When was the last time you looked backward in time at the day you got married? Whether you can measure it in months, years or decades, it is in all likelihood a sparkling waypoint in the road you have traveled from birth until now and, with God’s blessings and grace, it will continue to be just as bright for all of your years. Lest we forget, God has only part of the responsibility for keeping that shine. Marriage, as we have all heard so many times, is the hardest job you will ever have. Sometimes a joy, sometimes a burden, but it is always there, 24/7. Like any journey, it has a beginning and it has an end…sort of.
Were you the bride, standing there at the foot of the aisle, your hand lightly resting on your dad’s forearm? Whether you were the traditional bride in the beautiful white dress, standing next to your tuxedo-clad father, or in something less traditional, you waited, waited for the moment you were taking that first step into a new life. Down at the end of that walk, he waits. Did you have that moment of impatience? Did you think to yourself that you just wanted to toss that bouquet of flowers aside, tell your dad, “See you later!” and head off up the aisle, scattering a ring bearer and a flower girl in your wake? Was your secret attitude one of “let’s get this adventure started, and I mean NOW!”? You didn’t do it, of course. You walked up that pathway, traded a dad’s forearm for your love’s hand, and waited for the music to stop…stop so you could get started.
Were you the groom, standing at the altar, flanked by a friendly “best man” and maybe some others? All trussed up in a rented tuxedo, or something a little less formal, you waited. That aisle looked a mile long and you wondered just how much longer it would be until she finally started that walk. Maybe in your imagination you could see yourself racing towards each other, like two slow-motion lovers running closer and closer on the beach. You are so ready to get your old life ended and this new one started, with the one, true love of your life. Now all you need is for her to be here, by your side, and have the minister ask God to bless the two of you as you start a new life as one.
When the two of you walked out of the church door, through a shower of birdseed and cheers, did you remember to bring your Best Friend along? You know the one I mean, the one who was at that other wedding some years ago, in a little town called Cana. Being married, as mentioned up above, is a tough job. Taking on a silent partner named Jesus Christ enhances the chances…except He isn’t always so silent. Sometimes He whispers, sometimes He fairly shouts just to get your attention, depending on your needs, whether as individuals or as a couple. Don’t put Him on a shelf, just to drag Him out on Sunday mornings. Invest some time in Him every day, just a few seconds, or minutes will do. This is the kind of investment that doesn’t pay 6% interest, or even 10%. This investment pays 100%, because that is what Jesus has invested in you, 100% of Himself, planning your future, eternal happiness. Where else can you get a guaranteed return like that? And talk about a retirement plan community! When it is time for the two of you to move on to that next part of your life, He has a beautiful home all prepared, rent free, just exactly what you have been looking for and waiting for, for all of your life. When you see who’s waiting at the end of that aisle, you’ll want to race down that one as well.
Sunday, April 26, 2015
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Some Assembly Required
Genesis 2:7 “the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground.”
We all know that we have been formed, male and female, in the likeness of God. He took great care to select his design, body and soul, for his best creation. The Bible just says that he formed us from the dust of the ground without additional details. I wonder if he took the dust, added some water and then formed it like modeling clay into a variety of shapes until he got it just right. In any case, we are the results of that miracle of granting life. Of course, we also know that since we started out as dust, it is to dust that we shall return.
God starts us out as babies fresh from the womb, with only the life that he gave us, including our immortal soul. It is up to our parents to teach us and guide us from that point to our adulthood. They are assembling us in our knowledge and abilities. Once we do reach that point in our lives where we move out on our own, it then becomes our responsibility to continue the job. The first paragraph talks of assembly jobs that are eventually completed, but the assembly of our self is an ongoing process. We are always adding or deleting as we fine tune us physically, mentally and spiritually.
It is that last point that ultimately becomes the most important. We can grow up in almost any environment and develop physically and mentally. There are or can be huge differences in the quality, but those developments will happen in spite of what we do. It is the spiritual aspect of our assembly that requires special care and attention. In order to know God, to know Jesus Christ, to know the Holy Spirit, we have to have guidance. That may come from parents, friends, a chance meeting with a stranger. Regardless of how it happens, God will give us the opportunity to know him and to serve him. He will make sure of it and he will do it as often as necessary to get out attention. God created us and he did it in such a way to give us the opportunity to be with him for eternity. He wants us to be with him in heaven. It pains God beyond imagination every time one of his creations turns his back on him and chooses to spend that eternity with the devil in hell.
