Living life with steps of faith

Last year it was unlit lights on my Christmas tree. This year it is a stack of unopened Christmas cards sitting on our stairwell.  Didn't quite realize why I wasn't opening them until I came across an infertility blog that mentioned how difficult it is to open Christmas cards.  Each one holds a picture of a happy family or tells the story of kids or grandkids. Some act as a birth announcement. I am fighting the Christmas blues and have been doing fairly well until this last week.  But my husband and I have admitted to each other that we just can't wait for Christmas to be over. And yet, the Scripture that keeps coming to my mind is Nehemiah 8:10: 10  Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing  prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy  of the  Lord  is your strength.”  So we will go and enjoy choice food and drinks and try to stay focused on the fact th...

Today as I was doing research on a passage from the gospel of John I came across this quote from Chrysostom that caught my attention. He writes, "Don't be amazed that I bring you to what is profitable for you by way of such sorrow, since even a mother, to become a mother, passes in a similar way through pain." (Homilies on the Gospel of John 79.1) I am not sure yet where our journey of infertility will lead us, but if it is to adoption, I will know that I did not miss out on the birth pains of pregnancy or delivery.  They just came to me in a different way. So if you are reading this and you are an adoptive mother - know that when women start sharing their delivery stories, you have one too!  You were in delivery for 5 years, 7 years, 10 years, 18 years (you know how long). Your contractions happened on a monthly basis, sometimes they were more painful than others.  You were never quite sure when you would finally give birth or whether or not the result would be a li...

My husband mentioned that there has been a few news articles most recently asking where God was the day 6 and 7 year olds lost their lives at Sandy Hook Elementary. I have to admit, that hasn't been one of my questions this Christmas season, rather I have found meaning in a part of the Christmas story that for the most part of my life I have overlooked: Matthew 2:16-18 New International Version (NIV) 16  When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.   17  Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: 18    “A voice is heard in Ramah,    weeping and great mourning,  Rachel  weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted,        because they are no more.” [ a ]         ...

--> Good Christian, Come Rejoice Good Christian come, rejoice with heart and soul, and voice; Give ye heed to what we say: News! News! Jesus Christ is born today; Ox and ass before Him bow; and He is in the manger now. Christ is born today! Christ is born today! Good Christian come, rejoice, with heart and soul and voice; Now ye hear of endless bliss: Joy! Joy! Jesus Christ was born for this! He has opened the heavenly door,   we are blest forevermore. Christ was born for this! Christ was born for this! Good Christian come, rejoice, with heart and soul and voice; Now ye need not fear the grave: Peace! Peace! Jesus Christ was born to save! Calls you one and calls you all, to gain His everlasting hall. Christ was born to save! Christ was born to save!

This morning we are offering a Blue Christmas Gathering at our church.  I had heard about such gatherings and even read about them, but have never sponsored such an event myself.  This year though is my first Christmas as a pastor, and I would say over 30% of the families in our congregation our grieving the loss of a loved one.  I thought that we should offer a Blue Christmas (a.k.a. "The Longest Night.")  I was quite surprised though how difficult it was to find a service flow to follow for such an event.  So looking at what I've heard people say about such a gathering and piecing together little tidbits I found across the Internet, I put together the following service.  Please feel free to use and edit as you have need. Blue Christmas Gathering Opening          We come together today because we are people who share something in common, the loss of a loved one.  Not everyone around you gets wh...

Last time I read through Numbers 28 & 29, I had similar thoughts to today's reading - Do we have a rhythm of celebrations & holy gatherings in the church?  We meet regularly on Sundays to worship God; We have Christmas celebrations and recognize Holy week; But do we really have a rhythm?  What if we changed how we behaved as church such that our main gatherings were for specific celebrations and purposes and Sundays became times for small group Bible studies or for individuals to come into the worship space to worship solemnly and individually?  Do I sound too Catholic?  Would this work better in our culture? Imagine having everyone in a Christian community commit to going camping for 8-days (Festival of Tabernacles) and during that time we shared the blessings that God had given us the previous year?  Imagine the whole Christian community stopping everything for one day to fast and to repent (Day of Atonement), not only for our individual sins, but th...

" Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."  –James 1:27 NIV Do you know any orphans?   Have any family members, friends, or colleagues who are widows?   How are you showing them that you care?   Are you involved in their lives in a meaningful way?   Christmas can be a difficult time for those who are alone.   Sometime around 2004, my cousins became temporary orphans.   Although they were adopted into our immediate family, they had suffered great loss. Christmas and other holidays were difficult times.   They were more likely to get in trouble at school and at home around the holidays.   It is hard to be a good kid when you are experiencing such deep pain.   During the holidays it is important for us to be aware of the needs and losses of those around us.   A coworker may be grumpier...

“So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.’” Matthew 2:14-15 In Matthew’s version of the Christmas story, we discover that much of Jesus’ early life is reminiscent of the prophet Moses’ early life.  Both Jesus and Moses were born to a family line that was respected and recognized as set-apart by God: Jesus, a descendent of King David, and Moses, born into the house of the Levites.  Jesus was born during the oppressive rule of King Herod and Moses was born during the oppressive rule of Pharaoh.  Both political leaders chose to kill infants and toddlers that would have been the peers to these babes, and in the process, if it weren’t for divine intervention, both of these men would have been killed. When we read about the early life of Jesus, we learn that his father responded to God-given dreams b...

Repentance prepares the way for Christ. That is pretty simple, isn't it. Or is it? Why is it so difficult for us to repent? Is it because it requires that we swallow our pride? Is it because repentance makes us face the reality of who we really are? Is it because we don't have the time to truly repent? Or is it because it is a lot of hard work? In Matthew 3 we read that John the Baptist came to prepare the way for Christ. How did he do this? By preaching a message of repentance. See, repentance must be a requirement for us to be prepared for Christ. It is a manner by which we prepare mentally and whole-heartedly for the presence of Christ in our lives. I can't fully see who Jesus Christ is, unless I recognize who I am and who I am not. In order to recognize Jesus as the Messiah, I need to first recognize that I am not the Messiah. I must see what makes up my own humanity in order to see the unique divinity and perfect humanness of the Anointed One. If I am unwilling to...

Yesterday, an Amber Alert was posted for one of my relatives. As a family we talked to his school, tried to contact as many friends as possible, explored the possibilities of where he might have gone. We were on a search, a search that felt helpless. And then my relative was found and we rejoiced! This morning during my devotional time I thought about what this meant theologically. I was struck with the number of passages that dealt with the lost object or person. I saw how this is a parable of our lives and a message regarding the Kingdom of Heaven. I considered how the search felt so foolish in our sense of being helpless, yet we searched nonetheless. What does it mean for the shepherd to leave the flock to go after the one wandering sheep? What are the risks of doing so? How does this make the shepherd vulnerable? Why does the one animal value so much? We were sitting around family Christmas when we learned the news. We are a very large family - one of us was missing. The Ch...

What would happen if I went through every verse in a book of the Bible and recorded what it says about Jesus Christ? What would I find? According to the book of Colossians, Jesus is: The Son of God (1:3) Lord (1:3; 2:6; 3:17) The Christ (1:1, 3 - and many of the verses that follow.) Image of the Invisible God (1:15) Firstborn of All Creation (1:15) Firstborn From the Dead (1:18) Before Everything / The Beginning (1:17, 18) Head of the Body--the Church (1:18) Head of Every Ruler and Authority (2:10) The Hope of Glory (1:27) God's Mystery (1:27; 2:2) Risen (3:1) In Us (1:2) Proclaimed by the Apostles (a.k.a the Embodiment of the Good News/Gospel) (1:28) Seated Above (3:1) Seated at the Right Hand of God (3:1) But, this is not it! There is so much more. We also learn from Paul and Timothy in the letter to the believers in Colossae, that: Jesus appointed followers to spread His word: Jesus had apostles . (1:1) There are ministers of Christ. (1:7) Jesus powerfully inspires energy in the...

