Have you taken your MEDSS?

Good Morning Trinity Tribe,

I hope you are well! It is dreary outside, but I am feeling pretty chipper here inside the office. Sometimes when you go to a class that is required, you come away slightly disgruntled at how your time was wasted. Yesterday, I felt the opposite of that as I left the Clergy Ethics Seminar. I was educated. I was challenged. And I was a bit saddened about how stress impacts people to make poor choices that affect our proclamation of the gospel.

I learned a tool that will be helping me to stay balanced and healthy. I offer it to you as well.

Something we can ask ourselves every day is, "Have you taken your MEDSS?" Meaning:

Meditation (Devotional reading, meditation, and prayer)
Exercise (At least 30 minutes three times a week)
Diet (A balanced and healthy diet with at least 9 servings of fruits and veggies)
Sleep (At least 7 but adults need 8-11 hours a day)
Support (holy friends who keep you accountable and who are able to tell you things you don't want to hear)

Most of the acronyms are pretty self explanatory. However, I would like to talk about holy friendships a moment. We need to be in relationship with people that help us see the holy and see the sin in our own lives. To quote Greg Jones, former Dean of the Divinity School at Duke, "Holy friends are people who, over time, get to know us well enough that they can challenge the sins we have come to love, affirm gifts we are afraid to claim, and dream dreams about how we can bear witness to God's Kingdom that we would otherwise would not have dreamed."

I am blessed that I have a few friends that fit this bill. I need people to call me out when I am clinging to that sin that I like so much. I need people to push me to embrace God's preferred future for me, even when it is hard. I invite you to reflect on who your holy friends are. If you don't feel like you have anyone to whom you are accountable spiritually, emotionally, etc, how can we make that happen?

If you have been on a Walk to Emmaus, they encourage you to become part of a reunion group. If you haven't gone on a Walk to Emmaus, that doesn't mean you can't have holy friends to be accountable to. Let me know if you would like to join a group. Perhaps we can get one or two or more together here at Trinity.

Here are some good questions to start with:

Where am I growing? .
Where am I stuck? .
What step can I trust God with next?

I have also been in prayer about other small groups that might be helpful to our spiritual lives and personal lives. Let me know if you are interested in one of these or one that meets your personal needs. They might be for mutual support…sharing ideas about services in the area…bouncing ideas off…prayer…

Hebrews 10 says: 24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. 25 Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

*Parenting children
*Parenting teens
*Caring for parents
*Caring for a spouse who is sick