Good Shepherd Lutheran church

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Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Refresh America…err…Canada


Pepsi refreshes
So a while ago, apparently 2 years ago from what the ever knowledgeable Wikipedia says there was a certain initiative started up by Pepsi called the Pepsi Refresh Project. Now the thought behind this was to provide an opportunity for entrepreneurs to wow us with their amazing ideas about how they would have a positive impact on the world around them.

It all seems like a really great idea until you stop to think about the whole reason behind this project…what are we trying to refresh?

If you’re working on the Internet and your page stops loading, you’ll refresh it and reload the same information.

If you see something that’s out of the ordinary, you’ll find that refreshing.

If you’re thirsty, a cold glass of water can leave you feeling refreshed.

How does this multifaceted term fit into our everyday life?

The way that I would like to focus on refresh is most like the idea expressed in refreshing a webpage; the idea that you are returning to the original state.

With the Pepsi Refresh Project, that ended up being the predominant theme in the majority of the contributions. The winners all desired to make an impact by highlighting negative changes in their environment and focusing on fixing these changes. The decrease in fine arts education plays a prominent role, as does environmental damage and the role that we should have in repairing this loss in our society. In the Pepsi Refresh Project that becomes the main theme; refreshing as repairing.

Now, of course, you could choose any project you want as this has become a major theme in several different facets of life, I chose this one primarily because of the focus on the idea of refresh.

As Christians, this isn’t necessarily a word that is used in our vernacular. We have the idea, but we use words like restore or sanctify and veer away from the common term that we use everyday.

We recognize that there is a great deal of imperfection in the world and that the world we live in now is far different from the perfection described in the Garden of Eden. We recognize this and we would like it to be different, but how do we refresh this world?

Unfortunately, the Pepsi project won’t cut it. Even as they are attempting to do good, they are doing so for selfish reasons; to promote their city; to fund this idea that they think would be fun; even to promote themselves.

When we think about being refreshed as a Christian it comes from a far less self serving ambition. And by far less I mean, not at all.

Take a second and turn (or click) to Matthew 11:28-30. I’m sure it sounds crazy familiar to you and that is just swell.

Let’s look at this and place ourselves in the situation.

Oh man am I bad at traveling light. Traveling or travelling? Well, the red dotted line cleared up for me. You're lucky this time, Lucado
Half of us reading this really don’t know what a yoke is other than from reading through the bible and hearing our grandparents talk about it. So I’m going to steal a little bit from Max Lucado and use the imagery of luggage. Now some of you are probably really good packers and you can fit a week’s worth of stuff into one carry-on sized suitcase. I can’t. I pack for every eventuality, I pack things that I never use at home, but might need while I’m away. I have three different outfit choices for each day and enough hair products to ensure that if I ever happen to wear my hair down it will be covered in gels and sprays.

I never use half of what I pack.

I bring a lot of stuff along because I feel like I should. All it ends up doing is weighing me down, causing me grief and exhausting me. When someone offers to carry my suitcase for me I am both relieved and embarrassed. Relieved because it’s so heavy that it comes as a welcome relief and embarrassed because I don’t want someone else to take on all of the decisions that I made that caused this suitcase to be so heavy.

This is how I imagine the yoke to be. It’s all of those bad decisions, all of those worries and concerns that we’ve packed in. Not only do we carry these worries upon us but they seem to grow and it’s more like the suitcase at the end of the trip where all the stuff you brought, plus the stuff you bought is all crammed in and it is way too heavy. But still not so heavy that you want to give it up.



This is when we are refreshed. When we are at our most stressed, when we’ve piled so much upon ourselves that we can barely move forward. We are refreshed not because we want to be but because we need to be. It comes after we have yelled and screamed and kicked up a fuss. We try to avoid giving up everything that we’ve worked so hard to accumulate, even though it is slowing us down and making everything more difficult. We don’t want to hit that refresh button, and really we don’t. It takes God coming to refresh us to realize how badly we needed to be returned to original state, how badly we needed our luggage taken from us. We will fight and declare that we don’t need to be refreshed but when we take that light load and give up the heaviness that we have been carrying, it becomes even more evident how badly we have been struggling and how much we really do need to be refreshed and return to the original state that only Christ can offer.