Luke Ankeny is the pastor at Homedale Friends Community Church in Homedale, Idaho. He also coaches basketball and track at Homedale High School. In this morning's Fruit of the Vine, Luke offers a reflection on John 3:16 and Matthew 22:37-40, in which he considers what these scriptures look like lived out: "My job as a coach is to love my players or athletes, and their job as teammates is to love each other." It makes a difference. Luke writes that one benefit of coaching this way is winning, but the real impact comes from "the emphasis on relationships and the importance of team unity."
Today, I'm thinking about that word, "unity," and what it might mean for us as Christ-centered Friends to be unified - in relationship, in purpose, in the way we live out Christ's love for us together. "God's love for us is so intense ... [destroying] our sins on the cross," Luke writes, and in response, we "return the favor by loving God with every ounce of our being." The miracle of unity, Luke suggests, happens when God's love for us and our love for God "overflow to those around us."
This word - unity - and these words from Luke give me hope today. In addition, Luke leaves us with a query to consider in our actions and our interactions: "How does God's love overflow from us to others?" One place of hope for me has been emails like a recent message from Adam Monaghan, pastor at Crossroads Friends Church in Wichita, Kansas, asking us to send five copies of Fruit of the Vine. He wrote that these copies "will allow several of our families to try it out, many of us (including me) for the first time ever." I am encouraged because I believe that our increasing connectedness helps us to better love one another. In unity.
Eric Muhr
Like a seed growing underground
"Trust in the Lord" is a scriptural admonition, as Sierra Neiman points out in this week's Illuminate study of Psalm 37. But "it can feel so trite." Especially when "everything appears hopeless, when time is running out, or when we've lost what has held our joy." And it is hard. Trust requires us to "be still" and to "wait patiently" because, according to Sierra, "God's response might unfold slowly" and God's work is "like a seed growing underground, silently and out of sight."
Barclay Press, like much of the Friends Church, has been through a long period of waiting patiently. Much of this waiting has looked like decline. And even though this week's study focuses on the individual's responsibility to trust, I think this scripture might also be a source of hope for us at Barclay Press and for the larger evangelical Friends movement. What if God has planted and is planting seeds of hope? What if, in this time of waiting, God is preparing us, together, for a time when hope will flower, a time in which we might "delight ... in abundant prosperity," a time when it will be hard to remember why it was so hard to trust?
How We Work: Although our primary products at Barclay Press are the Fruit of the Vine devotional guides and the quarterly Illuminate curriculum, we also publish and sell books. Our busiest bookselling day for all of 2015 was the Tuesday of Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends Church yearly meeting sessions at George Fox University. And our most popular book was the recently released Making of a Quaker College from Milo C. Ross. Ross served as president of George Fox from 1954 until 1969, and the book presents his reflections on the challenges faced, decisions made, relationships forged, and growth experienced during a time in which it wasn't yet clear whether the university could survive. It's another story in which we can see - looking back - the fruit of God's work, quietly planting seeds of hope.
Eric Muhr
Does our work in the world make a difference?
Does our work in the world make a difference? It's a question that gets at the heart of our identity as followers of Jesus: "Who are we? Why are we here?" And it's a question that has shaped the stories Nancy Thomas brings in this week's Fruit of the Vine devotionals. Each morning, Nancy is sharing anecdotes from Friends whose lives have been changed - Manuel Coronado in Guatemala, Elena Rivera in El Salvador, Mario and Celia Choque in Bolivia - by an encounter with Christ. This morning, I read about Bernabe Sanchez of Honduras who found a New Testament on the road "and began leafing through it ... He wondered how come, if Protestants were evil, their Bible could speak of God." I won't spoil the story, but I will offer this: scripture, the written word of God, has power to reveal the present and living Word, that is Jesus. And the result of that encounter is a sense of identity, a sense of purpose, new life.
Here at Barclay Press, we've closed out 2015, and as I look over the books, I find evidence of concern in a slow but continuing decline in subscriptions from local congregations. But I also see signs of hope - a trickle of new subscriptions from individuals around the world, a handful of new writers, a slight uptick in book sales, a new book project, continuing partnerships with Christian camps and Evangelical Friends Mission, and just over $1,000 in unrestricted gifts over the last two months. Some of you have also written me in the last three weeks, generous letters of support, of encouragement, of your sense that this work we do together through Barclay Press should continue.
Eric Muhr