Red Letters/Black Letters: The State of the Blog: An Interlude

Well friends, as you know by now we are nearing the end of this little adventure that we began 6 months ago. There are now only 11 entries left in my Sayings of Jesus devotional.

As you also know this blog started off being every day of the week and then after some months of that and a month of nothing we moved to five days a week, giving both you and myself the weekend off.

Now, we are coming to the end.

But we are not at the end yet, because I am taking a Holiday break from the blog. I have no desire to write entries on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, so we are going on a two week hiatus, with the last 11 entries beginning on January 5, or 4 depending on the exact moment I post.

As I say, we are coming to the end.

To that end I have been giving this blog some thought. Will it just languish somewhere between my fingers and your eyes? Will anyone randomly find this blog and start the whole 135 day journey some other day? What if anything do I want to do in connection with this blog? Will I miss the journey? Is there another journey to take?

Hence I have decided that I am not quite ready to give up my examination of the things Jesus has to say. I am, though, ready to give up such a strict schedule of 7 or 5 days a week. So...our 135 day journey will begin again on January 5 and end on January 19, at that point this blog will go dark again for two weeks.

Beginning the first week of February, exact day to still be determined, this blog will go weekly as we begin a new journey looking at one parable of Jesus's each week. This new journey will be more in depth than the first 135 entries, hence the weekly schedule as opposed to daily. That journey should last us around 30 weeks, we'll see where we go from there.

I hope these entries have been worthwhile for you, they have been for me.

I hope the parable journey excites you and you join me for the ride.

Until January 5, I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Peace and Love,
Pastor K

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 124: To be more than human

"These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." John 16:33

In the previous sentence Jesus talks about how his disciples are about to abandon him and then here he tells them to have peace. I don't know about you,, but I'm pretty sure if I knew my closest friends were about to betray and abandon me wishing them peace would not be high on my list of priorities. Yet here is Jesus wishing them peace. Then Jesus goes on to tell them that this world is full of tribulations but that they can be joyous because Jesus has overcome the world. 

There are so many ways that Jesus has overcome the world, but for this moment I want to talk about only one way it is true, and it has everything to do with his ability to wish his friends/betrayers peace.

It is very natural to not wish them peace, our world carries tribulations and among those tribulations is our inane attachment to anger and vengeance. We react in anger to anger. We react toward violence with violence. We shun those who have shunned us. We hate those who have hurt us. We do this because we are, after all, merely human. Jesus on the other hand calls us to be a little more than human. Jesus calls us to attach the divine to our humanity, to allow access of our hearts and minds and souls to the very one who crafted our hearts and minds and souls. 

Jesus calls us to salvation. At base salvation is a redirecting of our being from an inward thrust to an outward thrust. Salvation is changing our eyesight and changing our heart-sight. With this new sight we can look at those who act in anger or vengeance and see them as God sees them, and we can look at those who shun and hurt and see them as God sees them. It does not take away their actions or the repercussions of those actions, but it bends how we see them. If we let God begin to remold us we will no longer react as we are acted upon, beginning reconciliation at the point of destruction. 

It is not easy to care for those who hurt us. It is not easy to show grace to those who show violence. It is not easy to accept those who have shunned us. It is not easy, nor will it be popular. Those who show grace are often referred to as cowards. Those who choose peace over violence are often called weak. Those who turn the other cheek are criticized. But, we can once again react in caring, graceful ways to this group of people as well, repopulating the world with more love instead of more hate.

+ How have you reacted with love and grace in the face of anger/violence/pain/being shunned?

+ How has God worked on your heart, mind, soul since you began to follow Jesus? 

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 123: God the Sustainer

"However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; 

for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; 

and He will tell you things to come." John 16:13

I believe in God the Creator, the Redeemer and the Sustainer. I was going to say that I understand the Creator and the Redeemer but that the Sustainer is still a mystery to me, which in truth is only one third true, all three aspects of God are a mystery to me. I like to think that isn't true, I like to think that I have a firm grasp of God the Creator and God the Redeemer, i.e. Jesus, but in reality I do not. There is a story of St. Augustine that speaks of trying to understand the trinity as likely as moving the ocean into a small hole, the truth being that God is so much bigger than our human minds can take in. So while I like to think I grasp two aspects of the trinity, I really grasp none. I can only tell you what I believe.