How are you doing with your assembly? What tools are you using to put yourself together in the best way? How often do you pick up the bible and actually read it? Do you have a spiritual leader, a priest, a minister, or someone you can guide you in your task? Are you doing the task in a haphazard way or are you following the directions to the letter? Are you preparing yourself for that final inspection on your last day so you tell God, “Assembly completed and ready to join you”?
Monday, April 20, 2015
Gotta Plane To Catch?
I first heard this as “Gotta a bus to catch?”, but since not as many people ride buses any more, I modernized it. So, if you are a fan of old clichés, I don’t apologize for that. Anyway, the point of this is impatience with each other. I heard a definition of patience recently that said it wasn’t how we waited, but how we acted while we were waiting. We have all waited on someone, a child, a friend, a spouse. Drumming our fingers on a table, pacing, yelling “encouragement”, and other ways of letting the other person know they were holding up the schedule are all in our repertoire. We have done it to others and have had it done to us at one point or another. On the other hand, perhaps we have waited calmly and accepted that not everyone is in as much of a hurry as we are at times.
One way that many of us show or experience impatience is in conversations with other people. That person may be a stranger or a friend or a family member. The other person is telling us something in their own unique way and they are just a bit too long-winded for us. Our attitude, body language and, sometimes, our speech, all say the same thing, “Can you just get to the point?” Why, do you have a plane to catch? What makes your time so much more valuable than theirs? Perhaps you already see where the story is going, the punchline of the joke, the answer to your question, even before the person finishes. So, we interrupt the person speaking, perhaps with a verbal jab of some kind, or we finish up the answer they are giving. So, what do we say next? How about something like, “Why do you have to be so long-winded with your answer?” Why, do you have a plane to catch? So, you can’t wait for the other person to answer your question or tell you their story their way?
I had a friend once whose wife cautioned me early on in the friendship to never ask him the time as an example of how slow he was to answer or respond. She told me that if I asked him for the time of day, he would go into great detail telling me how to build a watch, one gear at a time. I talked to him often down through the years and she was right. He would go into far greater detail telling a story or answering a question than some others would. He just knew so much about things, large and small, that he assumed everyone else would want to know what he knew. His wife, who loved him dearly, would ride him about his wordiness. I never did find out what plane she needed to catch.
Psychologists tell us there are four basic personality types. One is highly charged, always moving, never pausing long enough to breathe deeply in and out, quick and concise. For some reason, these people appear to attract the opposite, someone who is more laid back, never in a big hurry, and, wordy. The latter, when answering a question from the former, will drive the former up the creek and over the mountain with frustration while waiting for the answer. The latter, in defense, will counter with something like, “I am just trying to give you a complete answer.” And so the story goes: one wants or says something quick and concise, the other wants more detail or gives a “full” answer.
Perhaps you are one or the other of those two. Either that or you know people like them. Why on Earth would God throw two such people together in the first place? I don’t know for certain, but my best guess is He planned for one to slow the other down and the fast one to speed up the other.
Just think how ridiculous it looks or sounds when you hear someone say, “Would you please hurry up with your answer and get to the point? I don’t have all day.” Really? Why, gotta plane to catch? Just think about how rude and disrespectful that is to the other person. The message is clear: one person’s time is more valuable than the other person’s time. Don’t you think that is the wrong message? How would you feel if God told you He didn’t have time for your prayers and petitions? After all, He already knows what you are going to say or ask even before you know it. If God can grant you the time to bend His ear, can we really do less to those around us, those we love? Are we not trying to follow His lead, to be more like Him?
God created us all the same in that we are made in His image and likeness. He made us all different at the same time. If we are to follow His teachings, then we have to treat others the way we want Him to treat us. Remember, Jesus Christ told us that we should be as little children in our relationships with Him. When was the last time you listened to a child tell you something? Did you interrupt and tell the child to hurry up, that you had a plane to catch? Or, did you decide to catch the next flight? We are all children of God. Maybe we should treat each other to a little gift of time. Maybe we should stop worrying about how we answer or talk to each other and just accept and love each other as God accepts and loves us.
You really don’t have to run to catch that plane now, do you?
