this usually worked out well for me because I was a good seamstress early on and I have always thrived on affirmation. On one of our visits, she was inspecting a dress I had just finished, flipping it wrong side out to check the seams as she liked to do. This time, she found something that displeased her. Under the collar was a small piece of fabric I had caught up in the seam. You couldn’t see it from the outside because the collar covered it. I can remember even now Mama Payne pointing it out and how she said, “Laura Ann, I would fix that if I were you.” I quickly gave her my rationale for not fixing it, that it didn’t show, the collar still laid flat and no one would ever know it was there. The response she gave me still echoes in my heart today—and it changed something inside of me forever: “But you will know, Laura Ann. You will know.”
So, a lesson taught by my beloved grandmother collided with a passage I had recently memorized from Philippians and a value was instilled in me. You might not think this was true if you saw my report card from my freshman year of college, but it formed a baseline that I began to come back to time and time again as I grew into adulthood.
Now, the pursuit of excellence has its downside. Boy, do I know something about that! It can lead to perfectionism and those with perfectionistic tendencies can begin to procrastinate so as to avoid failure, or worse, fail to try anything new that takes them outside the realm of what they know they do well. A “learning curve” is a scary thing for a perfectionist, because we don’t always excel when we are learning something new. So, it behooves us to find a middle ground, to give our best, while not being afraid of failure.
Clay Jacobs was one of my former senior pastors. He went to be with the Lord way too early and I feel fortunate for the time I served alongside him and the ways he helped shape how I think about ministry. He used to talk about “excellent mistakes.” He encouraged us to do our very best, but not to be afraid to fail. He said we would try a lot of different things in ministry and some of them would work and some wouldn’t, but it was only a real failure if we didn’t learn something from it, hence the encouragement to make “excellent mistakes.”
I am reminded that Thomas Edison once said that he didn’t fail. He just found 2000 ways not to make a light bulb. He only needed to find one way to make it work.
So, I am thinking we can do both—risk a little for the kingdom and give our very best in what we offer to the Lord. Balance, I believe, is very much akin to wholeness, and wholeness is just another word for—holiness! May it be so for us as God’s people who will someday soon worship together at the corner of Morphy and Section Street—I just know it.
Oh, good and holy God, help me never to stand still in my walk of faith because I am too afraid I will make the wrong next step. Give me courage to risk a little for your kingdom every day. But give me a loving devotion to You that asks me to give of my first fruits every time. In the name of Jesus, I pray, AMEN.
Blessings,
Rev. Laura Parker
