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- Tuesday, September 22 - Prayer. Part 2, the practical. Years ago, I was doing the children’s sermon, sitting with all the little ones gathered around me, and I asked them a simple question: how do you pray? Immediately I heard from one, “Now I lay me down to sleep…” From another, “God is great and God is good …” There were other contributions, some silly, some to the point. Then I asked them to show me what it looked like when they prayed. To a child, they folded their hands, bowed their heads and closed their eyes. They were showing me their posture for praying. Continue reading
- Monday, September 21 - Prayer – Part 1 – A Lay-person’s Prayer: It’s the start of another week, and as we consider all that is scheduled or unscheduled, all that we have to do, let’s put all of that aside. Let me use this meditation as a common prayer for all of us, a prayer which hopefully prepares each one of us for the day, and the week ahead. Find a comfortable place to sit, quiet, and get settled in. Focus your mind on the Holy Spirit within, on Jesus, Lord and Savior, and on our great and generous God. Let us begin: Good morning Heavenly Father... Continue reading
- Saturday, September 19 - Peace in the Storm: Peace is knowing that despite the reality of the storm there is a greater reality in the One who can calm the storm. Peace is the tranquility to stand in the storm and know without question that everything will be alright. Peace is knowing that Jesus is in the boat with me. When the rains fall and the winds blow, I can be content just knowing that he is in control. Real peace is attainable only in Christ. There is no security outside of Him, none. Isn’t that beautiful and true? Continue reading
- Friday, September 18 - Storm Praying: The fires, the rain, the wind, and those disasters hit us as a nation. But the Covid-19, the virus, is worldwide. It touches the just and the unjust, with equal power and loss. The following is a poem of meaning by Joan Sedlacek, that appeared in a recent edition of The Evangel, a publication of the Association of Lutheran Churches: The days are alike in their sameness, The rhythm and pattern of life is gone... Continue reading
- Thursday, September 17 - Storms: Driving back from Illinois, late yesterday afternoon, the news was filled with so many disasters, throughout our country. Take your pick; on the west coast, the east coast and the gulf, racial stresses and, of course, the Covid19 is with us in awful supply. I don’t know how many million people are currently displaced by the raging forest fires in the west. And that’s not even the worst part of it. The air quality is not fit to breathe. I think about the long-range affect over days, weeks, months, and probably years for those people, on top of their loss of homes. Continue reading
- Tuesday, September 15 - Capernaum: I don’t think we consider Jesus having a hometown. Our thoughts immediately go to the fact that Jesus was God incarnate, and the whole world, as well as the vast universe, was His “hometown”. But, Capernaum was Jesus’ home town, or home base, for His first year or so in His ministry. He came to Capernaum fresh from His six weeks in the desert and His baptism by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. He may have returned to Nazareth briefly, but the next that we know, historically, is that he arrived in Capernaum, purchased the plot of land and built His house. The best historical records suggest that there were frequent gatherings in His house, including the one where tiles were removed from His roof so that a crippled man could be lowered to Jesus. Continue reading
- Monday, September 14 - Hope: Paul reminds us that though we may be at the end of our rope, we are never at the end of hope! Our perishable bodies are subject to sin and suffering, but God never abandons us. There is a wonderful painting entitled Hope by the English painter George Frederic Watts. It shows a lone blindfolded female figure sitting on a globe, playing a lyre that has only a single string remaining. The background is almost blank, its only visible feature a single star. How does that symbolize hope? Continue reading
- Saturday, September 12 - True Life: Practice, practice, practice. Pro golfer Lee Trevino tells us that the more he practices the luckier he gets. I believe that. I wonder if there is an application here for us? How about this -- In the book of John Jesus tells us “A new covenant I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” I wonder if anyone could love as he loves us without Him in our lives. Think about it, unless we have an intimate relationship with Jesus, I mean every day and every day, how can we possibly understand the fullness of what he is asking us, no, commanding us to do. Practice, practice, practice. Continue reading
- Friday, September 11 - Fear of The Lord: Do you see the thread running through these passages? The presence of the Holy Spirit in each of us, the instruction contained in the Beatitudes, the reassurance, the need to fear God in the sense of reverencing Him, and finally, I am with you always… We need to keep that in mind. We each have concerns about the future. You sometimes wonder, when listening to some of the great classical music composers, whether they really know how to bring a piece to an end. One of the most notorious is Beethoven. Continue reading
- Thursday, September 10 - Me thinks, perhaps, tis’ not sin that bedevils me. (Reading too much Shakespeare?) Said a different way, maybe it’s not sin that causes us to fall short. I wonder if we are confused by the whole concept of sin. Here’s the thing, in 1 Timothy 1:15 the Apostle Paul refers to himself as the worst of sinners, yet I wonder if there are times when I am part of that club. Guilty of sin in the first degree? Then, there’s another part of me that says, wait a minute! Continue reading