One way that many of us show or experience impatience is in conversations with other people. That person may be a stranger or a friend or a family member. The other person is telling us something in their own unique way and they are just a bit too long-winded for us. Our attitude, body language and, sometimes, our speech, all say the same thing, “Can you just get to the point?” Why, do you have a plane to catch? What makes your time so much more valuable than theirs? Perhaps you already see where the story is going, the punchline of the joke, the answer to your question, even before the person finishes. So, we interrupt the person speaking, perhaps with a verbal jab of some kind, or we finish up the answer they are giving. So, what do we say next? How about something like, “Why do you have to be so long-winded with your answer?” Why, do you have a plane to catch? So, you can’t wait for the other person to answer your question or tell you their story their way?
I had a friend once whose wife cautioned me early on in the friendship to never ask him the time as an example of how slow he was to answer or respond. She told me that if I asked him for the time of day, he would go into great detail telling me how to build a watch, one gear at a time. I talked to him often down through the years and she was right. He would go into far greater detail telling a story or answering a question than some others would. He just knew so much about things, large and small, that he assumed everyone else would want to know what he knew. His wife, who loved him dearly, would ride him about his wordiness. I never did find out what plane she needed to catch.
Psychologists tell us there are four basic personality types. One is highly charged, always moving, never pausing long enough to breathe deeply in and out, quick and concise. For some reason, these people appear to attract the opposite, someone who is more laid back, never in a big hurry, and, wordy. The latter, when answering a question from the former, will drive the former up the creek and over the mountain with frustration while waiting for the answer. The latter, in defense, will counter with something like, “I am just trying to give you a complete answer.” And so the story goes: one wants or says something quick and concise, the other wants more detail or gives a “full” answer.
Perhaps you are one or the other of those two. Either that or you know people like them. Why on Earth would God throw two such people together in the first place? I don’t know for certain, but my best guess is He planned for one to slow the other down and the fast one to speed up the other.
Just think how ridiculous it looks or sounds when you hear someone say, “Would you please hurry up with your answer and get to the point? I don’t have all day.” Really? Why, gotta plane to catch? Just think about how rude and disrespectful that is to the other person. The message is clear: one person’s time is more valuable than the other person’s time. Don’t you think that is the wrong message? How would you feel if God told you He didn’t have time for your prayers and petitions? After all, He already knows what you are going to say or ask even before you know it. If God can grant you the time to bend His ear, can we really do less to those around us, those we love? Are we not trying to follow His lead, to be more like Him?
God created us all the same in that we are made in His image and likeness. He made us all different at the same time. If we are to follow His teachings, then we have to treat others the way we want Him to treat us. Remember, Jesus Christ told us that we should be as little children in our relationships with Him. When was the last time you listened to a child tell you something? Did you interrupt and tell the child to hurry up, that you had a plane to catch? Or, did you decide to catch the next flight? We are all children of God. Maybe we should treat each other to a little gift of time. Maybe we should stop worrying about how we answer or talk to each other and just accept and love each other as God accepts and loves us.
You really don’t have to run to catch that plane now, do you?
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Never Give Up
Joshua 24:15 “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”
On October 29, 1941, the Prime Minister of England, Winston Churchill, was invited to give a speech at the Harrow School, a high-school level boarding school for boys in London. England had just survived 10 months of bombings by the Nazi German air force. There was massive damage and loss of life. The United States was not in the war yet and wouldn’t be until December 7th. France had already fallen to the Nazi forces and so had most of Europe. England was standing alone. Churchill delivered what became known as the “Never Give Up” speech. It was brief and to the point. He exhorted the boys to never, never give up. It didn’t matter how bleak the present and future looked, it didn’t matter what had happened in the past. His command, not just advice, was to never quit, never give up. If you want to hear that speech, it is available out on the Internet.
While that speech is famous and widely remembered, quoted often by motivational speakers and sales leaders, it is just a speech. Throughout the Bible, there are numerous examples of others who faced adversity and just kept faith with God and didn’t quit. When King Saul was pursuing David, trying to kill him, David endured many hardships and dangers, confident that God was leading him and preparing him for his future as king. When Job was enduring his losses and afflictions, having to listen to the ridicule and condemnation of his friends, he continued to trust in God, he kept the faith, he didn’t quit. In the New Testament, we see the Apostles striking out to carry the message of Jesus Christ, knowing that both the Jews and the Romans would try to stop them. The price they paid was heavy; only one escaped martyrdom. They didn’t stop, they didn’t quit, they never gave up on the charge that Jesus had given them to preach his word to all the nations.
