The Gift

Each day is a gift.  A gift is something given, something which comes to us from someone other than ourselves.  A gift is something which speaks of kindness and care on the part of the one who gives the gift.  A gift brings us joy.  Ir creates a heart filled with gratitude on the part of the one who receives the gift.  It is an expression of an important existing relationship      

Each day is a gift.  It comes to us not because we deserve it, not because it is something to which we are entitled, but because of the gracious kindness and mercy of the Creator God who has brought us into being.  He not only brought us into being in the womb of conception, but He has also blessed us with the unrolling of more days than we can easily count.  We do not live in a vacuum, but within the loving heart of God who has created us to belong to Him and be a part of a family of Kingdom dwellers.     

Each day is a gift.  Unfortunately, it comes with such regularity and frequency with one looking so much like a thousand which have already come that we take the gift of today for granted.  Taking something for granted diminishes the gratitude and the joy.  It is a shame.  Though the day itself is gift enough, within the gift come such wonderful things as time to live, to laugh, and to love.  How blessed we are to be able to receive these gifts once again from a kind and loving heavenly Father.  

Living Joyfully

The image of those three boys has just lingered in my mind like the smell of biscuits coming out of the oven, or the sound of the waves crashing on the beach.  More than anything else the sight of those boys sent my mind back to a time long ago when I was one of them.  I watched them while waiting for the young woman to sell her strawberries to the couple who had arrived ahead of me.  They raced through a field of knee deep weeds, grabbed hold of low tree limbs for a swing, and then sped across the rock gravel driveway on their way to the chicken yard.  All this they did and barefoot, too.    

Who among us remembers running wildly with abandonment without any shoes?  I am not sure my soles were ever as tough as the bottoms of those six feet running over gravel rock!  Back when I was seven or eight as they seem to be going barefoot was a treat!  I grew up wearing shoes, but I had cousins who got to play without them.  I looked forward to going to their house and becoming one of them.    

Perhaps, their image lingers because it calls me to play, to run, to be carefree, to experience and enjoy whatever the moment brings.  Being an adult with its insistence on acting proper can sometimes be a pain.  There is so much being missed because of our fear of casting aside what is ingrained within us from a life of living.  While our Creator certainly put us here to live responsibly, He surely intended for us to live with great joy within the Creation He has created all around us.  Maybe this is it.  These boys were like a message from God telling me to live joyfully!  Perhaps, I should give it a try.  Maybe, you should, too.  

Remembered Sermons

When I set out to remember sermons remembered, it is not a hard task.   Of the thousands I have preached, only a few really linger in the old gray matter.  One was a Mother's Day sermon which was entitled, "A Lament for the Children."   It centered around the difficulties experienced by some children and the need for the church and its people to offer the care of Christ.  At the door where preachers greet parishioners one lady came out furious saying, "I came here to hear a sermon exalting Mothers and I want you to know that was the worst sermon I ever heard."       

Maybe it was not the sermon, but the response I remember.  As a preacher I always preached convinced that a good sermon called for response, but her response was not exactly what I might have anticipated.  One other remembered sermon invited people to live as they felt a Christian should live for one week and some guy who was a self professed agnostic took up the invitation and ended up giving his life to Christ before the week was done.  But, the most amazing thing was that after his baptism, he went and told his mother about his faith, and she believed and was baptized as well.  I kept that sermon a long time!   

Of course, what every preacher knows is that the success of any sermon and its invitation is not about a carefully crafted sermon, but the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of those who listen.  A preacher never knows who is ready to hear a Word from God.  The task is to simply faithfully preach the Word and trust the Spirit to do as He pleases.  

Diminished Competency

By the time I arrived at my third appointment, the Talbotton Church, I had become extremely competent in my ministry.  You could tell by the number of hats I wore.  My biggest hat said preacher and pastor.  But, then I was also the Youth Minister as I gave leadership in that area as well.  I even did some custodial work.  The most surprising hat I wore was Choir Director.  The small choir needed some leadership and since I had one course on conducting in college, I figured I was a natural.     

