Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Red Rover, Red Rover

Remember this game from when you were a kid? You'd choose up teams and line up facing one another, linking hands and strategically placing the stronger kids between the weaker ones, you'd call someone out from the opposing team. 'Red rover, red rover send Billie right over'. And then Billie, with his team cheering him on would run as fast as he could and try as hard as he could to break through your line of linked hands and arms. if you held, Billie became a part of your team. If he broke through, he would triumphantly return to his team, and then they would call for someone from your team to repeat what Billie just did. It was a great game!
Well, recently God showed me how that children's game was kind of like His church. The idea was God, and Jesus, and the Holy Spirit were a team, a community of 3 that functioned together as One. In fact, oneness was at the heart of their community. What they were doing was calling other folks out, calling them by name to come and try to break through their ranks, capturing hearts. Then they would have that newly captured person join them, join their team, be one with them. Of course, whenever someone new would be called out, they would look for what they thought would be the weakest link, which would be the newest person added to God's team; not realizing just how good the original 3 were at making us all very strong.
So 'red rover, red rover, if God's calling you, it's your turn to come over'.
PJ

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Community Minded

For sometime now, I've been reviewing some notes I have from a lecture I attended this past fall at Willow Creek on community. I been getting my mind and thoughts and heart ready to preach on it. This week I began the process of getting it down to share, and I would like to share one realization I had with you. From the beginning, God has been creating community of Oneness. In fact at the heart of authentic community, is oneness. God instilled in us, because we are created in His image, that need for community, and therefore oneness with those we are in community with. (I hope I am making sense)

OK, now here's the realization. Genesis 2:24 reads, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be untied with his wife, and they will become one flesh." The man leaves his parents and Sib's, his original community, and with his wife re-creates a new family unit, a new community in which they strive for oneness. That verse made so much more sense to me when I saw it in the context of community and oneness. I also realized with a fresh perspective why God hates divorce so much. Because like sin at the fall of mankind, it totally disrupts God's intended design for community, which is oneness with God and each other. Chew on that for a while.

PJ

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Power of Caring Love

I returned to the office today from a 2 day pastoral visit in Boonesboro, MD. There's a sweet elderly lady there who used to attend a church I formerly pastored, that is in a nursing home and was, and maybe still is, in the last stages of life. Her and I connected at a heart level that will forever bind us together - more like a mother/son relationship than a pastor/congregant. A relationship that has taught me a great deal more about living, than I was ever able to teach her about God.
She has gotten quite feeble, and spends a great deal of her time in bed. She needs assistance for almost everything she is required or needs to do. There is one aid there who is particularly 'rough around the edges' whom my friend has taken a special liking to, simply because she could tell this aids life had been tough and she needed someone to care for, just like my friend needs people to care for her, only different - if you catch my drift.
Yesterday, as I sat with my friend she was lamenting to me that she just wasn't sure what else she could do for God. then, in the course of our conversation, this particular aids name came up and my friend told me about a visit she had from her late one night.
The aid came in sat beside her and told about how lonely she was, how much she wanted a family, and how know one seemed to understand her. they talked and wept together for some time- and then my friend prayed for her. Several days later, again late at night, this aid agin crept into my friends room, sat down beside her and gave her a tender kiss on the cheek, thanking her for loving her and for being her friend.
I looked at my feeble, tiny, bedridden friend and asked her if she was aware of the power of God's love through her? No, she could no longer do all the things she used to do; but that certainly didn't mean she was of no use to God or His kingdom. She had touched a life with his love; and then I proceeded to tell her of all the lives I could suddenly think of that she had deeply effected over the years, not by her actions, but by her sweet loving spirit and friendship.
You could almost see the light coming back into her eyes, as new hope filled her heart.

There's a great lesson there for us all. We tend to think it's in the doing for God that we receive our greatest sense of worth. When in truth it's in the loving care for another, even when we're feeble and bedridden and the end of days is in sight.

PJ

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Have No Regrets

Have you ever heard of Men's Fraternity? If not, I highly recommend every guy out there to check it out at http://www.mensfraternity.com/. And if by chance you are fairly new dad, or a soon to be dad, I cannot encourage you strongly enough to do yourself and your child a huge service and get involved somehow and somewhere with Men's Fraternity.

I'm 55 now, and my 3 boys are all grown up, and I am now leading the Men's Fraternity in our church, and so often I learn something that I dearly wish I had known when the 'boys' were still boys. I won't tell you about this weeks lesson; but as I sat here today and prepared, I wept too. I wept for them, for the wounds I inflicted upon their hearts and souls without ever, ever meaning to. Wounds I now see rise to the surface of their lives all too often. Wounds I know will never go away. I love them, and they know that; but that isn't enough to offset the scars I left there. So young men who may happen to read this, please don't do what I did, thinking I was doing right, or at least better. The regrets are too painful.

My prayer for all you dads out there is 3 John 4, 'That you would have no greater joy than to hear that your children live in the truth'. And if by chance you would like to see what a dads sacrificial love really looks like, check out http://www.teamhoyt.com/. Have great 2008.

PJ