In February 2009, I had the opportunity to make some remarks to the Northern European Cathedral Conference in Uppsala, Sweden.  I was invited to speak briefly as an Episcopalian to this diverse and ecumenical group of cathedral leaders.

I said that my tradition, the Episcopal Church, often seems to make headlines.  This attention is actually beyond what our relatively small membership deserves.  More importantly, most of our members are not preoccupied with those things that make headlines.  Rather, we are most concerned with the mission and sustainability of our congregations and with the struggle to live ordinary Christian lives.  Behind the headlines, there is a much larger story.

This is the great story of millions of people who continue to work, pray, and give for the spread of the Kingdom of God through their local congregations.  They worship and study; they give of their time and money; they serve those in need at home and around the world; and they care for each other within and beyond their congregational membership.

They are not perfect and so they make mistakes and often don’t get things right.  Sometimes they experience the miracle of forgiveness, offered and received.  They go on when things make sense and when they don’t.  They come to understand life as a gift of grace; lived in the matrix of a sacred dimension they usually call God.

In our time and in our culture, they do this more and more against the grain, trying to figure out how to balance impossible demands coming from all sides.  The pressures and trends that work against faithful practice are relentless and strong.  Yet millions still make the effort, however imperfectly.  And while it rarely makes headlines, this is the big story.  In innumerable, and perhaps in unrecognizable ways, what a difference it makes!

Part of our culture wants sensational headlines.  They are there for a reason, and we can always try to learn from them.  But here is an encouraging word for the bigger story of ordinary people striving to be faithful and making a difference.   Give thanks for those people.  Be one of them.