I guess as I got older and found myself in larger church settings, my competency level must have diminished.  Someone was hired to do youth ministry, someone else directed the choir, and the cleaning was in the hands of a custodian.  All my hats except for one hung in the closet which had a "Do Not Touch" sign on the door!   There is a world of difference in the way the ordained do ministry in the small church and the large church.    

Of course, the small church ministry is not where most clergy want to stay.  Everyone is looking for the big steeple church downtown somewhere.   Being content where we are has always been an issue for the ordained members of the church.  In the beginning we figure we can serve the biggest and deserve to do so but by the end, we realize we deserve nothing and anything is a blessing of grace.  It is unfortunate the young preacher cannot carry the old preacher's view.  It would surely make a difference.

Healing Ointment

When I went to the Talbotton Church back in the mid '70's, I went as a bruised and battered preacher.  The appointment served before going to this west Georgia community had been filled with hard confrontations that I was ill prepared to handle and by the time the dust had cleared, going to any other place seemed like heaven.  Of course, such is never really true, but it is also true that sometimes those are our feelings.  What I have learned over the years is that many church leaders run into rough places in their ministry.    

What I also remember from those days of leaving one place and starting over in a new place was the encouraging words of a couple of pastors.  One who remained a mentor type through the rest of my ministry shared some of his own struggle and then pointed me toward some positive things I could do to put myself on the road toward healing.  The usual preacher response to another preacher's trouble is to pretend nothing bad has happened.  I am thankful this guy was an exception.     

And, of course, as the years have moved along, I have unfortunately seen many others who sought to be spiritual leaders get banged up and broken by some institutional confrontation.  It is strange that the conflicts in the church are seldom about theological beliefs, but about the color of the carpet.  In other words our majoring on the minors creates major problems for the church and the clergy and lay people who seek to give it leadership.  Maybe one day, we will get it right and learn to live as a people motivated more by grace than by what must be, but that day has not yet come.  In the meantime, we can pray that those who still bear the open wounds might be bathed in healing ointment.  

Being Connected

Any walk midst the creation reminds us we are created to be connected.  The communication technology which promises connection is a poor substitution for what the Creator intends for us.  What we do not always see is the way our life is dependent on all that is around us.  None of us can truly live alone.  We may choose to live in a self-imposed bubble of isolation, but even then we remain connected to what gives us life.  The Word of God speaks of this sacred connection in the book of beginnings.  

The early pages of Genesis speak to us all about the way we are not the end result, but a part of the whole.  Most of our forays into a life that puts us out of sync with who we are comes as a result of forgetting this one basic truth about ourselves.  Whenever we get the idea that we are the center of the world around us, we are walking into a troubled time which will end up with an awful sense of separation from the essence of who we are and a loss of the connection between ourselves and the One who seeks to give and sustain our life.   

What the scripture speaks of simply as sin is not a word breathed easily by those of us who walk through these days.  The loss of the reality of our sin against God, others, and ourselves is what really strains the God intended connection with all that is around us.  Seeing it for what it is puts us back on the road we are meant to travel, but getting there is never easy for it requires honest confession and a desire to do whatever it is that must be done to become connected once again to the Source of our life.

On the Edge of Miracles

All day long the rain has fallen.  It started before the sun tried to lighten up the day and has continued deep into the darkness of the night.  There were moments when it fell with such force that it turned roads into rivers, but mostly it has been one of those slow soakers where nary a drop seemed to be wasted.  No doubt there have been some who have fussed about the inconvenience of a wasted day of rain, but no complaints have been voiced in these parts.    

What has inconvenienced some has put us on the edge of watching a miracle unfold.  It would be a bit of an exaggeration to say the earth was parched, but it has been a long time since the last rain.  Rain brings the miracle of life.  The pasture grass will green, the young fruit trees will suck up the moisture for the fruit, and the seed which has been placed in the dirt of the garden will germinate and begin to show promises of okra, peas, beans, and squash.    

Today's day of rain speaks of the way God has created a creation full of life giving miracles.  It is hard to see sometimes because so much of the dirt is covered with cement and asphalt, but when water falls on the earth, a miracle is only a moment away.   Today's rain has spoken a message of life giving power falling upon a needy earth and the way miracles are always ready to be poured out just beyond what cannot be seen with ordinary eyes.

