Tourist season

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By Rev. Glenna Beauchamp

Rivers and Oak River United Churches

There are at least two ways we can visit a place we’ve never been before. We can go as tourists. Tourists get to see only certain areas where the streets are clean, security is good, the people you see are well-fed and live in decent houses. Tourists can stay in motels with the same name as ones we’ve stayed at in Canada, where we can eat in restaurants that are franchises of the ones we frequent at home, where we just accept what certain people tell us about the place we are visiting. Or we can go and connect with local people. We can let them take us into the places where they live and work. We can eat the local food the people there eat. We can listen to their stories and participate in their celebrations.

We can also approach church like tourists. We can learn about the church through reports in the media. We can learn the Hollywood version of the Bible through movies and we can make an occasional visit for a wedding or a funeral. Or we can visit a church often enough to get to know people of faith. We can hear the church tell its own story and listen to God’s version of life in the Bible. We can participate in the celebrations of God’s grace, love, hope and peace that are gifts through Jesus Christ.

Tourists kind of skim over the surface. To really know a place or a church, we have to go and stay awhile.