When it comes to God the Sustainer, i.e. the Holy Spirit, i.e. the Holy Ghost, I believe that God speaks to us still. God speaks to our hearts, our souls, our dreams, our churches. God speaks in new ways to new people in new times and new places, enhancing our knowledge of God and ourselves and our world. God speaks in subtle ways, only perceptible for those with "ears to hear." God speaks into our situations and into our communities, and usually we only realize it in hindsight. I also believe that God the Sustainer works in the world still. God helps to guide us if we want to be guided. God works things out in our lives that we allow God to work out. I believe that God the Sustainer sustains us. When we are weak God gives us strength to carry on. When we are in cast about God gives us peace. When we are helpless God provides the help. Again, God work in us is only perceptible for those with "eyes to see"

+ What is your understanding of God the Sustainer?

+ When in your life can you point to as a time when God spoke, worked, or sustained you?

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 122: The Chicken or the Egg

"You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in my name He may give you." John 15:16

I grew up in a hymnal church, I don't think the church ever sang a "modern" worship song until I was in college. I grew up in a hymnal church and I loved hymns, still do for that matter. I grew up in a hymnal church and I hated the song O, How I Love Jesus. I had no problem with the verses, but I could not stand the chorus, it bothered me to no end that the reason we loved Jesus was because he first loved us. I thought, and still think for that matter, that it is not a good enough reason to love Jesus, it might be a good enough reason to think about loving Jesus, maybe even a good enough reason to begin loving Jesus, but it is not a good enough reason to still love Jesus. 

You see, my big problem was the word "because," to me it implies that it is the main, or perhaps only reason. And that drove [drives] me crazy. Do we love our parents because they first loved us? Do we choose our spouse because they loved us first? If not, and I am pretty sure the answer is no, then why is it all right to love Jesus because he first loved us? 

Now, all of that still bugs me, but I have begun to look at the song a little differently. Perhaps the author thought of the above verse when thinking about the song. Perhaps they thought of "because" meaning that since Jesus first loved us it opened the door to us loving him. Perhaps they thought, 'Well Jesus chose us, and because of that we can choose him,' that I may be able to get behind. It makes sense to me that the only way that we can love Jesus is because he chose to love us first, but that doesn't make it our reason for loving him. 

I may be quibbling over insignificant definitions, but to me it makes a difference. Because we don't have to love Jesus. We can choose, and many do, to not love Jesus. To me this says that while Jesus's love for us did indeed open the door to the possibility of us loving him, it doesn't compel us to, nor is it the reason for when we do.

+ Did that make any sense? ;)

+ Why do you love Jesus?

Red Letters/Black Letters: Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 121: Lord and/or Friend

"No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you." John 15:15

Everything that Jesus heard from God he told the disciples, and we have a lot of it in the Gospels, so why do we not listen to it? Sunday morning I talked a little bit about how we often forget the cross in the midst of the manger, but even more often we forget the time in between all the time. I am roughly 14 posts away from being done with this blog, at least as far as daily posts go, and one of the things I will miss is the daily wrestling with what Jesus taught. It has reminded me over and over again how far we, as individuals and as a corporate church, still have to go. It has been almost 2000 years since the cross and we still tend to mess things up more than we fix them up.

I say we above because it is all of us. Even the best of us need to step it up, and I am by no means the best of us, I have as much to work on as anybody [not that I really need to tell any of you that actually know me].

One of the things I think we need to work on is realizing how we relate to God. In John 15 Jesus attempts to get it through the thick heads of the disciples that they are not servants, but friends, it is a lesson that we would be well advised to learn as well. I am pretty sure that we haven't covered it in these entries [121 is hard to keep track of] but in Matthew 7:21 & 23 Jesus says "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord.' shall enter the kingdom of heaven...And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you...'" Among other things, I wonder if part of it is Jesus saying that we never knew him, that we never understood his purpose, his teaching, his love, his friendship. We so often call him Lord with no understanding of what our relationship to him is. Jesus is our Lord but he is also our friend, and if we fail to understand that, then we don't really know him at all.

+ Who is Jesus to you?

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 120: Sacrifice without ceasing

"Greater love has no one than this, then to lay down one's life for his friends." John 15:13

You may have visions of heroic sacrifice, dying in the place of another, honor and glory, let me stop you right there. While Jesus's words may lead to that place ultimately there are a million small steps between living a life of selfish desires and literally giving your life for another, yet we take the easy way out and only think about this verse in very large, ultimate, terms. As followers of Jesus we are to lay our lives down for the people in our lives, usually without shedding a drop of blood. Laying your life down is a lot more complicated than dying.

To lay down your life is to consider the other more important than the self.

