Re-Formed

When I was little, my sister and I loved to play the game, “Hawaiian Punch.”  It was an attempt by Mattel to cash in on the sugar-packed, glorious beverage of choice for all seven-year-olds in the early 80s, including me.  In it, each player moves around the board as a pineapple made of play-dough.  The other players try with all of their might to squish their opponent’s vulnerable little pineapple with their large, plastic Hawaiian punch figures.  Trust me, the squishing of one’s pineapple can be quite traumatizing.  After you’ve been squished, your only hope is to land on a square that allows you to be molded, re-formed, once again, into a fragile little pineapple.

As I’ve grown older, I sometimes see the Hawaiian Punch game as a metaphor for a life of faith.  We step out the door as fragile, vulnerable play-dough pineapples to face large, plastic Hawaiian punch figures in the form of others’ expectations, job pressures or insecurity, health struggles, fractured relationships, school anxieties, poor decision-making, and on and on, ready to come down on us.  Sometimes, even the church works to squish us with its own historical and present brokenness.

But this Sunday, we are invited to remember together the unending GRACE of God through the power of the Holy Spirit that RE-FORMS us as God’s beloved children day after day.  We may feel squished under the blunt force of our struggles and sufferings, but God’s grace is sufficient for each and every one of us!  No matter how severely we’ve been flattened, God is more than able to re-form us in God’s image!  Hallelujah!!!

Come and worship this Sunday.  Come and be re-formed by God’s grace in bread and wine, Word, prayer, song and community.  God’s grace is for you!

See you Sunday…

God’s Peace,
Pr. Rachael