Devotional 4-30-11

Leaning on the Everlasting Arms

After he said these things, Jesus became visibly upset, and then he told them why. "One of you is going to betray me." The disciples looked around at one another, wondering who on earth he was talking about. One of the disciples, the one Jesus loved dearly, was reclining against him, his head on his shoulder. Peter motioned to him to ask who Jesus might be talking about. So, being the closest, he said, "Master, who?" (John 13:21-25 from The Message)

Sometimes reading a different version of a passage in the Bible will give us a different viewpoint. When I read these verses of John from The Message, I was struck by the line "was reclining against him." That phrase creates a vision of John leaning against Jesus in my mind.

Our beagle is a pack dog. She likes to be close. She'll jump up on the couch when I'm sitting on it, find a spot, and start walking in circles. Once she has massaged the couch into submission, she plops down, right against me. It doesn't matter if she has the entire couch as a resting place, she chooses to shove herself against me.

Shouldn't we be that way with God? Reclining against him when we have questions?

Consider Thomas, one of the lectionary readings for this week. He had doubts, and he gets a bad name because of it. Really, though, he did what we are all to do -- he asked Jesus for help. He leaned against God. Sometimes I think I am too slow to remember to do the same thing.

Kim Matthews

Devotional 3-4-11

Creation

In the beginning was God.
His hands itched to create,
to swirl nothingness with the power of his Word
and create goodness and glory.

Nothing existed except for God.
The breath of his Word swept across the nothingness,
until God imagined light.
From a tiny flicker of thought
in the mind of God,
there was a spark.
God pulled light out of darkness,
and it was good.
God created the Day and the Night.

God moved across the water,
dividing it with power greater than we can imagine,
until there was sea and sky.
Related and yet separate.
God imagined clouds and wind,
waves and tides.
And he created them,
and they were good.

God swept across the ocean,
and like a potter with clay,
divided out land from sea.
Mountains rose at his thought.
Valleys and canyons were carved by his fingertips.
With joy and power, he sculpted the earth,
setting into motion the tectonic plates,
floating on a core of fire.
Each detail felt his breath
until he was satisfied.
Using the fabric of life,
he quilted together the trees,
Leaves and berries were his stitches,
Pops of color in the flowers.
Seeds for the future,
creating for the perpetuation of all he designed.
As he tugged the last aspen into place
he knew that it was good.

Like a photographer, he gathered the light,
and bound it into the sun and moon.
He met the needs of his creation
for heat and light,
by swinging the sun into the sky.
The moon became an anchor for the tides.
Earthly time flew from his Words
as the movement of his creation through the sky
marked the hours and the years.
His paint bush dabbed power in the sky
as stars began to glint and glimmer.
Giving the planet a push, he set the world spinning,
creating an evening and a night.
And they were good.

The next morning, God surveyed his canvas,
and smiled, rubbing his hands together with glee.
Life began to pulse as his Word spoke.
The air lifted creatures with wings
and fish shot through the deep.
Color and variety danced on the joy of God's imagination.
Clown fish darted as anemones waved in the water.
Eagles soared as God played with ostriches.
Fish swam and birds flew
as God declared their goodness.

Cell to cell, worms and elephants began to evolve
from the imagination of God.
Serpents basked on rocks, soaking in God's sunshine,
as spiders wove webs.
Animals sprang to life,
and God planted dreams of creation in their minds.
God's hands became gentle as he whispered.
A self portrait.
Man and woman, two parts of a whole, were spoken into being.
He blessed them with his imagination, his joy and laughter.
He blew across their hearts to start them beating
with love, created out of his own depth of being.
He made them clever and emotional,
and touched their lives with an awareness of their creator.
God laughed
at the goodness of it all.

He invited them to dominion and responsibility.
He placed his creations in their care --
the moon and the stars;
the water and the air;
the plants and the animals;
each other.
He promised them his presence,
and kissed them with his spirit.
The master touched his creation,
hallowing it,
and knew that it was very good.

Kim Matthews

Devotional 2-25-11

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth."   --Genesis 1:26

"The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all, our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope. --Wendell Berry (born in Kentucky in 1934, author and farmer)

Caution--this may get a little preachy!

What have you done today to care for the earth that God so lovingly provided for you and me? What did you do this morning with your empty cereal box? Toss it in the garbage? I know what you're thinking, Give me a break--it was just one cereal box! But look at it this way--what if every family in our state threw one cereal box into a pile. Would you tell your children or grandchildren to go play on that pile of boxes? Now add to that pile all the recyclable things you throw away in a day:

newspapers, magazines and junk mail,
egg cartons, Starbucks cups, fast-food cartons,
yogurt, cottage cheese, and other such containers,
peanut butter jar, soup and other tin cans,
plastic milk containers, plastic water bottles and soda bottles, aluminum cans,
glass jars, wine bottles,
cardboard boxes--the mac and cheese box, pizza box, toothpaste box, shipping boxes,
detergent bottles, shampoo bottles, ketchup bottles,
on and on and on..................

