Devotional 8-28-15

VISITING MARY’S HOUSE

High on a mountain outside of the ancient city of Ephesus there is a small stone house that is known as Mary’s house. When my husband, Steve and I visited it a couple of years ago, we knew very little about it. We only knew that the Apostle John was reported to have taken Mary with him to Ephesus after Jesus’ crucifixion (John 19: 25-27) and that this was where many believe she spent her final years. Our tour bus was the first to arrive there that day. Steve and I were among the first people off the bus and the fastest walkers by far! This made us the first people to enter that day and gave us a few minutes alone before the crowds started to arrive.

It was a simple 2 room house. The first room was a very small chapel lit by candles. There was a table altar with a Turkish rug on the floor. A circular alcove containing a statue of the Virgin Mary was built into the wall behind it. On the left side of the altar in a small brick alcove is a Turkish Bible open to John 19:25-27. On the right side of the altar, in a similar alcove, is an icon of Mary. 

These details I looked up later. At the time I had only the impression of a simple chapel and an overwhelming sense of the presence of Mary! The feeling was so strong that I just started talking to her in my head. I have never experienced anything like it before or since. She was there! We went on into the second room which was set up as a small bedroom--again very simple. Then we went out. We had not spoken since entering the house. I looked at Steve and asked if he had felt it. “Oh, yeah!” was his heart felt reply. This confirmed my feelings, To say that Steve is a skeptic about such things would be an understatement. This was not my imagination.

In my last devotional (August 8) I quoted an article about how Mary’s house was discovered. God used a poor, uneducated, German nun. He gave her a vision of where Mary’s house was located. Nobody listened when she spoke in her own language. So  God made her speak in Aramaic. God finally had the church’s attention! The foundation of what had been Mary’s house was discovered and rebuilt. This was a true miracle!

Steve’s and my experience was our own personal miracle. Would our experience have been the same if we had been part of a large group? I don’t know. I just know that it was a powerful “God moment” in both of our lives.

Margaret Williams

Devotional 8-22-15

WILL I EVER GET IT RIGHT?

Ephesians 2 :4-8

Courtesy of my dear little cat, Calli, there was a carpet stain in a very obvious  place in the hallway. No big deal you say.  I found I had a spray can of carpet cleaner in the junk cupboard along with a lot of other stuff, tile cleaner, tub cleaner, furniture polish, etc. (If you need any kind of cleaner just come and see my seldom used supply).

Okay, let's get to it. Read the directions first. Now this is my problem whether it is a spray can of some kind of cleaner or a recipe card. I read the directions carefully, not once, not twice, maybe three times. Even a recipe I have used many times, I have to keep reading the directions. Really stupid, right?

Sometimes I even wonder about my faith. Am I getting it right? The Upper Room scripture today was from Ephesians 2:1-10. After reading this passage I found my answer to getting it right. "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast".

We don't have to get it right. Jesus has taken care of it. All we need to do is to believe and keep on believing even in our weakest moments. Oh, the wonder of God's grace.

PS. The carpet cleaner worked!

Jean Dean

Devotional 8-14-15

God, It’s Me

Proverbs 3:5-6  Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.

God, it’s me, Becky. I’m in trouble. Can you help me? I don’t know what to do!

Now just calm down. What seems to be the problem?

I’m ...anxious,EXTREMELY anxious!  I can’t sit down. I can’t lie down. I can’t even sit still for a foot rub! That never happens. SOB, SOB, SNORT, SOB...

When did your problems start?

Earlier in the week I noticed that my blood pressure medication was a different shape. I checked the label and it was the right generic name, so I thought nothing more of it. Later I felt dizzy a few times, but I blamed it on the heat. I am getting up there, you know. I felt claustrophobic in my own house, but going outside didn’t make me feel much better. And the crying! I sobbed during Last Comic Standing. That’s just not normal!

So when these things happened, what did you do? Did you go to the doctor to check it out? Did you go to the pharmacy to be sure you had the right prescription? 

I prayed to you... I figured you could fix me much faster than those other guys. Don’t you remember me asking for help? I was the one weeping in the Walmart parking lot.

As a matter of fact I do recollect something about that now. I also know what I answered. You know, prayer is a two-way conversation. If you ask me for something, wait for the answer!  In your case, I told you to see your doctor! Now you’ve waited until late evening, so you’ll need to go to the ER. I’ve seen your tithe, so I’m fairly certain you don’t need to be spending that kind of money.

Will you go with me?