To lay down your life is to believe that the well-being of the other promotes the well-being of all.

To lay down your life is to walk in the other's shoes so that you can understand their decisions without condemning their actions.

To lay down your life is to bite your tongue when the words that you would speak would lower the other.

To lay down your life is to stand between the other and danger, physical, emotional, mental, spiritual.

To lay down your life is to take a smaller portion of what is yours (time, money, space, etc.) so that the other may have more than the world give them.

To lay down your life is to put aside personal preference for the good of the other.

If we can lay down our lives in every moment, whether or not we can in the big moment will not be a question.

+ Fill in the blank: To lay down your life is to _________________________

+ In what ways do you need to work on laying down your life?

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 119: Love as Loved

"This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." John 15:12

In my opinion the churches main stumbling block is our inability to answer what at first glance seems like a very simple question but is in fact a very complicated one.

What does it mean to love?

Part of the problem stems from the fact that we have taken four words from the Ancient Greek language (agape, eros, philia, storge) that mean different forms of love and have often times translated them as love.

Another part of the problem is that we often try to relate the Love of God to the Justice of God, as opposed to the Justice of God to the Love of God. It is a matter of some debate which point we should start with, but whichever side we fall on changes things drastically.

A third part of the problem is we add different words to love to define how our love looks: tough love, sacrificial love, foolish love, etc.

A fourth part of the problem is that the world also defines love in a myriad of ways, often in stark contrast to how the church defines it.

A fifth part of the problem is that when the world and the church differ in their definitions the church often uses unloving ways of correction, or more drastically perhaps there are times the world loves better than the church does.

The solution? We are not meant to define love, we are meant to love like Jesus loved.

How did Jesus love? Every moment of every day Jesus gave himself to everyone who was in need of him. What if we did the same?

+ How well do you love like Jesus?

+ Is that even something you try to do?

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 118: The end of the vine trilogy

"By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be my disciples." John 15:8

A recap: Jesus is the vine and we are branches. By being connected to Jesus we can have life, at the same time if we are not connected we will die, though we will mostly keep breathing. We can choose to be connected or choose to not be connected. If we choose connection our lives will be better because we will bear fruit, Jesus's words will change our hearts and our relationships, and our prayers will be answered because of a shift from selfish to unselfish natures.

Today we will look a little closer at something that we have already said, "We will bear fruit: people will be reached and loved and learn to love in return. Through our connection the whole world can be impacted, not to fill up church pews but to increase the quotient of love in the world and to decrease the quotient of hate."

Long, long ago in a land far, far away God made a promise to a guy named Abram, telling Abram that he would be a blessing to the entire world. As Christians we believe that this promise was finally fulfilled in the person of Jesus, but I don't think that is the final word on the matter. If you have been following these posts you will know that I have mentioned that we are called to be Jesus's hands and feet, we are supposed to be his body in the here and now. If that is the case, then God's promise to Abram continues on in our lives, we continue Jesus's blessing to the world, or at least we should be.

Jesus walked a very small portion of this planet; whereas his followers have walked every corner of the globe. Jesus spoke to a very small portion of the population, even in his day, and all of those people spoke the same language that he did and had a background very similar to his own; whereas his followers have the power to speak to people in every language to people of backgrounds and nationalities vastly different than their own. Through our connection the whole world can be impacted. Let's rephrase that, we will impact the whole world, the question is will we be living the connection when we impact them?

+ How have you impacted the world around you, for yourself or for God?

+ Do you believe that you are a part of something greater than yourself?

p.s. if I had looked ahead I would have realized that this was going to be a trilogy, as opposed to three entries on roughly the same topic, which is not really a trilogy at all

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 117: To flower is to bloom is to reach beyond

"I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, 

bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing." John 15:5

an aside: there is a difference in talking about what you believe in a positive light as opposed to talking about what you believe in the negative light of what someone else believes

Here Jesus lets us know that we have a choice, we can choose to abide in him or to not abide in him. As we looked at yesterday to not abide means to be cut off, to be a dead stick on the ground. We die as in we lose life and purpose, but we do not lose breath. I think that is an important point in conjunction with the end of this verse where Jesus says that without him we can do nothing. In strict language that is not true, we can accomplish quite a lot without Jesus, to deny that is to deny our eyes and experiences. There are a whole host of people who accomplish great things while never believing in Jesus or in God at all. We have been created to be amazing, and we can be with or without God. We can be the best dead stick on the ground.