Still want to send the kids out to play in that pile of trash?

Recycling is not just for Old Hippies or New Age Seekers. Recycling is for everyone. Especially for those of us who claim to be God's people. Don't we want to take care of God's amazing creation?

If your community doesn't have a recycling program, demand one! There are certain businesses that provide recycling bins. It is not that much trouble to take your trash to those bins if you don't have curbside recycling.

How about your business? How about your church? Are we serious about "saving the earth" or not?

Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.   --Cree Indian Proverb

Anita Gardner Farrell

Devotional 2-18-11

“Bragging about God”

How is your life different because you are a Christian? That is what I have been contemplating for the last two weeks. This has not been an easy task. I cannot remember a time that I did not believe in God. He was always there. But what if I hadn’t been raised in the church? What if my parents had not taught me to pray? How would my life be different? What different choices might I have made?

My faith grounds me. It gives me rules to follow. That’s good because I am a rules follower. I like knowing what the rules are -- knowing what is expected of me. I would like to say that I always follow these rules. Unfortunately the more I study the Bible and attend church, the more I find I need to work on. Hopefully this makes me less judgmental of others and keeps me humble when I invariably fall short. My faith gives me strength, not mine, but the strength that comes from God. I know God has carried me through some very difficult, very stressful times. My faith gives me peace, an inner core of calm. Yes, I get stressed. Can you be alive today and care about others and not be stressed occasionally? The difference is the inner core of peace that I can tap into during difficult times. The inner peace that come from God.

I believe that I am a different person than I would be without my faith. My priorities would be different and my values would be different, so I would have lived my life differently. I am a much happier person because of my faith. All of this is a gift from God. I need to thank Him for it all, but I also need to tell others that I don’t do things on my own--that what I do and who I am is with a lot of help from God!

So what about you? How would your life be different? How will you tell others? I will be saying, “With a lot of help from God!”

Margaret Williams

Devotional 2-11-11

Psalm 119:1-8

When I sat down with JM Kid’s Club one Sunday evening, I thought it would be neat to have the children take part in helping me with a devotional writing. We all know that inspiration comes in the most unexpected ways. The following is today’s Psalm excerpt, paraphrased and slightly modified by members of our Kid’s Club.


If you follow God’s rules, you’ll be eternally happy.
Blamelessness is like a chain, and someone else will be inspired by you.
If you do the right thing no matter what, you’ll be a happy person.
I will work hard to follow God’s light.
I won’t be embarrassed if I focus on God’s rules.
I will praise God and try to live a sinless life.
I will always try to follow God’s laws.
I hope that He doesn’t let me down or give up on me.

I would like to share with you that the children had no concern that God would ever let them down or give up on them, as mentioned in the scripture. I pray that all of us could emulate their faith. When the scripture is worded like this, I ask myself why it is so difficult to walk in God’s light. I feel sheepish, because it really can be simple. Had I chosen just to write something on this Psalm by myself, I doubt it would have been so perfect.


'Out of the mouths of babes oft times come gems’

Natalie Wray

Devotional 2-4-11

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Isaiah 58:6-7

Churches expend a great deal of energy trying to figure out how to worship. Should it be traditional or contemporary? Pipe organ or praise band? Chairs or pews? Ordered or spontaneous? Well-meaning people make passionate arguments that one form or another is somehow superior, whether superior is defined as more rooted in scripture and tradition or more likely to draw in more people.

I’m not pointing fingers—this is confession time for me. I’ve been in a lot of those discussions for several years, and have made some of those impassioned pleas. I want a worship style that is pleasing to me, that makes feel happy and good. I want to come to church, enjoy my time there, and leave feeling better.

I am convicted by this week’s lectionary passages, and particularly the reading from Isaiah 58, a portion of which is printed above. True worship, according to the prophet, is about more than ritual to make me feel better. True worship requires us to get involved, not only during the 11:00 a.m. hour, but the rest of the week. Piety, singing hymns, and praying, in and of themselves, will not bring about God’s kingdom of justice and righteousness. God expects us to act to make the kingdom a reality. Who will feed the hungry if not us?

Here are some startling statistics from Bread for the World, the non-profit hunger-fighting organization led by David Beckmann:

• 925 million people are hungry.
• Almost 16,000 children die each day from hunger-related causes. (That's one child every five seconds).
• In 2008, nearly 9 million children died before they reached their fifth birthday. One third of these deaths are due directly or indirectly to hunger and malnutrition.

