The Journey

“The LORD is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.”
Psalm 23, KJV

The image of God as a shepherd runs throughout scripture. What exactly does a shepherd do? It’s a job description that the ancient Israelites would have been familiar with, as would much of the world throughout history, when society was more agrarian. But in today’s world of agribusiness, when only a few farmers spend time on the land or with animals, we have become increasingly distant from this image.

Very few animals get to wander in green pastures these days. Instead they lead miserable short lives in factory farms. This image of God as a shepherd calls us back to a better way, a more beautiful life for the sheep and the shepherd.

I picture an Irish man with gray-flecked hair, wellington boots, a worn tweed jacket and a wool cap. He has a few sheep dogs running around his heels until given some subtle signal to run ahead. The sheep, from a distance, are white fluffy dots in a country landscape, little clouds in a sea of verdant green grass, the quaint local pub rising from the distance like an oasis. That’s the fantasy.

But get up close and sheep are a different matter. They are not white but usually dirty and soiled. Their coats are not soft and fluffy so much as tangled and matted. You wouldn’t want to snuggle with them. They smell. They make weird noises. Lambs are cute. Sheep not so much.

But if the shepherd is God, then you know who we are. The sheep. Lovely from a distance, but messy, smelly and a bit dim-witted when you get up close. And yet, God gets up close. God came to earth in human form, to once again be a shepherd.

Dear Lord, we understand as a shepherd cares for his sheep, we are loved. Lord, help us love this earth and the creatures we share it with. Let us return to green pastures, in and through Jesus. Amen.

Grace and Peace
Steve

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…let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes.
Ephesians 4:23

A Re-run

This afternoon, I read a devotional entitled “The Elephant In The Living Room.” I really liked the title but didn’t care for the devotion because it spoke of things that really did not touch my soul at all. I have scanned, searched, and thought about what I could write for my devotion tonight. Here’s the problem. I’m feeling kind of down today. Shirley even asked me “Why are you so gloomy today?” I really didn’t know I was gloomy until I started to write a devotion. And that was when I just seemed empty.

You know I think the real question is not about the elephant in the living room. It’s about how did he get in? I’m looking at the door right now and he had to be awfully small when he arrived. But now the thought is this elephant is huge – so huge we should not miss seeing it. But he had to get in sometime, and I bet he came in when he was small.

I bet my gloomy day started out like everybody’s gloomy day, one little cloud at a time. Actually I think my gloomy day started a couple of days ago. Perhaps with Sundays announcement of my retirement and our new pastor coming, it is starting to sink in that I only have a couple of months left at Pine Grove? Maybe it’s the phone call I received Monday informing me that a close former member of a former church had just passed away? It could be that by Sunday I will have officiated at three funerals in eight days? I have tried for two days now to start writing the two remaining messages I want to deliver. But to my dismay, I do not have even the first word started. Tuesday morning before 9 o’clock I had received two phone calls about kids and families in trouble, and these are families and kids I care about, but the only thing I can do is pray.

Now I’m really in trouble, because my elephant metaphor breaks down. Perhaps I should’ve used butterflies which came in one at a time as the door was left ajar. And now they can just fly back out one at a time as I deal with each problem each butterfly brought. Instead, I am left with a huge elephant who snuck in when he was little, and now how in the world can I get him back through that door? Well folks, now I’ve got two problems – one big elephant in the living room, no way to get him out, and a devotion that’s not finished.

Perhaps tonight is the night when I need to ask for your help instead of offering my own advice? When you receive this devotion tonight stop, pray, and ponder ways to solve my problem, and in turn find the solution to when you see that elephant peeking around the corner of your living room.

I have already thought of a chainsaw, but we would lose half the living room wall.

I have thought of pouring alum on the elephant and waiting for it to shrink. But that’s a lot of alum!

I have thought about putting him in the dryer with one of those dryer sheets that would make him fluffy enough to just be pushed through the door. But those things just get stuck in your socks, pant legs and other places we won’t mention.

I have even thought of pouring salt on him like you do on a snail, and therefore having him (bad pun coming) turn from the inside to the outside. That was really bad.

I think perhaps what I really need is to read a good uplifting devotional from someone else, a good night’s sleep, and start fresh in the morning.

Dear Lord, help get this huge elephant out of my room, lift my spirits and help me to be of help to those who need me this week. In and through Jesus. Amen.

Grace and Peace
Steve

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“If you refrain from trampling the sabbath,
from pursuing your own interests on my holy day…
then you shall take delight in the Lord.”
Excerpt from Isaiah 58:13-14

I happened to recall that a few years ago – when I had a Blackberry – I sat near to a man at the movies who spent the entire time working with his Blackberry and then sending text messages.  Occasionally, he would look up at the big screen, but then he would bow his head to the tiny screens in his lap. Obviously, he had taken to heart the slogan from an ad campaign: “Now anyplace can be your workplace.”

