KEYWORDS: Abide, vine, branches, communion.
At the 218th General Assembly, Rev. Diane Givens Moffett gave the following illustration in a sermon.
It takes courage to walk humbly with our God — just as it took courage for daredevil Charles Blondin to walk across Niagara Falls almost 150 years ago.
Blondin...was the tightrope walker who would stop across the falls midway to cook and eat an omelet.
The crowds of the day loved his act.
But when Blondin would offer to take a spectator across the raging waters on his shoulders, no one volunteered — except his manager, whom Blondin had to tell, as Moffett told the story, “You will feel like turning around when you don’t need to turn. If you trust your feelings, we will both
fall. You must become part of me.”
To the relief and delight of the crowd, the two men made a successful crossing.
Blondin’s advice to his manager applies to our walk with God, Moffett said.
“Walking humbly with God means we have to be one with God,” she said. “Looking at us is about the closest thing people will see when they think of Jesus.”
...
That courage to walk humbly with God, she said, is “borne of a deep-seated commitment to Jesus Christ.” What Moffett called “cosmetic Christianity” cannot “change our character or heal our spirit or make our world whole.”
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