The Long Shadow

While I lived in numerous places as I was racing through childhood and adolescence, it was the small town where I graduated from high school which seems most like home.  With a graduating class of 36, it was not just a small town, but a very small town.  It is sad to see the decline of so many small towns across the countryside, the loss of community schools and churches, and the way so many live without any sense of connecting roots.      

One of the things some bemoan about small towns is the way everybody knows everybody's business.  I remember one school day when I managed to get into enough trouble that the Principal got involved only to get home and discover that my Mother already knew about it.  And, this was long before social media!  Looking back it is not such a bad thing for everybody to know everybody's business.  What might seem like an intrusion into privacy and an opportunity for gossip might also be seen as an expression of concern for others.     

Of course, deep in my memory is also the way the church was such a central part of our lives.  It stood unlocked on the street corner throughout the week, gathered us all on Sunday, and served as a centering force for so many of us.  It might have been a small church in a small town, but it cast a long shadow, one which continues to touch my life even to this day.  

Life is Fragile

When I came to the farm over a decade ago, ten years forward seemed like a long time, and maybe it is.  But as I stand now ten years later looking at the next ten years, it does not seem nearly as long and it does not show itself with the same certainty it did ten years ago.  Though I have made a living preaching, I must confess to not remembering too many of my sermons and even fewer of the ones I heard.  As one who has always believed preaching to be supremely important, it is a strange admission.     

One of those heard sermons still remembered was preached by Bishop Cannon back in the day when I was pastor at the Talbotton Church.  The Bishop came a preaching on a very special day in the life of this church.  The theme of his sermon was simple, "Life is fragile."  I have long ago forgotten the sermon craft and the text which held it together, but the simple message has stayed with me for a life time.  Perhaps, such is all any preacher could hope for a few of the many sermons preached.    

Of course, back in the day of the sermon I was approaching thirty years of age which made life a whole lot less fragile than it does as I stand at a point beyond seventy years old.  It is too bad we cannot go back and put some of the old man wisdom in the young man's mind, but then such is not how life is lived.  There are many teachers.  The Word is one as is the Spirit.  And there have been a thousand like me who have taught lessons I did not always heed.  Experience has been a faithful, if not sometimes hard teacher.  One thing finally learned, at least on most days, is what Bishop Cannon preached long ago, "Life is fragile."

The New Community

What has been hard to shed in these years of retirement is the mantle of pastor.  The preaching thing which I thoroughly enjoyed for a life time of Sundays was always something which seemed to define what I did, but these last years have been empty of a pulpit from which to preach.  My girls sometimes accuse me of slipping into my preaching voice, but it is something which is largely absent from my life.  But, interestingly, enough I still see vestiges of the pastor in my life during these years on the farm.      

To be honest it took awhile to be aware it was happening.  Perhaps, it started happening as I realized how I was becoming invested in another community other than the one which was defined by the sanctuary under the steeple.  People are still the same as they have always been which means the people around me continue to deal with the struggles which are common to us all.   Caring about people is not something which comes because of a ritual of ordination.  Actually, it is not required though it is good to be a part of the clergy packaging.  

The pastoral work I do now is not likely perceived by those who receive it as an act of pastoral care and, to some degree, it is not.  It is more likely what happens to those of us who seek to walk with the Christ down the road He calls us to go.  Being close to Him invariably means that some of His Spirit is going to rub off on us making us into someone we would not be able to be otherwise.  It is something I am not only seeing in my own life, but also in the lives of folks around me who share in the membership of this new community God has unfolded around me.   

From the Earth

It happened again this morning.  It happened much like it has happened more times than I can count.  I reached down and picked up a rotten limb which had fallen overnight from a pecan tree and immediately thought the Words of the Ash Wednesday ritual which is also a Word from the Holy Word.  It is heard first in Genesis 3:19 as the Lord God says to the Garden of Eden couple, "...you are dust, and to dust you shall return."   It has come to be more than a word which speaks of mortality, but also a word which speaks of being connected to the creation.        