At first, I was a bit annoyed, but then I came to have something like sympathy for the man because his behavior had the look and feel of addiction. More and more it seems as if we are addicted to busyness. It starts with alluring promises (“you will save time, you will have more freedom”). Eventually, however, there is no pleasure in it. We feel trapped. Even though we may begin to sense, “This is not good for me,” we no longer see a way out. We are stuck in patterns we didn’t exactly choose and don’t know how to change.

A friend of mine, speaking of the time she was a pastor, says she felt – like most all pastors feel – that she had to make herself available at any hour, every day of the year. Laughing at herself, she said, “There used to be a time when only God was that important.”

It is precisely the reminder that “only God is that important” that is the basis of the practice of keeping Sabbath. When we stop working for a time we can see that the world does manage very well without us. The sun still shines. The tides still ebb and flow. We are fed. We are not indispensable, but we are valued nonetheless. It is good to have that reminder on occasion. In fact, it is essential if we are to be healthy in our faith.

Dear God, I confess to you the sin of perpetual busyness. Help us all to observe and allow others the gift of observing a Sabbath renewal. I know I have retired – hopefully slowing down, help me to receive the gift of peaceful rest that I may be renewed in my life and in my faith, in and through Jesus.  Amen.

Grace and Peace
Steve

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“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the
house of the Lord forever.”
Psalm 23:6

Henry Beston spent 1928 living in a little grey-shingled one-room house on the far windswept dunes of the Outer Beach of Cape Cod. He spent the year watching, listening, as the constellations, storms and tides, came and went.

It all sounded so “romantic” to live somewhere like our Outer Banks, but I have come to learn that the “Outermost House” is not an easy to place to go, but is a place where many get thrust, by the storms and changes of life.

Some of us discover that it will take a journey of solitude in order to reach the next season of our lives. For others, a crisis thrusts us out here alone where we did not plan to be.  

For his part, Henry Beston loved talking about the “idea” of a year in his “Outermost House” but it took his fiancé to get him there. She told him she wouldn’t marry him until he spent this year letting the seasons do their work in him and writing his book, The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod.

Will we let this season do its work in us? To trust that the Living, Creating, Renewing One’s hand is truly at work in “the warm mild weather of home” and in “all the cold” as well. 

Dear Lord, in this season may we join the company of those who have listened and watched the turning of the days and found in them your hand of grace, in and through Jesus.  Amen.

Grace and Peace
Steve

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“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.”
Psalm 23:5

Some days you can just hear the tinny sound of your own empty cup. You drag yourself around the office and the kitchen.  You walk with your head down. You forget to smile.  You forget you even knew how to laugh.

Other days there is a spring in your step, a 23rd psalm on your lips, a lift in your heart. You start sentences with YAY, though I walk through the shadow of death, I fear no evil. You begin from the resurrection instead of from the crucifixion.

What is the difference between an empty cup and a full one?  The difference is in the risk of emptying it. Overflow energy comes after we spill, not before. Instead we hear the waterfall in the background, the replenishing of plenitude released.  Plenitude hoarded gets tinny. Spilled, it flows. Our cups overflow if we empty them.

I think Asa, age 2 years 8 months, can help us.  His mother tells this story of his report card: “Ms. Allison got bumped in the mouth and Asa hugged her and kept saying ‘It’s okay! You’re doing a good job.'” Asa could have cried or stood in a corner or avoided the whole thing. Instead, he connected. His tears spilled with her spill and both were helped by the connection. “Doing a good job” might not be my preferred language in a child but at least he understands that loving is work. I’m not crazy about report cards either but at least now we know what Asa has in his cup and what he is willing to do with it.

O God, give us a way out of the tomb of empty cups and dissolute days, in and through Jesus. Amen.

Grace and Peace
Steve

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Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.
Psalm 119:102

Well, since around 4pm we have been without power. Can you imagine what that does to a techy? No Television. No Computer…which means no emails, no Facebook, no messaging; No air-conditioning. No lights. But, aha, I have my iPhone. And an oil lamb.

So here I am (picture this) after activating the hot spot on my iPhone so that I can send and receive emails and get internet – sitting here by the light of an oil lamp typing my devotional on my Mac. Kinda reminds you of Abe Lincoln doesn’t it?

Tonight (even though we did get to see the CNN news report of the first indictments of the Mueller Investigation) we are being forced to slow down almost to a crawl, actually talk to each other (not over the noise of the TV), be quiet, retrospective, and think about quieter times. (The cat actually purrs???)

I know that I will be glad when this intrusion into my techy world is over, but perhaps I will appreciate some quiet time – very quiet time at home talking about what our test results will produce.

Trim your lamps and enjoy your PB & J by candlelight. We did.