Am I looking for a worship experience that will move me to participate in ending hunger? Or do I want worship to lull me into continued complacency?

If you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in. Isaiah 58:10-12

As worshiping Christians, we should be about the business of ending hunger. We’d better get busy.

Amen.

Jeff Taylor

Devotional 1-28-11

Whew! That Was Close

There is a commercial break in your favorite TV show. You seize the moment to round up a snack. Once in the kitchen you admire your food selection and speed of preparation; a stacked high sandwich, a piece of (still moist) chocolate cake and a tall, cool beverage. And now,Yikes, the realization that you have three things to carry and only two hands to carry them with. It would take too long to ferret out a tray so you compromise. The cake is shorter than the sandwich, less likely to topple – its plate gets to set on top of the drinking glass, the sandwich held in the free hand. You hear your show about to return to the airwaves, you spin and WHOA!!! The wheels almost come off the bus. But thanks to your cat-like reflexes, you maintain your balance, you juggle just a bit, and, yes, you manage to save the food, the floor and everyone’s eardrums. As you head back to TV-land you mutter the words, “Whew! That was close.” Calamity avoided.

You are late for church. The speed limit gets a wee bit of a work out, and the STOP signs don’t get their full One Mississippi, Two Missi…. Oh, now a traffic signal looms on the horizon. Can you make it? Will it change to green when you need it to? As you get closer you can see that the perpendicular signal has changed to yellow – that means yours should change to green very soon. You could stay at speed (or a little faster) and zoom right through. Something makes you flinch; you tap the brake and begin slowing as if to stop, and WHOOOSH! The car approaching the yellow light must have also been late for something because the driver interpreted the intermediate caution light as HIT THE GAS so as to not be held up by a red light. Had you maintained your original intent, a crash would have been unavoidable. You get stopped in time and again mutter the words, “Whew! That was close.” Catastrophe avoided.

While returning to Galilee from Judea, Jesus did, in GPS language, some ‘recalculating’. He went through Samaria. Without delving too deeply into history or geography, suffice it to say – that was a no-no. He encounters a woman at a well. A woman whose life would never be the same again. He is where he is not supposed to be, doing something he is not supposed to do with someone he not supposed to do it with. He was a man, a Jew, talking to a woman, a Samaritan. I wonder if when the sun had set on the day, and she had had a chance to reflect on all that had taken place, which perhaps shouldn’t have taken place, if she thought to herself, “Whew! That was close.” A lifetime of ridicule and bitterness and not knowing God avoided.

I have two scars on my back. To the casual observer they are not un-alike. One is positioned directly over my spine – directly above the disc between the L4 and L5 vertebrae. It was put there by the skilled, caring hands of a surgical team determined, I would like to think, to give me back my life. The ruptured disc beneath had halted all meaningful existence. I think back on the decision that had to be made to ‘go under the knife.’ I was forty and had never been in the hospital. I played and re-played the surgeon’s words about medication and therapy and how surgery was probably the only real solution. Scared, I went forward. When I awoke from the operation and had no pain, when just a few days later I could walk, literally thousands of feet further than before, I knew that the decision had been the right one. I sometimes think back on that time painfully aware of how near I came to Plan B (which was no surgery) and say to myself, “Whew! That was close.” A life of pain and inactivity avoided.

The second scar actually took residence before the surgical scar. It is a little higher on my back and just about an inch from my spine. It came to be a part of my life when, at age twelve, while helping my dad with yard work at my grandparent’s house, I slipped and fell on a hatchet. I can’t see the scar. Occasionally while on a beach vacation my sons will mention it or while applying suntan lotion Kim will rub a finger over it and make a tut-tutting noise. I do think about it sometimes. Its nearness to my spine. Its potential to have wreaked havoc or killed. And I think, “Whew! That was close.” A life of paralysis avoided.

Attending a downtown church and in the off hours attempting to support a downtown economy, we have all been approached by individuals needing assistance. I know I have. And, much to my shame, I must say that I may have taken to an art-form the spotting up ahead of someone I think may be such a person and purposefully directing myself away. Judging, when I have no right to judge (not to mention the direct order to Judge Not…). I then smugly mutter to myself, “Whew! That was close.” Confrontation avoided. Oh, but wait. What else was avoided?

Rewind and don’t deviate. Don’t re-direct. To the casual observer two people are passing on the street. An entirely different thought process results in an entirely different outcome. Offer a kind word. Offer help if able. Show grace and kindness. A life of wondering if people care, if there is a God, if there is hope –avoided. “I almost didn’t get a chance to help him/her.” “Whew. That was close.”

Lord, help me - us – to step out of our comfort zone. To go through Samaria even though it may not be popular or proper. Let us show You to those around us. Amen.

He has told you, O mortal, 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 6:8)

Steve Matthews