Being a Christian today is not easy. It is easy to become one, a declaration of faith and belief, a baptism, and now you are one. Really? You might have a piece of paper that says so and your face can be seen sometimes or often on Sunday in the church of your choice. There is so much more to being a Christian than that. The world around you is full of temptation and the opportunity to steal the gift that God has given you. Like Job, you may have to put up with friends and others who don’t know and can’t understand why you want to be a Christian and forsake the other side of life; that other side being composed of the world, the flesh and the devil. You will be challenged to explain how you can possibly believe in a belief system that relies on a Being whom no one has ever seen. You will be told to “prove” that God exists, that Jesus lived and died for us. You may have to turn your back on family, friends, and co-workers to continue on. It would be so much easier to cave in, to give up, especially if the cost seems too high or too hard to bear. You can’t do it alone; you have to have help, just as all of the believers who have come before you and those who will follow your example in the future have to rely on help, God’s help.
The exterior world is going to come after you and try to turn you away from God. That is a given. How about your interior world? What is your self-talk? What does it sound like? What temptations are sneaking in past your defenses, trying to find a chink in your armor? Are you dealing with a large loss, like the illness of a parent or child? Are you asking God why and getting silence for an answer? Have you been faced with the death of a marriage or the loss of a job, and you are getting nothing but silence from God when you go to him? It is easy to tell yourself that God has quit on you so you are going to quit on God. It is easy to turn and walk away from the true source of strength that will help you through whatever you are dealing with. Your non-believing friends will certainly understand and approve. They will just tell you how right they were all along and how you can just drop all of the foolishness.
What say you? What are you going to do? Are you going to stand with God? Are you going to follow your charge to be an apostle and carry Jesus’ words to all of the nations, not necessarily as a missionary but with your words and actions? Are you going to follow Churchill’s command to never, never, never give up? Will you make Joshua’s declaration a permanent part of your life? It will never be easy, but the rewards for your faithfulness are eternal.
Sunday, April 12, 2015
Band-Aid-ing
You are working or playing hard and suddenly something cuts or scrapes you and you start shedding some blood. It may be basically minor and not life-threatening, but blood is blood. Perhaps the victim is one of your kids instead of you and the damage is still minor to you, but scary to your child. So, you clean it up with some soap and water, put some kind of antiseptic on it and then cover it with a Band-Aid. Little kids get ones that have cartoon characters printed on them in an effort to cheer them up. While Band-Aid is a brand name, it has also become a generic term for a stick-on wound covering. I have certainly had my share of those and the ones that are most visible are the ones that appear from time to time on top of my head. Since I shave my head every day, any cut or scrape that gets covered is pretty obvious. I seem to have a talent for running my head into things and get to wear the reward for doing so.
As Christians, we often turn to Jesus Christ to heal us, to make us well again, in both the physical realm and the spiritual. The four Gospels are full of stories of Jesus healing people or bringing them back to life. The question is: just how much healing do you really want? The kind of wounds I am talking about aren’t caused by a knife or a gun. They are wounds on our soul caused by our sins. We can ask for a healing when what we really want is just a Band-Aid. We just need something to cover it up, to get it out of sight and out of mind so we don’t have to think about it. So, we just ask for forgiveness, maybe say an extra prayer or two, go to church on Sunday and think that this takes care of it. The next time you have the opportunity to do the same thing, you don’t even think about the past healing, you just go ahead and do the same thing all over again. Now it is time to repeat the same cycle, over and over. Just cover it up and don’t think about it. Yes, God will forgive us our sins, Jesus taught us that and he made sure it was part of his prayer, the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus also told the various people he healed by telling them their sins were forgiven and they should go and sin no more. Repeating the same sins again and again is like pealing off the Band-Aid, picking off the scab and reopening the wound.
Jesus knew us. He knew we were mere human beings and that we would sin again. He also made sure we knew that God’s love and forgiveness were without limit. He does expect us to try to do our best to avoid the occasions of sin and to avoid sinning to the best of our ability. Knowing that we will does not cause us to sin or choose to put ourselves in the path of it. Jesus does expect us to work to heal ourselves of sinning. Just as an alcoholic has to stay away from alcohol and the drug addict must avoid drugs in order to survive and remain sober, so too must we protect ourselves and stay away from those people, those places, and those things which will lead us to sin.
We are not powerless against sin. We have a choice whether to sin or not. We also have a choice whether to just put a patch on what we do or to ask Jesus for his help in healing us so that we learn to turn away from sin and set ourselves up to enjoy the ultimate reward, being fully healed of this earthly existence and spending the rest of eternity in the awesome presence of God!