Dear Lord, you know I do like my techy stuff. Oh how difficult it would be for me to retro to 1900 with the oil lamps and no phones (I or Me or Wii). Thank you for this quiet time to reflect on the many blessings you have giving us, especially the blessing of Jesus. Amen.

Grace and Peace
Steve

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“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels to show
that this all-surpassing power is from God…”
Excerpt from 2 Corinthians 4:4-18

We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, but except on All Saints Day, it hovers over us unnoticed. It’s like our appendix: we don’t need it, so unless it acts up, we don’t know it’s there, or much care. That’s too bad, because unlike our appendix, we need the saints more than we think. Not, like in the Middle Ages, to save us from Hell for a coin or heal our complex ills by the simple application of a left-behind bone. We have politicians and star-power pastors for that.

No, we don’t need them for magic. We need them for lively conversation about the immense dignity of ordinary life, the incalculable value of everyday intentions to follow Jesus, and the inexplicable power of human helplessness to attract the mercies of God. We need them to confirm for us the secret of holiness behind halos and hymns – drudgery and routine; fleshly weakness and the shame of sin; the need for pardon and the struggle to be ready for grace; the groaning labor to reorder selfish affections towards selfless Love; the foolish choice to hope against hope; and the costly return, day after weary day, to the unlovely neighbor’s side, with no one catching any of this stubborn, unremarkable pilgrimage on tape.

Faced with intractable fears and exhausting complexities, the world whips out the sensation, the quick fix, and the magic of celebrity. The church’s ancient wisdom offers instead “mystic sweet communion with those whose race is won.” We have the saints, and if we look carefully, we find that they are us – extraordinary signs that ordinary vulnerability, love and repentance, courage and perseverance still count. They count for a lot. For everything!

Happy All Saints Day, saints of God!

Dear Lord, for all the saints who from their labors rest, who thee by faith before the world confessed, thy name O Jesus, be forever blessed. Alleluia! Amen.

Grace and Peace
Steve

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Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.
Mark 8:34-35 (NIV)

You might remember comedian Yakov Smirnoff. When he first came to the United States from Russia he was not prepared for the incredible variety of instant products available in American grocery stores. He says, “On my first shopping trip, I saw powdered milk you just add water, and you get milk. Then I saw powdered orange juice you just add water, and you get orange juice. And then I saw baby powder, and I thought to my self… What a country!”

Smirnoff is joking but we make these assumptions about Christian Transformation —that people change instantly at salvation. Some traditions call it repentance and renewal. Some call it Sanctification of the believer. Whatever you call it most traditions expect some quick fix to sin. According to this belief, when someone gives his or her life to Christ, there is an immediate, substantive, in-depth, miraculous change in habits, attitudes, and character. We go to church as if we are going to the grocery store: Powdered Christian. Just add water and disciples are born not made.

Unfortunately, there is no such powder and disciples of Jesus Christ are not instantly born. They are slowly raised through many trials, suffering, and temptations. A study has found that only 11 percent of churchgoing teenagers have a well-developed faith, rising to only 32 percent for churchgoing adults. Why? Because true life change only begins at salvation, takes more than just time, is about training, trying, suffering, and even dying (adapted from James Emery White, Rethinking the Church, Baker, 1997, p. 55-57).

Jesus is up against a formidable foe. And in the end this foe may posses more power than he. But the foe is not Peter and it’s not the Sanhedrin or Pontius Pilate, or Rome. This formidable foe is not even Satan himself. The powerful enemy of Jesus is our quest for positions of rank and status.

To address the confusion Jesus pulls his disciples together and brings them before a crowd. And in front of the crowd he corrects the disciples aspirations for privilege, rank, and power and he gives them this simple little directive: You must take up your cross and follow me. This morning I would like to ask the question “Why must we carry a cross?”

We must carry a cross to remind us that we are not the center of the Universe. That our suffering is part of our discipleship as Christians. It is characteristic of great leaders to make demands upon their followers. When Winston Churchill became Prime Minister he told the British people that he had nothing to offer them but “blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” The Italian freedom fighter Gerabaldi told his followers that he offered them only hunger and death. These were demanding leaders, but Jesus was a thousand times more demanding then they were. Jesus said, “So, therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.” Possession cannot stand between you and the Lord. Jesus went so far as to say, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own mother and father, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters, he cannot be my disciple.” Even something as noble as the love of family, as good and right as that is, cannot stand in the way of commitment to the Kingdom of God. Laziness, fear, selfishness, family nothing can stand between us and the call to discipleship. Jesus Christ demands our obedience. Jesus is not some wishy-washy little fellow coming up to us, hat in hand, hoping to win our favor, saying softly: Please sir, may I have a word with you.” He comes to us as the Lord of History and makes His demand: Take up you cross and follow me.” He comes to us as one to be obeyed.

