Fill… Spill… Thrill…

Lisa Kramme
Director of Faith Formation
Nebraska Synod, ELCA

It’s another busy week. (Aren’t they all?) And although it can be a budget-buster, we’ll probably go out to grab a quick bite to eat tonight before our kids’ evening activities begin. Sometimes running into a fast food spot seems like a real necessity, but here’s what I’ve found—eating quickly at various restaurants around town may FILL ME UP, but a meal at home with my family around our table is where I get FED.

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Lisa Kramme
Director of Faith Formation
Nebraska Synod, ELCA

Can you see yourself in either of these scenarios?

A high school youth regularly helps with Vacation Bible School. You comment to the young man, “I can see you as an elementary teacher someday!”

A stay-at-home mom capably assists your congregation’s bookkeeper with recording income and expenses. You share with her, “If you ever consider working outside the home, I think you really have the gifts to be an accountant!”

In my opinion, people are usually very good at suggesting career paths to others as we see them exhibit their God-given skills, but here’s what I wonder—do we intentionally point out to others the gifts we see in them for the rostered ministry? I am not so sure that, even within the Church, people with gifts for ministry hear from trusted friends and mentors often enough.

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Lisa Kramme
Director of Faith Formation
Nebraska Synod, ELCA

There was a song I learned at Girl Scout day camp years ago. We sang it as a round, and the words were, “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.” Maybe because we sang it in a round—over and over and over—or maybe just because it had a simple message and a sweet tune, I can remember the words and melody like I sang this song just yesterday. Maybe I remember the song because it’s true. It is good to make new friends. It is good to remember old friends. Each has value. Each can add new dimensions to my world.

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Lisa Kramme
Director of Faith Formation
Nebraska Synod, ELCA

Images are often the inspiration that I need to begin writing. I see something and it reminds me of a story I’ve heard before. Sometimes what I see has its own, new story that it shares with me and I try to pass it along to others.

Searching for an inspiring image to begin this article on a new stewardship project the Nebraska Synod is launching, I looked to Google Images for a source of inspiration, typing the word, “stewardship” into the search box. More than 6,370,000 images were found on the topic.
There were images of dollar bills peeking out from the pages of the Bible. There were pictures of various types of trees and photos of cupped hands holding a bit of earth and a growing seedling. There were images of church buildings and several pie charts, divided and labeled with how people spend their resources.

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Lisa Kramme
Director of Faith Formation
Nebraska Synod, ELCA

I love it when someone offers a prayer before meals that includes gratitude for the people who prepared the food. Some folks even expand their prayers to include the farmers who raised the food before it got into the hands of the cooks. Prayers like these help me remember that food doesn’t just miraculously show up on a plate in front of me without at least half a dozen people intervening on behalf of my dining experience.

Most of you reading this article probably know about Operation IDEA, a grassroots effort of the Nebraska Synod ELCA, created for the purpose of raising leaders for Christ’s Church. I talk with people throughout the Synod about Operation IDEA and how the program reaches out to people to ask them if God is calling them to the rostered ministry. But just as a cook in a restaurant needs the farmers who plant the seed and the workers who harvest it, the over-the-road truckers who haul the produce and the wholesale dealers who purchase the food for the cook to fix, ALL of us need to work together to have caring conversations and journey with people who are sensing a call from God.

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Lisa Kramme
Director of Faith Formation
Nebraska Synod, ELCA

“We’ve helped this much,” the man with small, gold hoop earrings said, “but there’s this much to do to make things better.”

The man gestured as he spoke, holding up two index fingers about an inch apart during the first part of his statement. Along with the latter part of his statement, his arms flung open wide, away from the center of his body in exaggerated arcs to show that the tasks needing done seemed infinite.

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Lisa Kramme
Director of Faith Formation
Nebraska Synod, ELCA

I didn’t wear gloves when I worked in my yard a couple weeks ago, planting a few geraniums, moss roses, one tomato plant, some lavender and other little white flowers that were not labeled but on the discount table at the plant sale. My hands got dirty, and I had to work to get the grime out from under my fingernails when the day was done. But it felt good. It felt good to be outside, turning the soil to loosen the hardness left by a season of waiting. It felt good to carry bags of mulch and work the rake to spread that mulch so moisture will stay where it does the most good, nourishing the young plants.

I imagine that there was probably dirt under God’s fingernails while God was working in the garden and creating this world and all the creatures that inhabit it. Anyone who is a caretaker of the earth gets dirt under their fingernails as they go about their important and vital tasks.

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Lisa Kramme
Director of Faith Formation
Nebraska Synod, ELCA

When I drive to the Nebraska Synod office, I travel past a nursery on the south side of Center Street in West Omaha. Now that it’s February, the young trees are without leaves, of course. They stand expectantly, in rows, planted just-the-right distance apart as though they were school children lined up to begin exercising in PE class, holding their arms straight out from their sides so that their fingertips just about touch.

I wonder where the trees will go eventually. Perhaps someone has built a new house and is landscaping for the first time. Maybe there’s been some clearing of old brush, and it’s time for new trees that change the look of a back yard. Regardless of the specific motivation to plant a tree, the action of planting something that will eventually grow taller and bigger around than the person who planted it is a sign of hope to me.

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