Peanuts and Cracker Jacks…
April 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment
…gimme Some!
James and Judy P. are putting together a Tides Game for Tuesday, 6/23. It’s “Roll Back the Clock Night”–$.25 hot dogs, popcorn & cokes. Interested? You can sign up on the sheet outside the office or leave a comment below with your last name and how many will be coming. Or you can send me an email. The cost is $8.50 per ticket.
This is a popular night and will probably fill up fast, so we need your $ by 5/20.
Above My Pay Grade
April 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. (Philippians 6:6)
Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance … it is laying hold of his highest willingness.
–Richard Trench
Rachel was about 2 months pregnant with our oldest child on September 11, 2001. This means that I haven’t yet had to explain that awful day to any of my children. So far they are blissfully unaware of evil and tragedy of that scope. I remember that there was a lot on the news shows about how to talk to kids about it. But it still seems like it would be a difficult task.
Author and preacher Erwin McManus talks about having to explain 9/11 to his children, then 13 and 9:
“…I remember sitting down with our kids. Now, I knew what I wanted to tell them. I wanted to tell them that old cliché-the safest place to be is in the center of the will of God. Haven’t you heard that? The safest place to be is in the center of the will of God. It’s so beautiful. It’s just so unbiblical.
I wanted to tell them, “Look, we’re Christians. We’re followers of Jesus Christ, so this would never happen to us. We’re on the other side of the country. It’s really, really far away. If you’ll just walk with Christ, you don’t have anything to worry about.” In fact, what I wanted to do was give them a good, old, Christian lie.
But I knew that I had to tell them the truth. And so I told my children that morning that what we learned is that we have no control over when we die, or even how we die, but what we have control over is how we live.”
Is it really any different with anyone? When faced with tragedy, don’t we want to tell each other that “everything will be OK,” or “God wouldn’t let that happen to us?” Never mind that Jesus assured his followers that they would face troubles in this world (John 16:33). It’s still tempting to seek consolation in false notions of safety.
But Paul suggests another route to courage–one that doesn’t seek to avoid pain or troubles. As we’ll see this morning, Paul points to the power of prayer in living a courageous life.
That’s a dangerous phrase: “the power of prayer.” It’s open to significant misunderstanding. So today we’ll look more closely at the power of prayer. We’ll seek to understand how such prayer can bring with it a “peace that passes all understanding.” I hope you’ll get a glimpse of that peace this morning.
Susan Boyle
April 22, 2009 | 3 Comments
In Sunday’s message I referenced the Susan Boyle video (now viewed nearly 40 million times on YouTube). Some of you said that you still have not seen it. You can watch it by clicking here. I can’t embed it. You can also click here to read an interesting commentary by a Catholic priest named James Martin on the world’s fascination with her. There’s also this take on it from our local paper.
The two views aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s probably a little bit of both. It got me to wondering why I enjoyed seeing Mrs. Boyle do so well. Part of it is the relief I feel at seeing disaster averted. My son occasionally hides his eyes when he sees a character on TV about to get in trouble or be embarrassed. That’s how we feel when someone like Susan Boyle comes on stage. It’s like there’s a voice that says, “Stop her before she makes a fool of herself!”
Imagine our surprise, our relief, our elation, when she’s not pathetic but glorious. It’s the surprise that gets our attention.
I agree with Fr. Martin. Perhaps we are drawn to this performance because it is a reminder of God’s power to do the same. To see the glorious in the mundane. It’s the great reversal that Jesus delights in pointing out, where the least of society (lepers, “sinners,” tax collectors, Samaritans) end up being the heroes.
Do we not have the same hope for ourselves? What do you think?
Worrisome
April 18, 2009 | 1 Comment
Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? (Matthew 6:27)
This morning we’re going to begin looking at passages that echo the sentiments of our theme verse for the year: “His divine power has given us everything we need.” (2 Peter 1:3). And we’ll start with these words from Jesus that are quoted above.
As I was reading for today, I came across a meditation on worry and thought I would share it with you.
“In some parts of my lawn, the grass is thick and green. In other areas, it’s sparse and dry. There are even a few places where the grass is missing entirely. When I mow the lawn, I notice that where the grass is healthy, there are no weeds. Where the lawn is sparse, there are a few. Where there’s no grass, the weeds flourish.
Every time I notice the weedy spots, I think, I really need to pull those things. So I do, but within a few weeks they’re back—and I’m pulling them again. One day it hit me: I don’t have to pull weeds where the grass is thick. Instead of spending all my time pulling weeds, maybe I [need] to invest time making the grass as healthy as possible. The more grass I had, the fewer weeds I’d have to pull.
The same applies to worry. Worry is like the weeds. God’s peace is the grass. Instead of just focusing on eliminating my worries, I [need] to cultivate God’s peace.” (Mike Bechtle, in an article for Discipleship Journal; quoted in the October 21, 2008, entry of Men of Integrity)
Bechtle gets to the heart of the real problem with worry. The problem is that, like the weeds, worry can consume so much time and energy that would be better spent elsewhere. As you’ll see, Jesus says the same thing in the passage from Matthew 6. Both would say that worrying is the opposite of doing something. Worrying is stationary, not active. Worrying puts us in a position of helplessness. I’ve found that, when I’m worrying, I’m usually not focusing on the true problem at hand.
This morning we’re going to be focusing on the weeds of worry. But my hope is that you will leave here wanting to pay more attention to the lawn of your life. I hope you will want to concern yourself, not with what might happen in the future, but what is happening in the present.
Perhaps the serenity prayer is in order here: “God grant us the courage to change the things that we can, the serenity to accept the things that we cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Worry is what happens when we fail to know the difference. May God grant us the courage to stop worrying and to turn to him today.
Keep Celebrating
April 17, 2009 | Leave a Comment
I hope that Easter has stayed with you this week. I wish that I was one of those who could say that they celebrate Easter every week. But I can’t. Perhaps I will grow closer to that ideal. But for now, I am blessed to have reminders. Church signs that declare: “He is risen.” Crosses draped in white or covered in flowers. It is good to celebrate. I’m reminded of NT Wright’s suggestion that, for the week of Easter, morning prayers should be preceded by champagne.
Here’s a celebration poem by John Updike called “Seven Stanzas at Easter,” from his collection, Telephone Poles and Other Poems. Updike takes on our tendency to make a parable or myth out of Jesus’ resurrection. His point is that the strength of the Easter story is that Jesus was raised bodily from the dead-hence the warning, “Let us not mock God with metaphor.”
He is at his most powerful in reminding us that our deaths are not a metaphor (stanza 5). They are all too real. And they require a real resurrection. Like the one that God performed for Jesus and will perform for us.
So if your Easter hope has faded some. I hope it will be renewed today. Happy Easter everyone.
Seven Stanzas at Easter
Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that – pierced – died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.
The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.
And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.
Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.
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