Even as we come from dust, is it not also true to say that we come from the earth?  Perhaps, it is not literally true as we come from the bed of our conception which at first glance seems far removed from the earth, but a second look reminds us that as the life which has the capacity to conceive is nurtured in a life giving way by the creation itself.  The limb on the ground was nurtured by the earth as it grew from twig to branch and so is our life nurtured by the same creative power of the earth.   Not a one of us comes into this world aside from a man and woman being nurtured by the creation.  

In such a way we come not just from the dust, but from the earth.  And in the end, even as we return to dust, so is it true we return to earth.  What is physical about us is always connected to the Creation put in place by the Creator.  We are never separate from its power which speaks to us about the way we are never separate from the life giving power of the Creator who brought us into being and Who brings us Home to Himself.  

Mouth to Ears

Most of us at some time or another have a measure of interest in our family tree.  Mine has been rekindled in the past few years by a woman with whom I am glad to claim some kin, but who has also been a keeper of the tree from which we both came.  While the information she has shared with me has largely been written, the stuff we first learn about who we are and to whom we belong comes by word of mouth.  The sharing of the past is not usually done in a formal structured setting, but in casual moments of sharing events and years together with family.   

One of the things often overlooked as we read the Scripture is the fact that so much of it was passed from one generation to the next not in written form, but through what is known as oral tradition.  Oral tradition is defined as one mouth speaking into the two ears of another.  It is easy to imagine the ancient Hebrews gathering around campfires or tables and telling the stories of their ancestors.  Perhaps, some of the Genesis narrative came into being in response to the question, "How did we get here?"   

As the years slip along, we are surely the beneficiaries of what we have read in the Word as well as the manner in which students of the Word have sought to enhance understanding, but it is also true that oral tradition still has a major place in the transmission of our faith story.  To be blessed with the faith stories of our mothers and fathers and grandparents is a wonderful thing to carry with us on our spiritual journey.  Knowing what has been experienced by those who love us the most and to whom we are connected is immeasurable.  It may not carry with it the authority the Word carries, but is filled with the trials and tears of those who nurtured us and pushed us ahead toward home.      

The Common Emotion

Grief is not always a rational emotion.  Sometimes it comes long after the precipitating event.  Sometimes it comes disguised in other emotions and has to be sorta out like dirty clothes in a laundry basket.  It may not be what it seems at first glance, but after sitting with it awhile, it becomes as recognizable as an old friend.  The men and women who walked the pages of Scripture were well acquainted with grief.  They lost husbands, wives, and children just as have those who have come after them.  And, as we read the gospels, we see pictures of Jesus in situations heavy with loss and grief.    

The 11th chapter of John is one of those stories filled with the deep loss and mourning of a family.  We often speak of it as the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead, but before that glory filled moment, grief soaked the ground with deep flowing tears.  The grief of the sisters for their brother was so heavy that Jesus wept even though He knew what was about to happen in the tomb of Lazarus.    The Word not only speaks of Jesus weeping, but also says He "was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved."  (John 11:33)   

As one who lived among us, He knew the pain of the loss experienced by all who continue to live after loved ones have died.  Grief is an emotion common to us all.  Once experienced it may disappear for a season, but it should never be a surprise that something so strongly felt resurfaces.  Our Creator made us  to love and the grief with which we live and manage surely speaks of the love we have for those we love.      

No-Seeums

After a few days in a coastal area I have decided we have friendly gnats.  When the weather gets warm around these parts in the summer months, black gnats come in droves.  They do not bite, they just aggravate.  They enjoy seeing how many can buzz around one ear before getting a hand swipe, or maybe congregating around an open mouth to see if they can withstand the blowing which is sure to come.  But, over on the coast, the gnats are called "no-seeums' because they bite wherever they land and remain largely invisible as they do.    

I suppose these gnats have some value and some significant place in the order of creation.  Maybe they are feed for other flitting creatures.  They surely were not created randomly without purpose, but finding it is difficult when they are feeding on a bare arm, or neck, or even in a head full of hair.   I am sure the Creator could tell us the purpose of these flying, biting pest.  