As Christians, we often turn to Jesus Christ to heal us, to make us well again, in both the physical realm and the spiritual. The four Gospels are full of stories of Jesus healing people or bringing them back to life. The question is: just how much healing do you really want? The kind of wounds I am talking about aren’t caused by a knife or a gun. They are wounds on our soul caused by our sins. We can ask for a healing when what we really want is just a Band-Aid. We just need something to cover it up, to get it out of sight and out of mind so we don’t have to think about it. So, we just ask for forgiveness, maybe say an extra prayer or two, go to church on Sunday and think that this takes care of it. The next time you have the opportunity to do the same thing, you don’t even think about the past healing, you just go ahead and do the same thing all over again. Now it is time to repeat the same cycle, over and over. Just cover it up and don’t think about it. Yes, God will forgive us our sins, Jesus taught us that and he made sure it was part of his prayer, the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus also told the various people he healed by telling them their sins were forgiven and they should go and sin no more. Repeating the same sins again and again is like pealing off the Band-Aid, picking off the scab and reopening the wound.
Jesus knew us. He knew we were mere human beings and that we would sin again. He also made sure we knew that God’s love and forgiveness were without limit. He does expect us to try to do our best to avoid the occasions of sin and to avoid sinning to the best of our ability. Knowing that we will does not cause us to sin or choose to put ourselves in the path of it. Jesus does expect us to work to heal ourselves of sinning. Just as an alcoholic has to stay away from alcohol and the drug addict must avoid drugs in order to survive and remain sober, so too must we protect ourselves and stay away from those people, those places, and those things which will lead us to sin.
We are not powerless against sin. We have a choice whether to sin or not. We also have a choice whether to just put a patch on what we do or to ask Jesus for his help in healing us so that we learn to turn away from sin and set ourselves up to enjoy the ultimate reward, being fully healed of this earthly existence and spending the rest of eternity in the awesome presence of God!
Friday, April 10, 2015
The Vulture On A Limb
When I was a kid, I went to a Catholic school and all of the teachers were nuns. This was the early 1950’s and they still wore the habits and looked very strange indeed. I had these ladies from first through eighth grade and was then handed over to Benedictine priests for the four years of high school. There were a few civilian teachers in high school, three or four, but all the rest were priests. Along with all of the regular subjects, we had extensive training in our Catholic faith. We learned a lot about God, the Trinity, the history of the Catholic Church, the history of the saints of the church, and, of course, how all of this was going to fit into our lives someday. What we didn’t learn about was love, God’s love for us.
We learned about sin, of course. We learned about it and about asking God to forgive us when we sinned. We were given some practical examples of what sin was so that we could recognize it and avoid it, and avoid the punishment that came with it. One of the humorous examples was a nun who said if I kissed a girl for more than 60 seconds, it was a serious sin and if I then died unconfessed, God would send me straight to Hell. I was always thankful that I didn’t die back then because I did some serious kissing on some of my dates.
The sad bottom line was that they taught us about a punishing, vengeful God. I do not remember any emphasis on a loving God, a God who loved us and wanted us to have the best because he designed us that way. It was always a matter of God’s wrath and how it was going to result in us going to Hell for a wide variety of sins. There was no mention of a God who loves me. It remained that way for many years.
In the early 1990’s I went to a weekend retreat that changed everything I knew about God. There were three presenters: two Jesuit priests, who were also brothers, and a lady with a Master’s degree in Theology. For the first time in the almost 50 years I had been living, I heard that God loved me. Even though I had heard John 3:16 many times during my life, I didn’t really listen to it or absorb what it meant. One of the priests used this example of just how much we are loved by God: he said that if we were on the fence about whether we wanted to follow God or turn our backs on him, he would spend an eternity of love in an instant to show us just how much he loved us and wanted us to spend eternity with him. My reaction to that was very simple: utter shock. This was a view of God that I had never seen or heard up until then. God loves me? Really? And he wasn’t just waiting there, like the vulture on a limb, waiting to send me to Hell? That was a life-changing moment. The other part of the message was that God doesn’t send us to hell; we choose to go there by rejecting him. What an awesome truth.
In the twenty-some years that have followed, I have carried that image of God in my heart. I now see the reality of the sacrifice that Jesus made for us by going through his torture and death on the cross. This was all an act of true love, true and unselfish and limitless.