What if we have it all wrong! What if by making Sunday into our day of worship, we have gotten in the way of people living their lives as an act of worship? What if we truly are to rest on Sunday? What if a better form of corporate worship can be found in festivals, special services of forgiveness or prayer, and community sharing? Could we make something like this work in our culture? (Exodus 23:12, 17)

"It follows from this that the universe is good, that the reason for its present lamentable state is not to be sought in the Creator but in the fact that the highest created state is that of a free, rational being, so that to create a universe capable of containing the highest form of goodness was to create a universe that depended on the free obedience of rational beings, the fall being the failure of rational beings to remain faithful to the good." - taken from xlviii of the Introduction to Genesis I-II in the "Ancient Christian Commentary On Scriptures: Old Testament I: Genesis I-II" edited by Andrew Louth, Marco Conti, Thomas C. Oden, and a list of others.

I wonder what it would have been like to live in that day of Christ's coming. I wonder if I would have been able to recognize the coming of the Messiah. I read through the Psalms and I read of God as this majestic one who comes thundering down from the mountain top (Psalm 64) and I wonder if I would have been able to recognize the thunder of His small presence in a manger or his roaring presence among the forsaken and lost sheep. I wonder if I would have recognized the man that went tearing through the temple or touching the lepers and speaking to the prostitutes as God's son. Would I have recognized him? Or would he have appeared so foreign to what I would have imagined him to be that I would have missed him? Would I have been a cautious spectator, unwilling to jump in with all of my being like the uninformed and theologically untrained nonreligious? Or would he have appeared so obviously to me as the one to come that I would be inviting all of my neighbors to join me in follo...

What does it mean to wait for the return of Christ? Each day that I go to visit my fiance at his house, I look more and more forward to the day when I will be able to stay and not have to return to my own home. I wonder if that is how it is supposed to be in our relationship with Christ. Each time I meet with Him in prayer and devotion, my longing to be with Christ in our shared eternal home should increase. Each visit into His presence gives me a better taste of what it might be like when we can commune continually. When I look forward to marriage, I look forward to being able to just be present in each other's world. I look forward to being able to share meals with each other on a consistent basis. I look forward to sitting at my computer, doing my school work, and then taking a break to have a short chat with my loved one. How is it that our daily life with Jesus can be like this today? How do we recognize God's presence already in the normal everyday actions of life? Do we ...

"She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn." (Luke 2:7) Is there more to this story? Why wasn't there any room for them in the inn? Did they arrive late to Bethlehem or not arrive early enough to find a place to stay? And if they arrived late, or not early enough, why? Did Joseph not plan ahead? Did he not consider the fact that his ancestral home would be overflowing with people looking for a place to lay their head? Or did they leave early, but Mary's morning sickness delayed their travels and made the trip take much longer than expected? Did they meet unexpected delays in their journey? Were these delays both the devil's attempts to stop them from arriving in Bethlehem and God's perfect plan for having His son born in a manger? Or were they still struggling with family conflict, Joseph's brothers giving him a hard time about including Mary and her child as his own in the census and Mary's mot...

I don't think I'm going to answer the above mentioned question. Instead, I have another question to ask, What does it mean to be a child of God living in the end times? What I mean is, how does the context of thinking the end is near influence how one lives as God's child? Yes, we do not know the day or hour, or even the year of the Lord's return, but we do know that it is approaching quickly and more quickly then it was approaching an hour, day, or year ago. Throughout Scripture Paul talks of the approaching end of days and instructs us on how we are to live. The writer of Hebrews tells us "Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another--and all the more as you see the Day approaching." (Hebrews 10:25) Yes, I recognize that the capitalization of the word "day" is the work of the collection of editors, but that doesn't change my question. If each day and each hour we are closer to the re...