I remember one story from the Moses narrative where a plague of gnats came as a sign from God that it would be a smart choice to let the Hebrews go from Egypt (Exodus 8:10:19).  Pharaoh obviously had a hard heart and a hard head.  While I am not always privy to the purposes of God, it makes sense to accept the fact that He does not create without purpose.  This word of belief includes things like gnats, and even folks like you and me. 

A Sister's Word

Years ago, but not so long as to forget, my sister shared a word of with me that remains lodged in the old gray matter where memories are kept.    It is brought to the surface whenever I find myself in one of those expressway traffic jams where movement is measured not by the miles traveled, but the minutes delayed.  As we were talking that day I said that something about the way the early morning traffic snarl had messed up her day only to hear her say, "My day was much better than those in the accident that delayed us."      

Perspective is an important issue in life.  It is one our impatience, our endless hurrying, and our sense of self importance often obscures.  Being delayed or even being late is not nearly as big an issue as going to the hospital, or to the funeral home.  Sometimes we forget about what is going on with others because of some inconvenience which hinders us.     

There are times when praying about what cannot be seen ahead is a thing to do.  And within that prayer of intercession for another's pain, there surely is time for moments of gratitude to God for the safe place in which we find ourselves.  Whenever we leave home for the road, there is always danger around us and safe journeys are too often taken for granted.   A different perspective about the fragile and uncertain nature of life would no doubt be a step forward for all of us.  

In Between

It is a season of mostly being here at the farm, but still there are those moments when a longing for getting away beckons with more than a little noise.  In the midst of such a time I decided to take a trip by reading for a second time a book entitled, "Grandma Gatewood's Walk," which is the story of a Grandma who in the mid '50's struck out alone to walk the Appalachian Trail from one end to the other.  She was a real trailblazer in many ways!    

Of course, there are other books which point us to different journeys.  So much of the reading done in these days has to do with the inner journey to wherever it is that God is leading in the present moment of life.  Spiritual journeys can be arduous as a trail that climbs upward and as a frightening as a mountain thunderstorm.  They tend to end up re-shaping our inner being which is for most of us an uncomfortable thing to experience.    

The journey we walk in faith is much about what is set forth in those Words from Hebrews which lead us to consider what is meant by the "conviction of things not seen...what is seen was made from things that are not visible."  (Hebrews 11:1, 3)  In such a world we journey as those who have heard and said "yes" to the call of Christ.  It is a journey that has a beginning and takes us to the eternal home, but is really not so much about beginning and ending as it is what is in between.  

The Speaking Garden

A garden is an invitation, maybe even a mandate to slow down.   I still use a push plow like I did back fifty years ago.  When the furrows are opened I walk along and drop one seed at a time in the dirt and then when the row is finished, I go back and cover the seed with boots that sweep plowed dirt across the open row.  As I was planting the okra rows this morning, it came to me that a garden is not something to be hurried.  Instead, it is sharing in something sacred.    

As the seed dropped in the ground, I prayed a prayer of blessing on the seed and ask that the earth would receive it and bless it for a harvest some months from now.  Gardens take time.  It takes time to plant.  It takes time to care for it.  It takes time to reap the harvest.  Nothing happens in a hurry.  To walk up and down the rows of open furrow planting okra seed enabled me to hear a word about slowing down, listening, and paying attention to the creative power beneath my feet.     

Of course, a garden is not for everyone.  Many people pass up on a garden not because it takes work, but because it causes life to be lived at a slower pace.  The Creation like the written Word speaks volumes to us about how life is to be lived, but even as we are too busy to sit with the Word for a spell, so are we too busy to hear what is to be heard as we walk behind a push plow and behold the creative power of the earth as it is opened for seed beneath plodding feet.   

A Place of Resurrection

It might be expected that a resurrection story would be filled with heavenly visions, holy incense hanging in the air, brilliant lights, and attending angels which makes the one in the 21st chapter of John a bit of a surprise.  It is at first glance a fishing story.  People in fishing stories are smelly, wet, and often filled with salty language which would make a sailor blush.  This story as John tells it is filled with smoke drifting down the beach, the smell of cooking fish in the air, and men exhausted from fishing all night and catching nothing.      

