Building Renewal 

Today’s author is Prince of Peace member Fred Ogimachi.

I have three grandchildren.  Two granddaughters and one grandson ages 7, 5, and 3.  They are my delight!  I think of them often and pray for them each day.  One of the things that I do when I am with them, usually multiple times a week, is to encourage each of them ‘to be a blessing to another.’ 

Of course, this brings up the ‘why’ and ‘how’ sequence discussion.  The why is usually answered, ‘Jesus asks us to love each other’.  Then comes the ‘how’.  At this stage I answer the ‘how’s’ with ‘what’s’.  What can they do to be a blessing to another; ‘be nice to a friend’, ‘help someone’, ‘do not fight with your brother or sister’, ‘take your dishes from the table to the sink’, ‘put your toys away’, etc.  I pray that simple acts will become habits and expand into a life of being a blessing to others and fruit bearing.

The day will come when the what’s are no longer sufficient to answer the how.  Their relationships and their world will become unpredictable, undefined, complex.  How to be a blessing to another, how to bear fruit will require more than grandpa telling them what’s.  They will want to know the source from where these blessings to others come from and how is it that they will flow through them.  They will come to know that being a blessing to another is not just about what they do but is also about who they are.  They then will follow up with another ‘how’.  How do they become the person who is a blessing and bears fruit?

This week’s lesson contains Jesus telling His disciples and telling us how to become, ‘I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.’ (John 15:5) This is the answer to the next stage of discussion with the grandchildren.   Of course, now I will need to think about this, I will need to figure out how to provide them with the correct hermeneutic, theology, historicity, nuances, context behind this declaration of Jesus.  (Grandpas want to get it right.)  But, until then perhaps this song will help.

I found this song on YouTube.  To the grandchildren, children, and those of us who are really children at heart.