Where are you in your relationship with God? Do you relate to the ultimate mystery, the Three Persons in the Trinity, the Father, the Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit? Have you looked into your heart, soul and mind and seen the fullness of God’s love for you and have you returned it in like kind? Is God real to you, or just something that you hear about on Sunday mornings and maybe Wednesday nights? Have you let him into your life or is he just an occasional visitor?
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God is very real. He loves you with a love beyond comprehension. He loves you even if you think you don’t deserve it. Open yourself to that love and know the true joy of God’s presence in your life.
We learned about sin, of course. We learned about it and about asking God to forgive us when we sinned. We were given some practical examples of what sin was so that we could recognize it and avoid it, and avoid the punishment that came with it. One of the humorous examples was a nun who said if I kissed a girl for more than 60 seconds, it was a serious sin and if I then died unconfessed, God would send me straight to Hell. I was always thankful that I didn’t die back then because I did some serious kissing on some of my dates.
The sad bottom line was that they taught us about a punishing, vengeful God. I do not remember any emphasis on a loving God, a God who loved us and wanted us to have the best because he designed us that way. It was always a matter of God’s wrath and how it was going to result in us going to Hell for a wide variety of sins. There was no mention of a God who loves me. It remained that way for many years.
In the early 1990’s I went to a weekend retreat that changed everything I knew about God. There were three presenters: two Jesuit priests, who were also brothers, and a lady with a Master’s degree in Theology. For the first time in the almost 50 years I had been living, I heard that God loved me. Even though I had heard John 3:16 many times during my life, I didn’t really listen to it or absorb what it meant. One of the priests used this example of just how much we are loved by God: he said that if we were on the fence about whether we wanted to follow God or turn our backs on him, he would spend an eternity of love in an instant to show us just how much he loved us and wanted us to spend eternity with him. My reaction to that was very simple: utter shock. This was a view of God that I had never seen or heard up until then. God loves me? Really? And he wasn’t just waiting there, like the vulture on a limb, waiting to send me to Hell? That was a life-changing moment. The other part of the message was that God doesn’t send us to hell; we choose to go there by rejecting him. What an awesome truth.
In the twenty-some years that have followed, I have carried that image of God in my heart. I now see the reality of the sacrifice that Jesus made for us by going through his torture and death on the cross. This was all an act of true love, true and unselfish and limitless.
Where are you in your relationship with God? Do you relate to the ultimate mystery, the Three Persons in the Trinity, the Father, the Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit? Have you looked into your heart, soul and mind and seen the fullness of God’s love for you and have you returned it in like kind? Is God real to you, or just something that you hear about on Sunday mornings and maybe Wednesday nights? Have you let him into your life or is he just an occasional visitor?
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God is very real. He loves you with a love beyond comprehension. He loves you even if you think you don’t deserve it. Open yourself to that love and know the true joy of God’s presence in your life.
Sunday, April 5, 2015
Stop And Go
It is a scene with which we are all familiar. You are driving to a destination and the traffic is flowing along smoothly. Not only will you arrive on time, but you will be even a few minutes early. You are relaxed and in a good mood. Suddenly you notice the traffic is slowing down, then slowing down some more. Within a short distance, you and all of your fellow drivers are at a complete stop. After a short pause, you start forward again...for two car lengths. It is a traffic jam and you are in stop-and-go hell. Your relaxed journey has now devolved into creep, crawl, and stop. Your planned arrival time is rapidly disappearing. As the wait gets longer, your patience gets shorter. Whatever your goal, whether it is work, home, shopping, a hot date, or something else, it is not going according to your plan.
As I said before, this is something we have all experienced at one time or another. In today's world of go-go-go, anything which slows us or stops us is to be avoided if at all possible. After all, how can we accomplish what we have set out to do if something else slows us down or stops us? It doesn't matter whether or not it is in our control, does it?
We are constantly being told to take time out for ourselves, for our spouses, or children, even God. Even God? Don't you take time for him on most Sunday mornings? Sometimes you even go to an additional service on Sunday or Wednesday evening. Of course, there is that 30 second mechanical prayer before you eat. That must count for something, right?
Have you ever been doing something and just had the urge to stop for a few minutes to pray? Nothing special or formal, just a brief pause in the action to have a chat with him. Did you listen or did you ignore it because you had something more important to do? Many times when I am driving someplace and am ahead of schedule, I get the idea I should stop at a church for a few minutes to have just a brief talk. The denomination of the church doesn't matter, I am welcome anyway. I have been directed to one church or another, sometimes passing one in favor of another. I don't know why this is so, but I have found that the five or ten minutes I spend refreshes me or calms whatever maybe bothering me at the moment. There is nothing like being able to ask God to carry the load for you or give you the help or answer you haven't found by yourself. Just think of it as a spiritual "stop and go".
