Ashley Bekkerus - June 9, 2019

Feasting Together

Growing Together

Relationships are a lot of work - but the goal isn't work, it's the relationship itself. Pentecost is a feast day - a reminder that God created us for a full, joy-filled life together. It's important to stop working and celebrate milestones. Healthy relationships feast together!

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This sermon written and delivered by Ashley Bekkerus

I’m not great when i first meet people. Mostly, I find that i don’t know what to say and so, i usually don’t say that much… but then that makes it more awkward. For example, there was one time when i was in college where I was planning on having dinner with some friends while i was driving through Dallas on my way back to OKC. Last minute, they asked if they could bring their friend along, because they’d been hanging out all day. I’m pretty amicable, so i said it was fine. The thing was, though, I was driving through Dallas to get back to Oklahoma City to get back to do homework. I used to drive back and forth from Oklahoma City to Houston a lot when i was in college, and i always made the trip without stopping. So, it was already deviating from my norm to even get dinner with these friends, let alone have to be social with this person i didn’t know. You know, there are social protocols and stuff. So, anyway, we have dinner and, let me tell you, it was bad. I was distracted the whole time about getting back to Oklahoma and I was thinking about all the homework that I need to do, which meant that I really wasn’t being super active in my conversation. So, really, you could feel the awkward in the air.

Then, as if it hadn’t already been awkward enough during the conversation, the waitress came by to ask how we were splitting the check. And i tried to tell her that everyone would be separate, except my two friends who were dating. That meant that, of the four of us, there would be 3 checks. Of course, I didn’t say that and she pointed to me and the new guy and i just nodded, like, “yeah, we’re still separate.” Well, nobody took it that way, including the waitress. And so you can imagine my horror when i look back to the table and my friends and this new person I’ve only known for about 45 minutes are all staring at me, wondering why in the world i would tell the waitress that me and this person were on the same check. So, i stammer and apologize profusely and they say it’s fine, that they don’t want to make the waitress change it again. So, it’s no problem.

I won’t venture to say that every time i meet a new person it goes that poorly, but I will say that it often happens that i’m so distracted by my agenda and my list of things to do that I so often miss out on relationships. Had i not been so distracted by my list of things to do whenever i got back to Oklahoma City, then I’d venture to say that i probably wouldn’t have accidentally made someone i didn’t know pay for my dinner and, honestly, i probably would’ve enjoyed dinner a whole lot more.

Anyone else ever get blinded by your to-do list? When you step back from it, it’s obviously not how we were created to be, but we all live such busy, full lives that we get too easily distracted from the people God calls us into relationship with.

Feasting is an important practice in relationships that requires us to put down our to-do lists and participate in relationships.

Join us Sunday as we remember why celebrating is essential to a life of faith.

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