Dear Lord, so many times we want instant Christianity and instant discipleship, knowing all along that it really doesn’t work that way. We look around the sanctuary and the world at the people we know to be disciples and, when we get beneath their story, we find they have been tried and tested by a world of trouble. Their faith, discipleship, Christianity wasn’t instant… it was grown over years of service to other and time on their knees with you. Bring us along in our journey that we may also become disciples who are carriers of the cross. In and through Jesus. Amen.

Grace and Peace
Steve

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The Lord is MY SHEPHERD
Psalm 23

Today was one of those introspective days… you know when you can’t help but think about the happenings in our world around us and the families in which we live, and even in our own personal lives. Shirley’s Page High School Reunion Ladies who meet each month for a luncheon reported last week that six of their classmates have died since March. A lot of people we know (our age people) are going through some very rough medical situations. Shirley has basal cell cancer on her nose requiring surgery in later November. Her sister has thyroid cancer and will go through treatments. I have gained 30 pounds since April even though I am daily consuming only 1500MG of calories and 1500MG of sodium. Something is going wrong somewhere. My thyroid levels are off but not that much. One of the docs thinks it is liver related. These things could be serious or just scary. It is getting to where our prayer list could have us praying half the day.

I also am deeply troubled by the actions of the world around us… spoiled, fighting kids in charge of countries that want to do away with each other… nuke each other. Yes, I am talking about North Korea and the United States. One very respected four star general believes Trump is leading us to nuclear war with North Korea by next summer. That scares me to death… not so much for me, but for my grandkids. My grandson has just turned 16 years old. A war anytime soon could catch him in a required reestablished military draft. I’ve been in war (not a nuke war) and I don’t think war settles anything except to take innocent young men and expose them to unspeakable horror, terror, and inhumanity.

As I was pondering all our conditions and situations Josh Groban’s song, “You Raise Me Up”, came on the radio. It came as a word from God to bring us the affirmation of His presence in the midst of our deepest time of trial. Please read these words as a prayer and let them flow deep within your soul bathing your spirit in the assurance of a God who loves you more than you can even imagine. Feel the healing begin and accept the comfort and strength it brings.

Josh Groban  “You Raise Me Up”

 When I am down and, oh my soul, so weary;
When troubles come and my heart burdened be;
Then, I am still and wait here in the silence,
Until you come and sit awhile with me.

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;
You raise me up: To more than I can be.

There is no life – no life without its hunger;
Each restless heart beats so imperfectly;
But when you come and I am filled with wonder,
Sometimes, I think I glimpse eternity.

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;
You raise me up: To more than I can be.

Heavenly Father, raise me up on your shoulders: To more than I can be.  Amen.

Grace and Peace
Steve

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Yesterday Shirley and I were at Target. Beside Target is Pet Smart and on down the way is Harris Teeter. I have my usual position manned and ready – that is sitting in the car waiting for Shirley to attack every aisle in the store – taking two hours to do what could have been done in five minutes… but some people have to see everything in the store and catalogue what has been moved to where in the store.

I have a steady hand on my chore – watching people in the parking lot passing by and wondering why they are wearing whatever it is that they are wearing. All of a sudden, I notice this young couple – man and woman. She is certainly in charge because he is following her carrying this above average – huge pumpkin. I mean it is so big that he has to change carrying positions several times… above the shoulder… back to the chest… till it slips a little into the stomach area… back to the shoulder. He is doing all he can to keep from dropping it.

Here is the funny part (depending on if you are the observer or the carrier). They have walked all the way from Harris Teeter, passed Pet Smart, and are now almost to Target. Now this is a good hundred yards. Just then the leader (the lady) remembers that she parked in front of Harris Teeter. They turn and head out into the parking lot, moving about five rows back toward Harris Teeter till they find their car. Poor guy was just about ready to drop this thing… along with Halloween.

I know this was a huge pumpkin, but it probably would have fit (sideways) into one of those little baskets on wheels from Harris Teeter they call SHOPPING CARTS. It would have made his job much easier and his blood pressure a little lower.

Have you ever noticed they we try to carry huge burdens, much like this pumpkin, all by ourselves… no carts to ease the load… and in the wrong direction? Many times we, too, are almost at the point of dropping the whole thing… just giving up… when a new direction is given, and some relief is in sight.

I wish I could say that this strong man came to this young man’s rescue, taking the pumpkin to his car… but there was no strong man. There was an epiphany from the young woman who finally realized that the car – the relief – was in another direction. That is what we need to know at times – especially the times when we try to carry our own heavy burdens all by ourselves. 

Perhaps if we would stop… take the time to listen… we just might hear God saying “The direction to wholeness is the other way. If you will take it, I will walk with you and give you the strength to carry this big ole orange ball”.

Lord, help me to be reminded of your strength to help me carry my burdens everytime I put my hands on the handle of a shopping cart.

Grace and Peace
Steve

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