Work on us. Reshape us. Help us to mend our broken relationships. Help us to be in right relationship with you. Anticipating something more and better, we wait, we imagine, we believe, and we grow in character, as God does what God does, smoothing us, reworking us, making something beautiful out of an old lump of clay.
As the world becomes more secular, many people don’t really know the Christ we claim to follow either, because getting to know the real Jesus is sometimes a little stressful and confusing. Jesus challenges us to alter our priorities, values, and occasionally even the direction of our lives.
God has blessed us with a great church and a wonderful opportunity to work for God’s kingdom in the name of Jesus Christ. Yet this work often fails, not because of God or structures or well-crafted plans. The work of God’s kingdom often fails because of us. Like the gatekeepers of the Wall, we run the risk of being bribed and seduced to compromise our faith and serve other gods.
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Alice Lee Humphreys in her book, Angels in Pinafores, tells about her experiences as a first-grade teacher. She tells about one little girl who came to school one winter day wearing a beautiful white angora beret with white mittens and a matching muff. As she was coming through the door, a mischievous little boy grabbed the white muff and threw it in the mud. After disciplining the little boy, the teacher sought to comfort the little girl.
I trust in the last 4 weeks as we’ve talked about Travel as a Spiritual Act, the different places where you’ve visited have come to mind. Our emphasis these past weeks as we’ve talked about travel has focused on the people and the relationships we’ve gained, and on the lessons we’ve learned about our similarities and differences.
Whenever Scott and I have headed off on an adventure, he always tells me after maybe a week that he’s ready to go back home. For me, it’s taken about that amount of time to “let go” of the “to do” lists that never seem to get fully done and so my brain starts churning again, like the “pop-up” reminders that keep appearing on my computer.
As we continue this series Quest: Travel as a Spiritual Act, and look at this week’s focus on “reflection”, I decided I would like to share several experiences with you I’ve had—during seminary and afterwards—going to places I never thought I’d go and learning things I didn’t realize I needed to learn.
There’s a saying that was at one time a part of the daily devotions of Jewish men. It goes something like this: “Blessed art thou, O God, that thou hast made me human and not beast, Jew and not Gentile, man and not woman.” This is the context for us to keep in mind as we consider Jesus’ walk through Samaria, and his talk with the Samaritan woman.
Once it finally happened, it happened quickly. Each plague wore Pharaoh down. Each time, he would say the Israelites could be released from the captivity that had enslaved them for all those years, but then he’d change his mind. By the time the 10th and final disaster happened, we wouldn’t be all that surprised if Israel had given up hope that they would ever be released.
A hunter wanted to show off his new dog, so he invited a friend to the lake to see what his dog could do. The owner took a decoy duck and threw it out as far as he could. His dog ran across the top of the water all the way out to the decoy and carried it back. After three times, his friend seemed unimpressed.
I'm sure most of you have heard of an oxymoron. It's a Greek word that means "pointedly foolish." You make an oxymoron when you put two words together that are complete opposites. They contradict each other. Some of my favorite oxymorons are "clearly confused," "act naturally," "open secret," and "jumbo shrimp."
Thomas Wheeler was at one time the CEO of the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. He and his wife were driving down an interstate highway when he realized he hadn’t paid close enough attention and needed gas.
One of my family stories involves a little girl born of a young woman who fell in love with a soldier before the end of World War 2. The young woman, without the knowledge or approval of her family ran away with the man and planned to marry him as soon as possible. Before that could happen, her aunts somehow located her and took her back home. When her pregnancy was discovered, she was promptly deposited in a home for unwed mothers in a different city.
This is Trinity Sunday, the last in a series of Sundays of the Liturgical Year (beginning with Advent and continuing to today) that lay out our salvation history in the life, death, resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ, and the coming of the Holy Spirit.
There are at least a couple of books entitled The Road; the first one I began reading because I read it was is a classic and among the top reads of the century, so I thought it would be a good choice. I decided about halfway through that just because a book is called a classic doesn’t mean I have to like it or finish reading it, so I stopped and picked up a second book with the same title.
Our daughter ran in high school. Her two main events were the 800 meter run and the 3200 relay. Over the years I watched a lot of relay teams passing off a lot of batons, and as you might expect, there is an art in doing that well. Both the one who hands off the baton and the one who receives it needs to be confident in what they’re doing and in what their teammate is going to do, in order that the race can continue as seamlessly as possible. The outcome of the race depends upon their ability to make a good exchange.
I check out one of the news outlets daily summaries each morning so I have an idea of what’s happening in the world. It’s too easy for me to get caught up in what’s happening here and now in my own space, and doing that helps me to look out a little further into the larger space of what’s happening in the world.
Perhaps you and I take for granted the opportunity to learn in this day and age. In this nation we consider it our “right” to receive a basic education so we can make choices that will help us be successful in our lives.
It is officially the fourth Sunday of Easter on our liturgical calendar, sometimes called Good Shepherd Sunday, and the texts are filled with shepherds and sheep. The imagery of God as the Good Shepherd isn’t unique to Psalm 23, God is often described as a shepherd who leads, protects, comforts and nurtures God’s people.
Hearing that announcement can fill you with a sense of peace and comfort knowing that you have a group of people who love you and are ready to stand by you through thick and thin, or it can cause you to shutter as you wonder: Oh, my! Will I be like that someday?!
Poor Thomas. All these years later, he’s still most known for his weakest moment. It’s sad. Still, we can’t honestly think bad of him, can we? He’s us in a whole lot of ways: that little voice inside us that resists easy answers to hard questions about faith, who might like a little proof, even though we realize that proof and faith don’t always work very well together in the same sentence.
It’s a familiar story that we read from out of one of the Gospels each year. We hear it from different perspectives; different details that don’t exactly fit together like pieces of a puzzle—and yet somehow they all tell us the mysterious story of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Palm Sunday 2021. It is a day of mixed emotions, isn’t it? I am so pleased to be able to come together face-to-face in a sanctuary this a.m. Last Palm Sunday we were in our 3rd week of online services only, and none of us had any idea at that point that our best option for the next year would be to gather online only.
There are times when it feels like you’re “large and in charge” and things are going your way—just the way you always hoped they would be. You’re calling the shots, setting the schedule, making the decisions. And then something happens and the rug is pulled out from under your feet. It all changes in a heartbeat.
Wrapped within this morning’s scripture is one of the most familiar passages to contemporary Christians—and perhaps to non-Christians, as well. The actual words of John 3:16 may not be known to the viewer who sees the two-toned-face-painted football fan standing in the bleachers at the endzone, holding his John 3:16 sign, but there you’ll see it, just the same.
Perhaps because of the setting in which I’ve worked for 30 some years, I have on many occasions, enjoyed taking the opportunity to go and sit in the sanctuary of the churches I’ve served during the week, when no one was around, to simply breath in the peace of that space.
In Blessed Bookies this week, we discussed a book that touched on a number of themes, including a dying man’s reflection on whether or not he had made the right choices in his life, and had lived in the best way he could have. He wondered if his life had had meaning and purpose.
