A Common Story

There is a story behind everyone and everything.
That’s one of the reasons our experiences of life are so varied and each of us, unique.
We’ve all got a story to tell.

Sometimes our stories are quite modest and ordinary; sometimes they are exceptional; some stories get told with ease and others are heartbreaking.

Even so, our stories always share some common ground. We don’t always like to admit that and sometimes we have to hunt for it – but it is there.

And it’s there because there is another bigger story that gives our stories shape.
The bigger story goes like this:...

In the beginning God made us to love him and to love each other and to nurture the world like good gardeners. It wasn’t a bad start to the story but we wrote a few script revisions which had us failing badly when it came to loving God and each other, and we made a mess of our responsibilities for the garden and all its creatures.

In spite of how things were going, God was still in charge of the story and he kept the plot moving towards the moment in history when he confronted and defeated evil. Jesus’ life and death and resurrection is God seeing to it that the story goes on.
The next really big thing in the story is when God sets everything right perfectly. Between now and then we have the opportunity to be reunited with God -  learning to love well again; restoring broken relationships and working to heal the broken planet.

A letter written centuries ago says this, “Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behaviour from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.”
So that’s the common ground.

• We are all intentionally designed for love; all created to love and be loved.
• We all mess that up; sometimes in small and ordinary ways and other times in catastrophic and extraordinary ways.
• We can all get into right relationship with God because of Jesus
• We are all invited to live in good partnership with God - loving him and each other and caring for the world we live in.   

At LBC we choose to live on the common ground.
Because God loves us
We choose to gather as a multigenerational community through relational services.
We choose to grow closer to and more like Jesus in our attitudes and actions.
We choose to serve the community for the sake of the community’s well being
We choose to love like that and this is our story. There is plenty of room for your story here and we would love to hear it!  

Karen Siggins
Lead Pastor