When the fishing story moves from the sea to the beach and becomes a breakfast story, there are worn out men wolfing down an early morning breakfast of fish and bread while warming their wet cold bodies around a charcoal fire.  It is an earthy story with more sights to see and more smells to smell than could possibly be imagined.     

Here in the midst of all that speaks of the earth is present the One who expressed Himself in Bethlehem as the Incarnate One, but who is now expressing Himself as the Resurrected One.  Look for the Incarnate One who also is known as the Resurrected One in the holy places filled with incense and holy rituals, but look also in those places where men and women strain and struggle and seek to live the most earth filled circumstances of life for in such places the One who came to die and rise chooses now to abide.  

A Second Look

The sun was just touching the tops of the trees on the western horizon when I backed the tractor in the shelter and sat for a moment in the stillness.  As I looked into the not so blazing sun, I saw several columns of swirling tornadoes made of small flying bugs.  Hundreds of them.  As they swirled between me and the setting sun, I dismounted and walked close enough to stick my arm into their midst.  And, then, as I walked around so that the sun was to my back, they disappeared.  But, when I went back to the place of facing the sun, they once again appeared.      

There is so much out there not seen.  It has always been that way, but I have not been paying enough attention to see.  Watching this evening show, I could not help but wonder how many blessings of the Creator I had failed to see and know.  Too many I am sure.  Actually, if there is only one missed blessing, it is one too many.  Like this blessing only seen in this day's fading sun, there have been so many blessings of holy presence swirling around me that I have missed simply because I failed to look with eyes given to me, but seldom used.   

Had Mary Magdalene not lingered a few extra moments that Resurrection Morning, she would have missed the greatest of imaginable blessings.  Her first look supposed the One seen to be the gardener.  It was in a morning stilled by holy presence that she saw Him and heard her name in the mist.  Because of that second look, her story has never been the same.  It is no different with us as we pause to look once again only to see the Holy in what had been seen first as invisible.  

The Second Look

The One everyone came to see that first Sunday after the cross of Good Friday was nowhere to  be found.  Certainly, He was not where He was supposed to be.  He was not lying silently and still in the darkness of the tomb.  Peter and John could not find Him when they arrived.  Mary Magdalene made one trip and then another and all she had to show for her morning exertion was her heavy tears.  On the second trip she saw two angels in the tomb which should have been a clue that something extraordinary was afoot, but she was too blinded by her tears and her grief to see.     

It might also be said she was even more blinded by her expectations.  The body she expected to find was nowhere to be found and if she remembered Jesus saying anything about being raised from the dead, it was surely outside her consciousness that early morning.  We know about expectations.  There are times and places we expect Jesus to be present and when He seems like One who is nowhere to be found, we find our own eyes shut to some moment of outside the box revealing.  

As He came to Mary in that early morning hour, so does He often come to us with our name on His heart as it is spoken by the Spirit to the deep place of abiding presence within us.  From the language of the story, it appears that it was only at the second look after hearing her name that she knew Who was with her.  We sometimes forget how persistent Jesus can be in making Himself known to us.  It is not His absence that keeps us from seeing, but eyes that are closed to everything but what we expect to see.  

"Now You See Him...."

While the story of the empty tomb is reported in each of the four gospels, there are some notable differences in what happened after the resurrection of Jesus.  Matthew and Mark have a post resurrection view that can best be described as "Now you see Him, now you don't"   On the other hand, Luke and John have a different view of what happened after the emptiness of the tomb was discovered which can be described as "Now you see Him, now you don't, and there He is again."  With the first two gospel writers, the story mostly ends with the resurrection, but such is not the case with Luke and John.     

The "Now you see Him, now you don't, and there He is again"  writers include wonderful stories that we know as the Emmaus Road, the locked room break-ins, and breakfast on the beach.  In these stories the resurrected Jesus seems to move from the visible, to the invisible, and back to the visible realm again.  If it is true that there is a thin veil between here and there, then Jesus knew exactly where and how to be gone; yet, still be among those who in the beginning were not even looking for Him.    

What is so appealing about these "Now you see Him, now you don't, and there He is again"  stories is the way we are given assurance that the One who has risen has not simply left the tomb to disappear from our midst.  He is in the heavenly realm, but still He chooses to linger here sometimes slipping through the veil between here and there to make Himself powerfully known once again.   

