Joy
I like being happy, it is a good feeling. You just kind of feel better about things, no matter what has been happening a little piece of happiness makes it all better. Joy is not exactly that. Being happy has to deal with our circumstances, with our situation, joy on the other hand does not. For example I am happy when life is going good, I am sad when my life is not. But, if I have joy, then no matter what is going on I have peace in my life. For lack of a better word I am happy that I have life, no matter whether it is going great or not so great. It is this way that we can continually have joy and be rejoicing even in the midst of pain or sorrow.
A long time ago, in the Church of God we had the belief that if you had faith in God you would be physically healed. Period. But then something happened, Charles Naylor a strong leader in the church suffered an unfortunate accident and was not healed. Throughout the ordeal some people said that he must not have faith, or else he would be healed, others, who knew the man that he was, said that the church's understanding must be off. Through it all Naylor showed faithfulness and joy. He was able to persevere no matter the volume of dissent nor the continued pain. May you be able to find that same joy in life's difficulties.
Peace
Stop the War! Stop the War! For God's sake stop the war!
What do those words bring to mind? What is your first reaction? Do you agree? Disagree? Do you even know what I am talking about? I would hazard a guess that you do not, because I am not talking about a war that is fought with guns and bombs. I am talking about the millions of wars that exist in our homes, between husbands and wives, between parents and children, between ourselves and our imperfections or failings. Every time we bring someone down, including ourselves we are going against God's plan for our relationships. As people who are created in God's image we are to embrace and accept people, including ourselves. Peace is more than a cessation of hostilities between countries or people, it is a state of being in harmony even when the things around you are not.
“I have observed that whenever you try to hit somebody, there is a tendency for them to try to hit you back.” -- Charles Schulz by way of Charlie Brown
This is why Jesus commands the responses to hostility in Matthew 5. He knows the best way to diffuse a situation is to act contrary to how people expect. If you repay violence for violence, whether it be physical, emotional, sexual, spiritual, you are going to perpetuate the cycle, after all if you repay violence with violence that person will repay your violence with new violence and so on and so forth. But, if you are willing to turn the other cheek, to pray for them, to give them your shirt and coat, you will have broken the cycle and created peace in the midst of war.
When was the last time that someone did not give you the any leeway, any benefit of the doubt, in a situation? When was the last time that someone expected you to change before you did, when they expected you to grow before you had the time? Do you remember how that felt? How much it hurt? Were the expectations too much too soon?
I think that one of the biggest problems that we as Christians have is our lack of understanding and grace in conjunction with someone's Christian growth process. We often do not allow people to progress at their own speed, we expect them to perhaps magically transform from a person of the world to a instant copy of Jesus at the moment of conversion. The simple fact, is that people need to continue to grow after that point in time, not just before it. We do not become carbon copies of Jesus in an instant, we change in many ways both large and small over the course of our Christian lives, and we have to allow others the ability to do the same. I think that a big part of our problem is that we tend to pigeonhole the term patience into only meaning waiting for something, like the light to change green or our food to arrive at a restaurant, or perhaps for a sermon to end. But it also has to deal with how we deal with people changing and growing around us. May we continually seek God's grace and continually seek to share that same grace with others.
1)
In The Message paraphrase Eugene Peterson translates the word kindness as “a sense of compassion in the heart,” I like that, it seems to convey more than the one word 'kindness.' When I think of kindness I think of taking in a stray dog or picking up a ball kicked out into the street and throwing it back to the kids playing in the yard. At most I think about not being mean to the kid everyone laughs at. But if I think about “a sense of compassion in the heart” I start thinking about empathy and being willing to feel what others feel, instead of being disconnected from the people and situations in our lives. If one sits back and looks at the list of fruit that Paul mentions, not one of them is about the self, they are all about living life in conjunction with others, they bring about a sense of connection that is all too often lost in this world that we live in. So often we move so fast and so much that we barely slow down, let alone take time to look around or to interact with people anymore than we absolutely must in order to accomplish our selected tasks. If we but have “a sense of compassion in our heart” I imagine that the world could look quite a bit different, at least through the lens of our own eyes.
2)
Luke 10:30-37 – The Good Samaritan
I remember a couple years back the idea of 'random acts of kindness' was really in vogue, it was the cool thing to do, you would go around and find something nice to do for someone and you would do it. Most of the time this would be done anonymously, just a nice little gesture for the good of someone else, but also to make yourself feel a little better as well. To some extent its too bad that its cool factor passed, for awhile people actually treated other people well.
When I think about Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan, I often wonder who I would be in the story. Would I be willing to step out of my daily routine to lend a hand to someone in need? Or would I just pass right on by, not caring about the man in the ditch, as long as my life was all right? I like to think that I would stop, that I would see the burning bush and decide to take a little detour, but too often I cross to the other side of the street when it comes to the homeless, and I tend to look the other way when I am stopped at a light with a person holding a sign saying “Need help, food.” What if that was me standing on the corner, or me holding a sign, what if it was Jesus? What do you think he would say to all of us who continually just go on our way? I hope he would continue to say, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” Luke 23:34.