Do you really need to ask? I go everywhere with you. But Don’s going to have to go, too. He will wait in the waiting room, wait when you fall asleep in the hospital room, and then wait to pay the bill. It’s a good thing you listened when I answered about him! Now let’s go get you straightened out. We all need our beauty sleep.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, you have given us everything we need to have a wonderful life. When we are anxious and ask for your help, don’t be afraid to put a neon sign and arrow next to our brothers and sisters. The sign might say, “ Because I love you, I trained these people to help you. Let them. Your loving God.”

Amen
Becky Warren

Devotional 8-7-15

Ephesians 4:7 But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. (NIV)

“The invalid German nun had never traveled outside of her home country. The daughter of 18th-century peasants, she was no scholar. Yet, awaking in a trance, she was speaking in a language no one knew.

A linguist was called on the scene. The nun, he revealed, was speaking Aramaic. And she was describing the house where the Virgin Mary spent her final days.

This was not the first vision of Sister Anne Catherine Emmerich, who conversed with the Child Jesus and received the stigmata. But it was the first time that many began to give credence to her descriptions of a house near Ephesus (in modern-day Turkey) where Mary spent her final days — descriptions she had previously given in her own dialect.

What she described, recorded in a book called “The Life of The Blessed Virgin Mary,” was a small stone house, built by the Apostle John who, according to popular belief, brought Mary with him from Jerusalem to Ephesus. The house had a fireplace, apse, round back wall, a bedroom for Mary, and a spring that ran into her bedroom. After Mary was taken to heaven, said Emmerich, the house was turned into a chapel.

Sure enough, a late-19th century expedition to Nightingale Mountain (near Ephesus) revealed a site with holes in the ground for a cistern and a well, along with a destroyed chapel whose foundations likely dated from the first century. In the minds of many, Mary’s house had been found.

Today pilgrims from all over the world travel to Bülbül Dag (Nightingale Mountain) to see the site where Mary may have spent her final days. They come as faithful Catholics, as Christians, as Muslims (who revere Mary as Jesus’ mother), as curious tourists. They come to pay homage to the Virgin Mary, to attend Mass in the chapel built at the site, to drink the waters of the spring, and to leave heartfelt petitions — on handkerchiefs, scraps of paper, even leaves — at a wall constructed for the purpose.“*                                                  
God used Sister Anne Catherine Emmerich. By earthly standards it would seem a strange choice. But God often uses people who would seem a strange choice by our standards. What about you and me? God uses each and every one of us. Maybe not in quite as dramatic a way as he did Sister Anne Catherine Emmerich. But, He still uses us. When I pray I sometimes feel God pushing me to do things that take me out of my comfort zone--sometimes way out! More often, I think God  puts us in situations where we help someone and may never know the difference we have made. Embrace God, pray, and let God work through you!

Source

Margaret Williams

Devotional 7-31-15

Maturing as Christians and the CHURCH

Read Ephesians 4:1-16

Paul is writing this letter to the believers in Ephesus some 60 years after Christ’s Resurrection.  In Chapter 4, he speaks of maturing as Christians. How we have been called to live as Christ lived his life? One of love, gentleness, patience and acceptance. We are of one body and one spirit.  We have all been given different gifts to use as one body. Some preach, some teach, some prophecy and some are evangelists.  We are called to use all of these for the CHURCH and to bring others into the CHURCH.  And to continue doing so until we mature as adults in the fullness of Christ.  We are to no longer be as a child who can be tricked into other beliefs.  We are to:

¹⁵Instead, by speaking the truth with love, let’s grow in every way into Christ, ¹⁶who is the head. The whole body grows from him, as it is joined and held together by all the supporting ligaments. The body makes itself grow in that it builds itself up with love as each one does its part. Ephesians 4:15-16

But what is the church?  Is it a building? A steeple? Is it a place of rest?  No “It Is THE PEOPLE”. The church Johnson Memorial UMC would not have existed if it were not for the people who started it over One Hundred and Thirty years ago.  It would not still exist today if it were not for the PEOPLE of JM.  The building is not the CHURCH, the CHURCH is wherever the PEOPLE of JM gather.  Just as the Refrain from “I am The Church” says:

I am the church! You are the church!
We are the church together!
All who follow Jesus,
all around the world!
Yes, we're the church together!

JM is not a CHURCH all alone, we are a part of the Universal Church, in every corner of this vast world of ours.  We may not always agree with each other, but the message from God is that we are to love one another, accept one another, live in one Spirit and become like Christ.  And as we bring others into our CHURCH we bring them with: Love, Gentleness, Acceptance and Patience. All of the qualities of how Christ LIVED !!!

The song “One Bread One Body” written by John Michael Talbot is one which we have sung at JM many times.  It is special to me because it sums up how I feel about the CHURCH.

Refrain
One bread, one body,
one Lord of all,
one cup of blessing which we bless.
And we, though many,
throughout the earth,
we are one body in this one Lord.

