Sally will be minister in concert. Come and worship the Lord!
Shepherd of the Valley, Logan, OH
Beth Messiah, Loveland, OH
Laying Down The Sword
I have been thinking back to when I used to fight with my dad all the time. Our arguments could go as long as 4 hours—literally. I clocked it a couple times. By that I mean I happened to look at the time when we sat down starting to talk, and again when I got up and it was over. Minutes and then hours flew by because all the anger I had accumulated from past wrongs—real and perceived—had reached a maximum saturation point and just came spilling out of me with the least provocation.
Such are the times we are living in. It is my observation that objective truth—as much as we are capable of recognizing it—has very little weight in this season. What matters to so many is the emotional truth—the wrongs and injustices done, both real and perceived that, having not been adequately addressed have accumulated over years.
He only had to speak one small statement I disagreed with
It was the same with my dad and I. He only had to speak one small statement I disagreed with, and it would trigger all the previous words and injustices, real and perceived. I could never get my fill of hurting him back verbally for all the times he hurt me and my brother with his rage, creating complete fear and distrust.
Experiencing God
I am facilitating a group from our church in a study called Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby. We are about 3 weeks away from finishing the workbook which takes about 13 weeks in total. I have probably engaged this study myself and with others possibly 14-15 times now over the last 25 years. It is an awesome study! One might even say—life-changing!
Everything up until this point has been about our individual walk with God, but recently we start on Unit 10, which is about the church—in essence a community of believers. And once again I am so profoundly struck by how far away we are from the prayer Jesus prayed—and I think is still praying—in John 17, that we would be one as He and the Father are one, because this, in fact, is our witness to the world that Jesus was sent by the Father.
Paying respect to the letter of the law, but ignoring the spirit.
What I see instead is our fleshly passions heating up over what and who we think is “right” and what and who we think is “wrong.” I grew up with an understanding of the right and wrong my parents taught me, along with a complete set of Encyclopedia Brittanica in their very impressive hardback bindings with a special bookshelf just for them. Everything was included in those books—or so it seemed. But a few years ago I sold them, because knowledge and information has changed so drastically over these last few years that much of what they had to offer seemed outdated. And so, too, our understanding of right and wrong. So small and so limited, so very flawed, much like the Pharisees. Paying respect to the letter of the law, but ignoring the spirit.
The God Who Sees
I remember reading Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl several years ago. In it he shared some of his experiences in one of the death camps during the Holocaust. At the core of what he was saying was the idea that most of those who survived the camps were people who had a purpose or reason to live. They had something—or someone—to come back to or live for.
I think of our all too human need to attain some significance in this life and the great longing to know that we matter—that we are seen and our lives are not in vain.
And then I consider Hagar. She was not the classically chosen mother of the promise God gave Abraham. She was the woman Sarah put in the arms of her husband Abraham out of fear and doubt that God might not fulfill His promise to give Abraham an heir that would actually come from
“You are the God who sees me.”
Sarah’s womb. And even in that reckless choice of Sarah’s, God was gracious to Hagar and brought Abraham his son, Ishmael. When I first learned this story in full, after coming to faith, the conclusion I drew from it was that Sarah became impatient and tried to fulfill God’s promise on her own in a cultural context.
30
It was a hot-and-bush-was-burning day
When God said Moses look my way
You got to travel home and tell Pharaoh
Let my people go, oh no
Let my people go
Early this morning the ministry received an email from a woman requesting permission to use the lyric from our song Improbable People for Impossible Tasks. Two things about this request stuck out to me. First, we don’t often get these kinds of emails, asking permission to use a lyric or a song for something special—only now and then. Second, and more importantly, her email came the day before the 30th anniversary of our ministry, Improbable People Ministries.
There are moments in life when everything changes…
Coincidence? I think not.
Congregation Yeshuat Tsion, Denver, CO
Roeh Israel, Denver, CO
Roeh Israel, Denver, CO
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