In this hurry-up, take-no-prisoners world in which we live and work, we all hate to be delayed by the traditional stop and go. But sometimes, we need to take time out to do a spiritual stop and go to talk to God. Why don’t you try it sometime?
As I said before, this is something we have all experienced at one time or another. In today's world of go-go-go, anything which slows us or stops us is to be avoided if at all possible. After all, how can we accomplish what we have set out to do if something else slows us down or stops us? It doesn't matter whether or not it is in our control, does it?
We are constantly being told to take time out for ourselves, for our spouses, or children, even God. Even God? Don't you take time for him on most Sunday mornings? Sometimes you even go to an additional service on Sunday or Wednesday evening. Of course, there is that 30 second mechanical prayer before you eat. That must count for something, right?
Have you ever been doing something and just had the urge to stop for a few minutes to pray? Nothing special or formal, just a brief pause in the action to have a chat with him. Did you listen or did you ignore it because you had something more important to do? Many times when I am driving someplace and am ahead of schedule, I get the idea I should stop at a church for a few minutes to have just a brief talk. The denomination of the church doesn't matter, I am welcome anyway. I have been directed to one church or another, sometimes passing one in favor of another. I don't know why this is so, but I have found that the five or ten minutes I spend refreshes me or calms whatever maybe bothering me at the moment. There is nothing like being able to ask God to carry the load for you or give you the help or answer you haven't found by yourself. Just think of it as a spiritual "stop and go".
In this hurry-up, take-no-prisoners world in which we live and work, we all hate to be delayed by the traditional stop and go. But sometimes, we need to take time out to do a spiritual stop and go to talk to God. Why don’t you try it sometime?
Thursday, April 2, 2015
The Burden Gift
We have all received gifts that put a burden on us in one way or another. Maybe it was a classic sweater from your favorite aunt that deserves to be hidden from society forever, but she is coming to visit this weekend and the day promises to be sweater weather. So, you have been talking about taking up a new hobby, one you have talked about doing for years. It is that one that you like to talk about but you know you really won’t do it. Then some wonderful person gives you a gift card to get you started. Oh, joy! Of course, you do have a choice, don’t you? When your aunt asks why you aren’t wearing the sweater, you can suddenly remember that you wore it last weekend, spilled something on it and when you took it to the cleaners, they said it was ruined and you had to throw it away. As for the gift card, surely you can come with some reason why you can’t do it, some physical condition that is at least somewhat believable. Just hold that set of thoughts for a moment while go on to the next part.
Decisions, who needs them? Which class do you take in college? Which restaurant do you want to go to? If that restaurant is one of those with a 10 page menu, the agony really sets in. I am famous for reading every selection on every page and then invariably choosing something with chicken as the main ingredient…except for a steak house, then it is the rib eye. We are constantly faced with making decisions and some of us solve the problem by always making the same one every time. I have learned to avoid panic in a Chinese restaurant by always ordering kung pao chicken. See, there is a way…of course, there was a time when I had to read the whole menu.
In many ways, it would be so much better if we had only two or three items to decide between. Better yet, someone to tell us which one we wanted so we could put the blame on someone else if it turned out to be the wrong decision. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way and in this society, we would rapidly build up resentment to always being told which choice to take.
God has given us a wonderful gift. The string he attached to it is that he expects us to use it all the time. It also has to do with making decisions. That gift is the one called Free Will. He has given us the right to make whichever decision we want to make at any point in our life. That isn’t to say that he hasn’t given us a set of guidelines to help us make the best decision, but he also allows us to make other ones in the same circumstance. Just think how much easier it would be if he made sure we didn’t make the wrong decision. When we head done that wrong path, he is surely sitting there watching and thinking, “You’ll be sorry.” The great thing is when we figure it out, and tell him we messed up and apologize, he forgives us.
Free will is the most marvelous and wonderful of gifts. It also carries a burden. The burden is to make sure that we use that gift in the correct way, that we use it to make the right choices and the best decisions. He will not interfere directly with the direction we choose, but he may try to stop us by tossing a roadblock in our way that will make us stop and reconsider. He is not above getting in our face and telling us we need to stop doing the wrong thing and do what he needs us to do. We can be foolish and stomp our foot and tell him “no!” That would be a really dumb move, but the possibility exists that there are those who have done it. You have to wonder where they will be spending eternity when the rest of us are with the Master Gift-Giver.