- Tuesday, September 8 - Lament: Here’s an old-fashioned Biblical word for you: Lament. Yes, like “Lamentations”, but what does it mean to lament? I thought I had an idea, until I looked it up in my Webster’s. I kind of, sort of was right. Here is what I found: Lament, a mourning, wailing, to feel deep sorrow. To regret deeply. It is also a literary and musical term meant to convey deep sadness. Is that what you thought? Well here’s another definition, or at least a different application. Continue reading
- Monday, September 7. Labor Day - Your Parachute: Charles Plumb was a US Navy jet pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured and spent 6 years in a communist Vietnamese prison. He survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned from that experience! One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, "You're Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!" Continue reading
- Sunday, September 6 - Two days ago, I learned that my sister-in-law and occasional confidante was afflicted with reoccurring cancer. Something happens to a person when you learn that someone very close to you, someone that has had a significant role in your life over the years, is so very ill. It’s as if you are on the verge of missing an important compass point, a source of wisdom. In answer to my request for permission to share her story, she responded with these statements: Continue reading
- Saturday, September 5 - Humble and Kind: I love music! All kinds. It is a rare thing not to have music playing in my home or car, mostly through Pandora, so I get my pick. There are a lot of channels that have Christian music, and some of it is the old familiar hymns that you like to sing. Occasionally, they slip in some good, but contemporary, music that just doesn’t appeal to my ear. Give me Sandi Patti to Jars of Clay, please. Some of the great hymns have been drawn from the Psalms. Continue reading
- Friday, September 4 - Humility and Life: I’m in the process of reading Randy Alcorn’s book, Deadline, where he presents an interesting, intriguing, and stereotype-changing picture of Heaven. In the story, there is a conversation between Zyor, a Heavenly Being, not an angel, and a new arrival in Heaven. Zyor explains that you cannot separate joy from truth, because you cannot fully embrace joy except through truth. Zyor continues, “You come from a world where truth is obscured, shrouded, reinterpreted…where lies are mistaken for truths because a majority believe them, as if ... truth (was) subject to a vote. Men choose to believe certain things because they find them flattering, comfortable, and popular. But truth is seldom any of these..." Continue reading
- Thursday, September 3 - Lost and Found: The young couple stood at the door to the counselor’s office, and asked, ”Can we speak with you?” The counselor smiled and motioned for them to come in. The young man said to his friend, “You tell him.” She, in turn, said to him, in tears, “I can’t, you tell him”, and the story came out. It was a story of loss, loss of innocence. There had been an abortion five years before, at the age of 14, and the young woman was lost, deep in depression and delayed grief over her lost child. By the time the story was fully told, the three were in tears. Continue reading
- Change of Heart - Change of Heart: How do you change a person’s heart? I can understand how someone could change another’s mind with facts and a persuasive argument. But how does one change a person’s heart? Sometimes there is confusion between a mind-set and a heart-set. Both can be difficult to deal with. I suppose that both could cause a breach between friends, depending on the topic or the circumstance. I believe that our mind-set is something over which we have control. Continue reading
- Saturday, August 29 - Happy Birthday! First things first. Happy (Censored)th birthday to my sister, Shirley Davis, in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, a member of this network. Today is her human birthday. I do not know when her Spiritual Birthday occurred, I just know that she had one a long, long, long time ago. Spiritual Birthday. We all have one, you know. That day, some call ‘born again’, is the day we know, with conviction, that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior. The story of Nicodemus is an interesting one. Continue reading
- Friday, August 28 - I Am the Greatest! Alright, who first said that and when? If you said Muhammad Ali you would be almost correct! Cassius Clay made that statement in a comedy album that was released in August 1963, six months before he announced his conversion to Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Ali. I am the greatest! I deserve this! I am entitled to more! Only I can do this! No one is better! In our political world, we will probably hear more of this child-fantasy talk and braggadocio (is that a real word?), to the point where we want to scream. Years ago, I wrote an essay entitled “Disappointment” and a portion fits with this meditation. Continue reading
- Thursday, August 27 - We all have favorite verses from the scriptures. Proverbs 3 is one of mine, and another is this: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplications, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” I am sure that you recognize that is from Philippians 4. How can you be anxious for nothing? Seriously, you start out with that as your goal, not to be stressed or anxious, but too often that peace you aspire to keeps slipping just beyond your reach as the day unfolds. In my pre-retirement years, back when I was working on university and college campuses, I loved my work but to say it was stress or anxiety free, now that would be a stretch. Continue reading
