quote

quote i just found:
"Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good."
— Maya Angelou (Celebrations: Rituals of Peace and Prayer)

Friends

Wrote this today for our church national association Lenten devotions publication

"I no longer call you servants, because servants do not know their master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you." John 15:15 TNIV

My friend and I ate our dessert in silence. With some folks, it is awkward when neither has anything to say. This friend and I are comfortable in silence together. We have been friends since grade school. We were not in touch for a time, as we both went through considerable life changes. But we are back together, and it is just as if we were never apart. What a gift it is to have a such a close friend!

Jesus said to the disciples, "I called you friends". What a gift! He called them friends, because He made known what He knew from God. This is intimacy, when one shares with another. Sharing requires that we are open to one another. The disciples were open to Jesus' teachings. It was a process that did not happen overnight! Real intimacy does not happen instantaneously. It comes over time.

How can we allow ourselves to be more open to the teachings of Jesus? Can we spend more time with Him, in our Bible time, small groups, in worship, and in service? Shall we accept the gift of friendship from our Lord?

Prayer: Loving Lord, thank you for the gift of friendship. Help us to grow in our friendship with You and with other Christians. In Jesus' Name, Amen.

be still

Devotion that i gave this morning at church staff meeting: The senior minister is beginning a sermon series on spiritual discernment, How do we discern (learn, interpret, comprehend) the direction God is leading us? So the first step is : Psalm 46:10, "Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth."

We need to have quiet time in order to hear from God. in 1 Kings 19, the voice of the Lord is referred to as "still, small voice". in our time, the word "small" seems to mean "insignificant". And of course God's voice is significant! Author Henri Nouwen refers to the voice of God as "an intimate voice". It is not loud, or pushy like a tv sales pitch! In fact I think we are so used to "hey hey Have I got a deal for you" in our daily lives, that we do not remember to take time to be still and know that God is. We pray for the ability to better listen to the intimate voice of God.

Godly Goals

On Jan. 1, as I sat down to do my Bible reading, I was thinking/praying about my New Year's resolutions. Resolutions are goals. To effectively set goals, whether personal or for a group or business, there need to be parameters. Good goals need to be specific, realistic, & measurable. And as I was pondering this, I realized that as a Christian, as one called to serve, my goals also need to be Godly! And what better way to have Godly Goals, than to use Scripture!?
So my goal of reading thru the Bible this year (which has a side benefit of being more knowledgeable about it!) is "Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." So I can pray, "Lord, help me spend more time reading and pondering your word, and help it grow in me and guide me in all I do"

2010

a new year! so is it pronounced twenty-ten or two thousand ten?

Last night's New Year's Eve service and supper at church went well. and broke up earlier than usual which was good! we were home by 8:30. I went to sleep early but woke up before midnight. and the neighborhood was quieter than usual at midnight, a few firecracker volleys but that was it. I read Revelation 21 & 22, the description of the heaven..the New Jerusalem. "Behold I am coming soon!"

at the service we sang a couple songs, then i read Gen 1:1-5 and John 1:1-5 and 1:14. Talked about language, words. God merely spoke and everything was created. and His word-promises, law and covenants came to Abraham and Moses. The prophets spoke of God; then Jesus the Word, is God and is the promise of God's word. We can have The Word within us, Jesus as savior and the word of God as we read and meditate and pray on it.

and I am going to go do just that. I have a new Bible reading plan and devotions for the new year. knowing that there will be days I do not manage the 'daily readings' I am going to allot days like today, downtime, to read chunks. bliss.

May the Grace and Peace of our Lord Jesus be with us more each day in this new year! Shalom, Carol

The Word

for New Year's Eve service, I believe we will discuss The Word. Jesus, and the Bible. In the New Testament Greek the word used is Logos, which means "word", but also in Greek philosophy meant the core of one's being. Logos is used both for Word, used for Jesus in John chapter 1, and for "word of God" or "word of Christ" in Paul's epistles. "Let the word of Christ dwell in your richly..." I want us to think about concepts of language, and that words have power. Being in the Word, being in Christ, and spending time with our Bibles, has power!

