Saturday, June 12, 2010

Jewel in a Vault

My friends' daughter graduated last night so this afternoon we are invited to a graduation cook out to celebrate.
This has been a real challenge for Katrina.
From the very start she was born premature and not expected to live and has had lots of school struggles but is very involved in her church and has decided to go to
Bible College to be a youth minister and maybe,if the calling is strong enough, a minister.
Yesterday I decided to not just give her money in a card but to buy her a small Christian gift.
Now being from a mega church and non denominational it became a challenge to find something appropriate.
I spent about an hour in "The Morning Star" store and finally settled on a pretty cross done in filigree witch looks very modern yet feminine.
While at this store I walked the aisles and checked out all the books,Cd's,pictures and other sorts of religious things.
As I eyed all these pretty things it came to me that although they seemed to have everything for every religion they had nothing Orthodox.That's when it dawned on me that we are really much better at hiding our faith then promoting it.
I saw all types of Catholic books,rosary beads,crosses and even alter things but nothing Orthodox.
Seems we Orthodox tend to take our true faith,like a hidden jewel from a vault,out on Sundays to impress each other but not to impress the rest of the world.
Are we afraid some strange thief will sneak up and steal it from around our necks never to be seen by us again?
Back 20 and 30 years ago it was not necessary to promote our faith.In the old country it was the national religion,supported by the government,and in this country the immigrants who came here had enough people to not only support the church but pass it on.
But alas as time as passed we now wane with fewer and fewer people picking up the mantle to carry into the future.
It is now time to make our selves know.To allow people who walk into a religious store to know we are here and we are significant.
As I continued to look at the book self titles in this store I noticed a sign which I thought said Apostolic but it did not it said apologetic.
Were does this leave us if Apostolic does not sit on a book self but Apologetic does.
We need to step forward and make our books and materials open to every one or we will have a Jewel in a vault,something of great value locked away in a dark place never to see the light of day.
how sad...

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