She’s Gold That Doesn’t Glitter

Not a Sermon - Just a Thought - October 12, 2007

Maybe you’ve met her. She looks pretty good for fifty. Her joints sometimes bother her, and she could stand some improvement to her physique, but she doesn’t really show her age. And if you’re into comparisons, she’s really a young thing next to some of the ones she runs with.

Outer appearances aren’t the only measure of her worth. On the inside she is full of all kinds of beauty. If you knew her history, you’d know how she’d spent a lifetime trying not to judge others, welcoming some into her life that weren’t always welcomed elsewhere. She’s patched up her share of lives, that’s for sure. A little cash here for someone who has lost a job, a little food there for someone who’s having a hard time making ends meet. She’ll cloth just about anybody who shows up, and sometimes opens her doors for complete strangers. She can be a risk taker from time to time, but she’s not a sell out.

She’s also been great to her children, very nurturing. She taught them life skills and nurtured her faith in their lives. As teenagers, they actually like to hang around her, and her “all grown up and moved away” children still come around to see her almost every Sunday. She’s fed them thousands of times, sometimes with food and sometimes with the Word. She has encouraged and forgiven, mended and sewn, served and saved.

Some think it scandalous that she is still a bride “in waiting” after all these fifty years, yet she’s no single mom. Her groom is always helping her do these things I’ve been talking about. He’s a first class husband-to-be, some would say he’s the best possible choice for a husband in all the world. He goes by lots of names. The old-timers called him Joshua, in Greece he picked up the nickname “Christopher,” but most folk around her house today just call him Jesus. Maybe you know him, and maybe you know his fifty year old bride named Willow Meadows Baptist Church.

Her official birthday is tomorrow, October 13. It was on that day in 1957 that the Willow Meadows Baptist Chapel first met in the cafeteria at Red Elementary School. We’ll celebrate her birthday this Sunday with a special worship service at 11:10 a.m., and a luncheon to follow. We’ll have a special guest preacher, Dr. Charles Wade, who is the executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. We’ll sing our praises for the past and we’ll say prayers for our future, for we, Willow Meadows Baptist Church, are that bride of Christ. We may not always glitter like the things of the world, but with God we are golden.

Happy 50th Willow Meadows Baptist Church!

Grace & Peace,
Pastor Gary

Not a Sermon – Just a Thought is a weekly column by me, Gary Long. I’m the pastor of Willow Meadows Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. You can learn more about WMBC at our website, http://www.wmbc.org/. I’m a polite guy, so if you want to be added or deleted from this mailing, just contact me at glong@wmbc.org.