“Let us make (human beings) in our image, according to our likeness”
Genesis 1:26a NKJV
I have to mention what Eugene Peterson uses in The Message again, here instead of the word goodness he says “a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people.” I know that this is a difficult thing for a lot of people to believe, in fact I know a lot of people that believe the exact opposite, that all people are at base evil. While I am not about to say that people are all good all the time, I do believe that the image of God is still visible in people, and by that I mean that we are still 'good'. We may have dashed the fullness of possibility in that concept, but it has not been fully hidden by our sin. It is a testament to the true power of God that his work can overcome the power of sin, even without any help from us. The image of God is still able to be found within people, sometimes you just have to squint a little more. It is easier for me to see the holiness in the wider scope of creation, than it is, sometimes, to see it in human beings, but it is still there. It's why forgiveness is possible, why love is possible, why we can say no to hate, and why we are able to accomplish great things, even in our weakness, because God made us, and made us well.
Dan Clark, in his book Puppies for Sale relays two short stories. In the first one a young boy enters a pet store looking to buy a puppy, in the end he decides on a puppy who is forced to limp because of an injured leg. The store owner tries to talk the boy out of it, saying wouldn't he rather have a healthy puppy. The boy lifts the leg of his pants to reveal a brace and says, “The puppy will need someone who is able to understand.” The second story takes place several years later, and the boy, now a teen, and his puppy, now a dog, are taking a walk. The dog runs along at a normal pace, while the boy still walks slowly. Suddenly the dog leaps out into the road to chase a cat and is hit by a car. The boy races into the street, picks his dog up and runs home, in the process breaking the brace on his leg. When he reaches home he gets his mother and they rush to the animal hospital, there they find out that the dog, while injured will recover. While they are waiting the boy asks his mother how he was able to run home. The mother says that his injury would heal if he would only get out and exercise it. They had been told that the dog suffered from weak hip tendons, but if he was walked daily he would grow into a healthy animal. The boy, striving to help his dog ended up helping himself as well. That is how it is when we are faithful to God and faithful to our friends and family. By helping others grow we are in turn growing alongside.
Gentleness
“for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Matt. 11:29b
In order for us to become gentle I think we probably have to know what it means to be anti-gentle. If a person is not gentle I think we see them as being a harsh person, that they generally deal with people abrasively. This is not to say that people should never be abrasive or harsh, like Jesus in the temple there is a correct time and place for angry feelings to be let loose, but at the same time it means that we deal with people, by and large, with a 'soft touch.' Yet it seems that in today's world gentleness is not something that is highly sought after, after all how much gentleness are we actually confronted with? In addition perhaps the better question that we should be asking is how much gentleness does the world see from us? Are we a people who are gentle, or are we a people who are quick to confront anything that we disagree with? Some of the most confrontational people I know are Christians who believe the only way to introduce someone to Jesus is to make them feel as bad as possible, to make them fearful or weak. May we seek to be a people who are gentle and willing to carry other's loads, not make them feel that their load should be even heavier.
1)
“I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Hebrew 13:5b NKJV
I have a problem. Depending on how you want to look at it, it may or may not be a big problem, but I consider it a problem none-the-less. You see, I love music and movies and video games. When I should spending my time reading or learning or working out or anything else I spend hours just vegging in front of the TV or stereo. When I should be spending my money more wisely, by saving it or giving it to those who need it more than myself, or to some organization that is fighting to end the things in this world that I believe should be ended, I instead spend it on acquiring more CDs, DVDs, and games. I also buy a lot of books, so many that I hardly get a chance to read the ones I buy. I suppose what it all comes down to is a desire to be entertained, to take whatever amount of time I can in order to escape my life, to escape my pain, or the world's. I can put on a CD and zone out, I can put in a movie and pretend that it portrays reality, or that reality could at least be like the movie, I sit down in front of the TV with the controller in my hand and suddenly I am in control, of a character, a team, a whole world and it feels so good. But then I once again think about the things that I should be doing with my life and I realize that it is all a matter of self-control, or lack there of. We all have vices in our lives, things that we use to walk away from the circumstances of our lives, but if we are willing God will help us to do the things that matter and walk away from those things that do not.
2)
Sometimes I think that the difficulty in having self-control is a lack of big picture thinking. So often we reach for the easy enjoyment, the quick fix. We live in a world that is so often about instant gratification (drugs, alcohol, sex, entertainment, etc.), and this desire causes us to constantly look at the here and now. While it is important to not dwell on the future too much, after all Jesus does say (Matt. 6:34) something about tomorrow having enough worry for itself, so that we should only worry about today, at the same time though we can not only live for today. I greatly enjoy the musical Rent, I resonate with its call to love others above everything else, and about the strong need for connections within 'an isolating age,' but its rallying cry of 'No Day But Today' has the possibility of over-riding any long range vision. Without some idea of what we want to accomplish tomorrow, how do we strive to lay aside the momentary pleasure for the long-term positives. You might be thinking that this not only would mean having self-control over our desires but also requiring a great deal of patience, and you would be right. The fruit of the spirit are intertwined, each requiring the others in order to be truly successful. The same can be said for the Church which is the Body of Christ, without each other we can never be what God wants us to be. May we let the fruit invade us and intertwine us together.
Peace and Love,
Pastor K
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