Encouragement

The Rev. Nancy E. Gossling                                    

1 Thessalonians 5:11 “Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.”

I posed the question, ‘What exactly do you need?” to the vestry members of St. Peter’s Church in Cambridge yesterday. While God knows our needs before we ask, it’s good to verbalize them to ourselves and to others. 

It was November of 2012 and I had just written a letter to the good people of St. James Episcopal Church in Glastonbury, Connecticut. I had served as their rector for ten amazing years and felt that God was calling me (and them) to something new. I knew not what. I knew not where. I just knew it was time.

That very same month, Brother Curtis from the Society of St. John the Evangelist, in Cambridge, Massachusetts (SSJE) had been invited to Connecticut to offer some reflections at our clergy day. I had never met him before and to this day I still remember his words on encouragement. Who knew that 8 years later I would be living right down the street from SSJE and Brother Curtis? Who knew that those were the very words I needed to hear then and now?

Encouragement is a matter of the heart, coming from the French word “coeur.” We look for courage within us, perhaps saying to ourselves in a moment of challenge, “With God’s help, I can do this!” Or, as a community, we look for encouragement, saying to each other, “Together, we can!” Without encouragement our hearts become hardened. With encouragement, our hearts are softened, healed, and strengthened for God’s mission of love and reconciliation.

Brother Curtis suggested that there are two groups of people who need the grace of encouragement: (1) the least, the lost, and the last; and (2) leaders. God knows there are plenty of us who feel least, last, and lost. God knows that the leaders of our churches, our communities, our nation and our world need the grace of encouragement now more than ever. Indeed, St. Paul knew it when he wrote his letter to the Thessalonians in the 1st century.

Encouragement dissipates fear. “What do we need?” To lean forward in faith into the unknown mystery of the future. We need the grace of encouragement.