One of the realities that we are dealing with at Grace Hill is invisibility. Lord willing, we won’t always be invisible, but for right now, we are invisible. One of the things we are trying to do as a core group is to be more visible. We have started going on prayer walks in the neighborhood surrounding Cherokee Middle School, where we hold services. Last Saturday, we handed out water bottles to walkers, joggers and strollers at Sequiota Park. At the end of the month we’ll be serving down at Convoy of Hope helping pack boxes and take inventory of their relief supplies. All of these are ways in which we are trying to be seen. And yet even doing these things, we can still be invisible unless God opens the eyes of those around us and makes us visible.

It got me further thinking about King David. Last Sunday I began a summer series on the life of David and I was struck in my study of 1 Samuel 16, where David is anointed king, how invisible David was to his family, to Samuel and perhaps even to God. He was left to tend to the flock while the other brothers got to go to the sacrifical feast that Samuel was putting on, even though unbeknownst to him, he was the guest of honor. David’s invisibility was hardly an obstacle for God to overcome, and Grace Hill’s invisibility is hardly an obstacle for God to overcome, or our being Presbyterian for that matter, which I think is an obstacle for people down here. But surely even our being Presbyterian is not an obstacle to God.

As you pray for the work of Grace Hill, pray for our visibility and receptivity as we seek to love our fellow Springfieldians so that they can come alive to the wonder of God’s grace. Pray that God would not only make us more visible, but that he would make his Son more visible through us.

I’ve been looking to do some social media advertising and was pleasantly surprised to learn that there were 145,000 FB users in the metro Springfield area (pop. 425,000).  I put the ad on FB last night and as of 6pm, we’ve had 45 people go to our website and look at Grace Hill Church.  Don’t know if it will translate to people coming for worship, but it’s definitely good to get more traffic to our website. 

The parable of the pharisee and tax collector in Luke 18 is a dagger in the heart for someone like me who likes to make a big deal about his righteousness. I like to be right. A lot. My righteousness has many different faces. I have parenting righteousness which means that I raise Jackson and Anna Sloan the right way. I have music righteousness which means that I only listen to the right kind of music. I have merging-traffic righteousness which means that I merge when I first see the signs to get over. Space does not permit for me to list the rest, but you get the idea. The ugly result of this kind of righteousness is that my parenting righteousness, music righteousness and merging-traffic righteousness cause me to look down on and hold people who don’t follow my righteousness in contempt. That’s what the Pharisee did to the tax collector and the others who didn’t share his same level of righteousness. It’s no wonder that his righteousness was an ugly one and unacceptable to Jesus, much to the shock of those who held the Pharisees in high esteem. The only righteousness that is truly pleasing and beautiful before God is Jesus’ righteousness. It’s the only righteousness that we should boast in and look to. The Bible talks about our righteousness, our good deeds, as filthy rags…unsightly and unusable. Lord, help me to see, like the tax collector, my sin and my need for mercy. Help me not to trust in my righteousness but in Christ’s.