Good Morning!
I have been away from this discipline for too many
days. I gave myself the excuse that I
had too many things distracting my mind because I was doing full time ministry
again. Now there’s a study in
self-contradiction. It’s when we are attempting
to help people know the presence of the Lord and worship God that we most need
to stop and reflect on God’s words, silently and apart. We can lead people to God only if we remain
mindful of the destination and the road map.
It is when we are busiest that we must stop and look on the words God’s
messengers have left us and share our burdens with the Lord.
In Psalm 139 we read:
“For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
that I know very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.”
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.”
We spend time debating the merits of being
“purpose-driven.” You can’t read the
words of this Psalm and not understand that God has something in mind for all
of us. Not only that but as God’s
purposeful creations we are indeed “fearfully and wonderfully made.” The modern mind doesn’t like to grasp the
notion of awe. When we think of “fear”
we think either of fictional creatures manufactured to give us a thrill (like
“Freddy Kruger”) or of the political reality of what we call “terrorism.” Either way it’s not something that we would
call “wonderful.”
We struggle for words to understand God, to understand
Christmas, to understand Holy Friday, to understand Easter morn. If you think that you know exactly what those
things mean, you are wrong. No human
mind can absorb who God is or – more to the point – what God has done to and
for us. God’s power is beyond anything
that we can even imagine, and God’s love goes far beyond what our hearts can
conceive. If you can begin to imagine
God’s power, then fear will enter your mind.
If you can begin to imagine God’s love, then you will come to see it as
wonderful – that is, delightful, brilliant, perfect.
There comes a time when all of us who worship the God of
Abraham and Isaac and Elijah and John and Jesus must take a step back from the
social, economic and political events of our lives and say that we believe in,
we have faith in, we trust in a God that is beyond our comprehension. A God who made us to receive God’s love and
respond to it.
Last night I told Karen that I haven’t always been the
person that my parents would have been proud of. I’ve screwed up a lot of times. And Karen reminded me that no matter what, my
parents would never have stopped loving me.
And that’s why I still strive to be the person that they would be proud
of. They have both been dead for too many
years, but Karen is alive. Because of
her living love for me I want to do everything that I can to love her, as she
deserves to be loved.
When you start to conceive of the “fearful and wonderful”
love that God has given to us, a love that still lives for us every day, then
you will want not only to make God “proud” of you, you will want to return that
love as fully as you can. You will know
when you stumble and fall into the pits and snares that this world wants us to
fall into that God still – constantly and consistently – loves you, and the way
out of those deep and dark places is to look up at the Lord and start once
again to return God’s love. And when we
return God’s love, the world around us is changed because to return God’s love
is a public thing that changes the way we perceive this world.
Let us pray: Almighty
God, You created us for Your purposes. ““For it was you who formed my inward
parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully
and wonderfully made.” We each have
different lives to live; different gifts to share; different burdens to
carry. Yet we know that if we begin by
returning Your love, everything that You created us for will fill our
lives. If we allow our love for You to
define our lives, then we shall find what we have been created to fulfill. Lead us into the light of Your way and fill
us with the strength and courage that can only come from Your Spirit. We pray in the name of Him Who brought us the
proof of Your love, our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Today’s readings are Isaiah 10:20-27; Jude
17-25; Luke 3:1-9; Psalm 55, 138, 139:1-23.
Blessings.
Pastor Jim
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