1. Gentile or Jew,
servant or free,
woman or man, no more.

2. Many the gifts,
many the works,
one in the Lord of all.

3. Grain for the fields,
scattered and grown,
gathered to one, for all.
Pray for the CHURCH………… that we will all be one in Christ and like Christ.  Amen

Have a very blest week.
Fred Herr

Devotional 7-17-15

“ ‘With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’
He has told you, O mortal one, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness,
And to walk humbly with your God.” – Micah 6:6-8

As I write this, it has been a week since I had the blessing of attending the Wednesday evening Bible Study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.  We had planned a family vacation in Charleston to visit and hold two new month-old babies:  a great granddaughter (our third) born June 1 and a grandson (our 17th) born June 2.  Since we would be there, I determined that I would attend the Wednesday Bible Study at Mother Emanuel AME Church, called “Mother Emanuel” because it was the first AME congregation in the south from which others were born.  The Johnson Memorial congregation sent with me nine prayer shawls into which people wove their own prayers as the shawls draped from the prayer rail during the Eucharist the Sunday we left.

The United Methodist Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Church are siblings in the broader Methodist family.  That makes JM and Emanuel first cousins.  It was a holy joy to meet my cousins.

The group was studying the prophet Micah.  Chapters 5 and 6 are full of God’s judgment against those who refuse to live in the ways of God.  The conversation often turned to events three weeks earlier when 9 members were gunned down and a 10th wounded.  The memory of the event was still fresh and raw, though the Emanuel folk exhibited remarkable grace and hope.  At one point, a woman stood and very quietly but directly said, “Our church is getting a lot of credit in the media and across the country for how we have handled this tragedy.  But we don’t deserve the credit; God did that.”  She sat down, and there was a moment of palpable stillness.  I know that in my feebled attempt to write this, I cannot capture the deep and wide spirit of that moment. But her comment, and the grace of the Emanuel congregation, are bringing redemption to a sacred space that had been fouled by violence and hatefulness.  Perhaps the lesson beyond that evening’s study is that wherever we are, there is the opportunity to sense the fresh blowing of the spirit’s wind, cleansing what humans have soiled.  Further, there is the lesson that we are all called to be redeemers in a troubled world.

“Breathe on me, breath of God.  Fill me with life anew,
That I would love what thou dost love, and do what thou wouldst do.” – Edwin Hatch, 1878
     
Rev.. Jack Lipphardt

Devotional 7-10-15

WAIT A MINUTE…WHAT???

 

This week's lectionary readings ranged from King David's exuberant joy in returning the ark of the covenant (the presence of God) to the city of Jerusalem; to David's Psalm proclaiming God's holiness and sovereignty over all creation; to Paul's letter to the church at Ephesus, exhorting them to remain strong in their faith because they have been adopted as children of God; to Mark's Gospel which records people's responses to the miracles and healings performed by Jesus and His disciples. I'm sure there is a common thread in this mix of Scripture… I just can't seem to grasp it… try as I might.  As a consequence, I've chosen to focus on one portion of the Gospel reading, which is quite jolting after reading the first 16 verses of Mark 6.

 

Mark tells of some people saying, "'John the baptizer has been raised from the dead, and for this reason these powers are at work in him.'  But others said, 'It is Elijah.' And others said, 'It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.'  But when Herod heard of it, he said, 'John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.'" (Mark 6:14b-16).

 

"For Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, because Herod had married her.  For John had been telling Herod, 'It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife.' And Herodias had a grudge against him, and wanted to kill him.  But she could not, for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him.  When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he liked to listen to him." (Mark 6:17-20)

 

Wait a minute…what???  Herod recognized John's righteousness, his holiness, feared him, imprisoned him, and liked listening to him. Yet Herod let his own self-importance, reputation, and power overcome that small piece of light beginning to appear in his dark soul ("and yet he liked to listen to him."), and allowed himself to be manipulated to the point of having John beheaded!

 

I believe God, through Jesus Christ, and the indwelling Holy Spirit, has given each of us that wonderfully amazing small piece of light to help us during those dark seasons we all have at one time or another. The causes of the darkness run the entire spectrum of human emotions and human circumstances.  Our response to the darkness is our choice.  Sadly, being human, it is often much easier to indulge in the seductive power of the darkness, which requires no effort to sustain.

 

Because we have all been adopted into the family of God, we must do everything possible to encourage and enable our little pieces of light to become brighter, so they may help eliminate the dimming of others' pieces of light.  As Jesus reminds us, "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me." (Matthew 25:40).

 

My prayer is for us all to be aware of each member of our holy family – of each other's little piece of light. When there is a dimming, offer a piece of your light, and, in the giving, I'm sure your light and my light will burn a little brighter. 

     

Linda Summers