165 Supply Chain

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Supply Chain”, originally shared on November 11, 2021. It was the 165^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   We are experiencing serious supply chain issues that are not likely to be fixed until after Christmas. Christians have been having supply chain issues since the first Christmas. Today, we’ll find out why.

   Have you finished your Christmas shopping yet? That would ordinarily be a crazy question at this time of the year. Shopping this early used to seem overly compulsive or the product of a commercialized season. Now it just seems practical.

   Stores were stocked with Christmas decorations around Labor Day this year, and it’s not just because stores make a huge amount of money from Christmas celebrations and gift-giving.

   This year, they may have already run out of what you want. Their supply chains have become unreliable.

   Who knows if the presents you want now are going to even be on the shelves tomorrow, much less just before Christmas?

   The “supply chain” is everything a business needs to have happen in order to deliver what it sells to the people who will buy it.

   It includes product development, finance, marketing, operations, manufacturing, distribution, and customer service.

   Like any other chain, it’s only as strong as its weakest link. When the world is experiencing a global pandemic and people are reluctant to go back to work because of health concerns, every link in the chain suffers from a labor shortage.

   But today, the weakest link appears to be distribution.

   That’s the way it looks anyway when the news is filled with pictures of container ships clogging the ports of LA and Long Beach, parked, waiting to be unloaded. A shortage of truck drivers and trucks, dock workers and berths, warehouse workers and space make it more difficult to make room for off-loaded containers containing goods. Rising fuel prices make the goods more expensive and less desirable to stores selling them.

   Fines may ease the problem but right now there are over 75 container ships just floating around here in San Pedro Bay.

   Our appetite for goods is increasing, so there are a lot of ships and there’s a lot of money to be made if the goods can be reliably brought to market. The freight lines themselves are making money. As a result, some big corporations are building their own fleets and their own methods for off-loading. Ironically, there is now also a shortage of containers in Asia.

   Likewise, Christians have opportunities that seem to outpace our current resources.

   How do we break the logjam?

   In Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, this exchange takes place, in John 4:10-14,

¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” ¹¹ The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹² Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” ¹³ Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

   Streams of living water!

   The woman, an outcast among outcasts living a separate existence within Israel, returns to her village and fearlessly shares what she has encountered in Jesus, in John 4:28-30,

²⁸ Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, ²⁹ “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” ³⁰ They left the city and were on their way to him.

   Jesus’ disciples see only Jesus’ immediate needs. They do not see the need of the people that is greater than life itself. We continue with verse 31,

³¹ Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” ³² But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” ³³ So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” ³⁴ Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.

   Jesus refocused their attention toward Jesus’ mission, and his disciples’, and what was happening right in front of them, continuing with verse 35,

 ³⁵ Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. ³⁶ The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. ³⁷ For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ ³⁸ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

   Sounds kind of abstract, right? Here’s what’s coming, in verses 39-42,

³⁹ Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” ⁴⁰ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. ⁴¹ And many more believed because of his word. ⁴² They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

   What opportunities are right in front of us that are we missing?

   What friend or relative is ready to hear our stories, the one about how we became a Christian or the ones where we were challenged and remained one?

   Who do we encounter in a grocery line, a sporting event, an outdoor restaurant, among our neighbors, or anywhere that people gather where we go?

   How many people do we know that have been stewing about their lives during the pandemic and need a word of hope about this life and the next?

   The Holy Spirit is everywhere, planting seeds in every heart. Who will name the name of Jesus at work in those hearts, knocking and asking to be let in?

   We have everything we need to do the work, or to be a part of a team doing the work, of harvest.

   Who will go? Who will being a word of hope through the community of Jesus Christ?

   There is no shortage of good news in Jesus Christ. There are only supply chain issues.

   Will you go? The fields are ripe for the harvest. Will you break the logjam? Will you go to the people you know with the good news God has given you in Jesus Christ with the name of Jesus Christ?

   Our sin has been blotted out by the blood of Jesus.

   All we need is the Holy Spirit, the streams of living water within us, freely given and gushing up to eternal life.

   Will you respond, as Isaiah did in Isaiah 6:1-8,

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. ² Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. ³ And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”

⁴ The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. ⁵ And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

⁶ Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. ⁷ The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” ⁸ Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”