It is amazing to me, that no matter how unready I am for Christmas, it comes anyway, and i am reminded again of the birth of our Savior. And i pray that it was the same for you! We had a nice quiet, nuclear family Christmas. Our 2 sons came to the 10pm worship service with us. Hubby did not have to usher, there was plenty of help, so the 3 guys sat together, as I helped lead worship. The music was wonderful and really spoke to me. I think it moved a lot of folks, from the expressions i could see.

this AM i preached on Colossians 3:12-17 Clothe yourselves with kindness, compassion, forgiveness, etc.. and Psalm 148. Praise as the root of worship. Worship as the root of our faith life, and recommitting to Christ. Choir had the day off, so we did a hymn sing in the place of the anthem and folks kept calling out requests! I think we did one verse each of 5 hymns. the final request was for Amazing Grace and i requested that we sing the last verse too..."When we've been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise, than when we've first begun."

Christmas, bah humbug. Ok, that is a decidedly un-Christian attitude! but i am feeling awfully humbug today. I have a cold, the weather is terrible, i am not done with any of our preparations, and this has just been a bad year in many ways. so there it is. Come Lord Jesus, fill my heart with the right stuff, please?

oh this year has been something else. 2009 just needs to be GONE.
i was so sick with pneumonia in May, a car accident in October and my car, almost paid for, was wrecked. and now, the very worst, our son's girlfriend died very suddenly. He is just heartbroken. and not being a believer, he does not have the hope that Jesus brings us. if i 'preach' to him, i am afraid he will turn away from me. i am praying. hard. i do pray hard for my sons, but now..well. I am so very concerned for him.

clutter.....

I've been reading Unclutterer blog (http://unclutterer.com) for a while now. It is interesting topic and I hate to admit how much I need help with this! and in their forums, i see lots of folks posting good ideas. But some of them seem to be "here is what I do...and it mostly works. But sometimes it doesn't..." We seem to be adding stuff to the process of dealing with our stuff, and not addressing the underlying issues.

This week hubby & I have done some serious "uncluttering" ourselves. (since i was sick in the spring, did not do spring cleaning...oy vey!) And it feels so good to have got rid of stuff and organized some of it. Yet i know unless we develop new habits and work thru the reasons that we got to this point, nothing has really changed. I have read lots on this topic. In fact in sorting junk this week, I came across books-- "Simplify Your Life" and "Clutter Free, Finally and Forever."--in piles of stuff. Oh the irony!

I had read both books--and a variety of others! So they didn't help ME much, did they? I have to think thru and deal with the issues that got us here. Neither his Mom nor my folks were good at dealing with stuff. Both had definite 'hoarder' tendencies. They contained most of the clutter, for a long time. But by the last few years, things were piling up. I think with our parents' generation, it goes back to the Depression/WW2 era growing up. They had so little, then were part of the post war boom economy. And the advent of TV and its advertising!

So we (baby boomer generation) grew up with parents who had grown up feeling deprived, and who did not want their children to know that deprivation. AND we had the growing onslaught of mass media and all the advertising that says to get more stuff!

A friend shared a quote from a book she is reading/preaching on. "Physical deprivation causes spiritual hunger." (from Compelled by Love by Heidi Baker) and we so often mistake spiritual hunger for physical, material, other kinds of hunger.

and Gerald May in Addiction and Grace talks about how basically EVERYTHING can become an addiction; as well as the "usual suspects" of drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, etc.... So having/acquiring stuff is a profound addiction!


oh-- good stuff...gonna go read and make some notes...

(To be continued...)

wow I am bad at this blogging thing! I did more of it when i was sick than now that i am 'well'. and yes, i have had some after effects of the dag-nabbed pneumonia. chiefly fatigue, much much better now, but i have absolutely NO tolerance for humidity. never have had much, but it is worse this summer. and of course the ragweed is bad now too. we have been running the AC for several days straight now. it cools off outside at night, but the pollen and humidity never let up. i was sleeping so badly for so long, soon as we had the house closed up and AC on, i slept!

Friends

I have been lazy about keeping up my blog. There are things on my mind to say here, but i am challenged at sitting down and actually DOING something about it! it may be that i am mostly focusing on my work. I have a preaching gig out of town Aug 2, preaching at our church Aug 16 and a wedding in between!

Preaching this Sunday on friendship. the text is Mark 2:1-5:
¹ A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. ² They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. ³ Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. ⁴ Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. ⁵ When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, "Son, your sins are forgiven."

I adore this story. The friends are SO very determined to get their pal to Jesus that they dig thru the roof! (Probably a flat thatched roof) My sermon will focus on true friendship, especially caring for one another, having compassion...all that good stuff that church is SUPPOSED to be....

Well HUMPH!! The news keeps saying the recession is better. Well I just stopped at my fave coffee shop, It is locally owned, not a franchise. the shop will be closing next week. And going thru my mail, one of the magazines I subscribe to is ceasing operations. I don't know whether to throw something or start crying.