Okay, now we have that sin thing addressed. In other words, if you have the chance to sin, it is your choice to do so. That is how your relationship with God works. So, let’s talk about your relationships with other people. We have all used the excuse for our actions that “you made me…” The last word
could be “happy/sad/glad/mad/angry/forgive/love” and so forth. Just pick the one that works for you at the time. The problem with that excuse is it isn’t true. No one can make you do anything, especially have a particular feeling. Think about it: if God, who is all-powerful, can’t make you have a certain feeling, how can one of your fellow humans? What someone else does is to create a situation and then you make the decision on how to respond to it. You, and you alone, are responsible for your actions and feelings. You don’t like that? You don’t really believe it? Tough! You have the free will and you get to use it. See what I meant about a gift with a burden? Part of that burden is being honest with yourself and not putting the responsibility on someone else. It isn’t always negative. Look over that list again. It means you fell in love because it was the right thing to do and you decided to do it.
How are you doing with your gift? Are you using it wisely? Not always? Well, as I said above, God has a plan to take care of those times and to help you get back to making better decisions. If fact, he is so serious about it, he sent his only Son to help us out.
Decisions, who needs them? Which class do you take in college? Which restaurant do you want to go to? If that restaurant is one of those with a 10 page menu, the agony really sets in. I am famous for reading every selection on every page and then invariably choosing something with chicken as the main ingredient…except for a steak house, then it is the rib eye. We are constantly faced with making decisions and some of us solve the problem by always making the same one every time. I have learned to avoid panic in a Chinese restaurant by always ordering kung pao chicken. See, there is a way…of course, there was a time when I had to read the whole menu.
In many ways, it would be so much better if we had only two or three items to decide between. Better yet, someone to tell us which one we wanted so we could put the blame on someone else if it turned out to be the wrong decision. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way and in this society, we would rapidly build up resentment to always being told which choice to take.
God has given us a wonderful gift. The string he attached to it is that he expects us to use it all the time. It also has to do with making decisions. That gift is the one called Free Will. He has given us the right to make whichever decision we want to make at any point in our life. That isn’t to say that he hasn’t given us a set of guidelines to help us make the best decision, but he also allows us to make other ones in the same circumstance. Just think how much easier it would be if he made sure we didn’t make the wrong decision. When we head done that wrong path, he is surely sitting there watching and thinking, “You’ll be sorry.” The great thing is when we figure it out, and tell him we messed up and apologize, he forgives us.
Free will is the most marvelous and wonderful of gifts. It also carries a burden. The burden is to make sure that we use that gift in the correct way, that we use it to make the right choices and the best decisions. He will not interfere directly with the direction we choose, but he may try to stop us by tossing a roadblock in our way that will make us stop and reconsider. He is not above getting in our face and telling us we need to stop doing the wrong thing and do what he needs us to do. We can be foolish and stomp our foot and tell him “no!” That would be a really dumb move, but the possibility exists that there are those who have done it. You have to wonder where they will be spending eternity when the rest of us are with the Master Gift-Giver.
Okay, now we have that sin thing addressed. In other words, if you have the chance to sin, it is your choice to do so. That is how your relationship with God works. So, let’s talk about your relationships with other people. We have all used the excuse for our actions that “you made me…” The last word
could be “happy/sad/glad/mad/angry/forgive/love” and so forth. Just pick the one that works for you at the time. The problem with that excuse is it isn’t true. No one can make you do anything, especially have a particular feeling. Think about it: if God, who is all-powerful, can’t make you have a certain feeling, how can one of your fellow humans? What someone else does is to create a situation and then you make the decision on how to respond to it. You, and you alone, are responsible for your actions and feelings. You don’t like that? You don’t really believe it? Tough! You have the free will and you get to use it. See what I meant about a gift with a burden? Part of that burden is being honest with yourself and not putting the responsibility on someone else. It isn’t always negative. Look over that list again. It means you fell in love because it was the right thing to do and you decided to do it.
How are you doing with your gift? Are you using it wisely? Not always? Well, as I said above, God has a plan to take care of those times and to help you get back to making better decisions. If fact, he is so serious about it, he sent his only Son to help us out.
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