Seeing the Unseen

Some look and see only emptiness while others look and see things unseen and invisible.  On that resurrection morning long ago Peter and John raced each other to the tomb to see an unthinkable thing that Mary Magdalene had said to be true.  "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb..."  (John 20:2) she told them.  When they breathlessly arrived, they saw only signs that a dead body had been placed in the darkness of the tomb, but nothing more.      

After they left the tomb for home, Mary "bent over to look into the tomb..."  (John 20:11)  What she saw were two angels.  If the angels had been there when Peter and John looked, they were there in the invisible realm.  But, what they did not see, Mary saw.  Perhaps, they revealed themselves to Mary, or maybe she had a heart that enabled her to see what mere eyes could not see.     

Angels show up often in the pages of the Holy Word.  Likely enough, we each have our favorite angel story.  Of course, few of us talk about angel stories that point to some moment of personal encounter with  these divine servants of the Almighty. (Hebrews 1:14)  We can only wonder why these holy servants have remained in the invisible realm instead of revealing themselves in such a way as to be seen.  Perhaps, it speaks of our inability to see what is not seen, or maybe, like Peter and John we arrive in the present with our own expectations of what there is to see and then hurry back to whatever it is we know as our comfort zone.  

Easter Eve

Heavy hanging hours, 

  minutes barely moving,

    tossing and turning, 

      a deep darkness

and suffocating dread.

 

Alone and waiting,

   crying and weeping,

     gripped by grief,

       brokenhearted, 

and mostly hopeless.

Dreading sunrise,

   the task at the tomb,

     unable to imagine,

       the impossible, 

an empty tomb.  

Gongs and Cymbals

Something surprising showed up today.  A business had a sign on the window which read, "Closed for Good Friday."  It took me on a trip down memory lane when many businesses closed on Good Friday.  It was, of course, a different era.  It was a time when the church and its ministries had a more central role in the community than in our current day.  We are certainly at a different place now as it has been business as usual in most places on Good Friday and when Easter Sunday comes, it will hardly be noticed in the places where commerce is done.     

While no one is out there advocating for a return to those days of old when store closings were normal every Sunday, it did encourage some to be more faithful about worship while it infuriated others to have to abide by a law based on a religious observance.  Actually, what the law has to say about Sunday life ought not really have any bearing on what Christian believers do with keeping Sabbath.  What we do in response to God is more a matter of the heart than adherence to a rule or law.    

Long years ago I remember a District Superintendent who had gathered all the preachers under his supervision together to encourage them in some program of the larger church.  The name of the program is long forgotten, but not the conversation which was heard in the room.  One of the preachers said, "Brother Carruth, just tell us to do it and we will do it," to which the Superintendent said, "If that is the only reason for doing it, then don't bother."   We can do all the right looking things for God, but for all the wrong reasons and when such happens, our life ends up looking like a "noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.'  (I Corinthians 13:1)

The Great Escape

On the way to the coffee pot just after seven o'clock, I heard a strange bovine sound outside the door.  When I opened the front door, three cows that belonged inside the fenced pasture were walking around the truck at the front door.  Suddenly the morning was filled with getting the escapees back in the pasture, getting out the chainsaw to cut up the partially rotted tree that had fallen over the fence, digging some post holes, and repairing the fence.  Just after noon I made it back to the house thinking about all the plans I had made for the day.     

The Word has a word for such plans as it says, "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there doing business and making money.'  Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring."  (James 4:13-14)   All of us are prone to make plans and some of them come to fruition, but it is also true that every day has within it the potential to play havoc with our best made plans.  When life seems to make mincemeat out of our plans, we tend to fret, get upset, and go into some kind of inner tantrum.     

It does not usually occur to us to consider that God might be in the mayhem.  When we pray we ask God to lead us and to protect us, but we do not always think that the mayhem might be a part of His response to our petitions.  Perhaps, God had me in the pasture this morning to keep from some other thing which would have proven to be more troubling than getting cows back in a pasture.  Who knows and who can understand the ways of a God who cares for us and is always working to bring good into our life even though unexpected difficulty is all around us?