On the other hand, if we choose to remain in Jesus we can be something more. By being connected to that which is greater than ourselves we thus become greater ourselves. In the next couple verses we are told that if we remain in Jesus 3 things will happen to us: we will bear fruit, Jesus's words will remain in us, and our prayers will be answered. These three things are the something that we can only do completely being connected.

1) We will bear fruit: people will be reached and loved and learn to love in return. Through our connection the whole world can be impacted, not to fill up church pews but to increase the quotient of love in the world and to decrease the quotient of hate.

2) His words will remain in us: we will constantly be made better. We will be better friends, better siblings, better parents, better children, and ultimately better disciples. With or without belief we can be improved, but we will never reach the true potential of what a human can be.

3) Our prayers will be answered: if we are in the vine then the things we ask will be for the betterment of the Kingdom of God and the people around us. By aligning ourselves to Jesus we lose our selfish desires, lose our selfish attitudes, and lose our selfish prayers our desires then become Kingdom desires, our attitudes, Kingdom attitudes, and our prayers, Kingdom prayers.

+ Do you agree that you have been improved since you began to believe in Jesus?

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 116: To Flower or to Die

"I am the true vine and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit." John 15:1-2

Let's break this beast down, shall we?

The first thing to understand is that Jesus is the vine and we are the branches, duh. What that means though is that since Jesus is the vine he is both our reason for life and our ability to have life. A branch on its own is a dead stick on the ground, in order for that branch to fulfill its purpose it must be connected to the vine and when it is connected to the vine it can not only live but be a conduit for more life.

That last bit is rather important, while we are connected to the vine we reach out from the life that is given to us in order to bring life to others. By being connected to Jesus we can blossom and bring beauty. Apart from Jesus we can not. Apart from Jesus we will still breath in and out and still live our lives but we will never truly be alive and we will not be able to give life to others.

By being disconnected from the vine we are disconnected from our true potential and our true purpose and our true power. From the moment of disconnection we are only capable of what we are capable of on our own, we are a stick on the ground and we can be the best stick on the ground that we can be but we will never be anything but a stick on the ground. You may well be okay being a really good dead stick, but I want a little more.

If we continue to be connected and we share the life given to us with others we will move into a period of being pruned. To prune means to cut back a little bit of the growing portion to make way for new and better growth, we are pruned to produce more. No matter how long we are connected to the vine God understands that we are not yet perfected and that there are aspects of our lives that need removed so that we can produce even more for life and love for others.

Jesus gives us the secret ingredient to what we can truly be, connection. If we stay connected we can be a part of something bigger than ourselves as opposed to just being a really good dead stick.

+ How do you keep connected to Jesus?

+ What examples can you point to in your life of how your purpose and potential has grown by being connected?

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 115: Change us that you may change the world

"Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives, do I give to you. 

Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." John 14:27

This week the Advent candle was the candle of peace, now here we find ourselves with a verse on peace. In a way it's ironic, because the world, while in the midst of the holiday season, is decidedly non peaceful. Us Christians are about to celebrate that pivotal moment in world history where we believe God stepped out of the beyond and into the world in the form of a little baby, yet we are as divided right now as we possibly ever have been, at least here in America. We are divided among racial line. We are divided among sexual lines. We are divided politically. We are divided socially. We are divided by our various interpretation of scriptures. We are divided by our preferences inside the walls of our sanctuaries. We are divided and in this time of waiting and preparation we are incapable of seeing beyond our differences to the spot that connects us all, or rather the one that connects us all, Jesus. We can't seem to agree on that point of connection because we seem to each believe in a different Jesus. How messed up is that?

This Advent season I hope to remake the place Jesus has in my heart and in my life, to widen his space and shrink mine a little in order that he may live more in me and more in this world. The world needs the peace that Jesus offers and I need that same peace because I am a part of this world.

There are no questions today, but if you agree that the world needs more of what Jesus offers then I would ask you to pray the following prayer, and in the chorus of our voices the Lord may hear our prayer and begin to work anew in our lives and in this world.

A Prayer: Jesus, the one and only, We beseech you in this moment to shine again on us poor beggars at your door. We beseech you to open our eyes and our ears and our minds and our hearts and our souls to the love that you commanded us to show so that others would know whom we serve. We beseech you to once again pour out your peace among us, that our hearts may be not troubled and that we might not be afraid. We ask these things not for our own good, but for the good of your people and your world that lives may be changed by the touch of your peace and your presence. Make your dwelling place among the people and help us to spread your love to every corner of darkness. Amen and amen.

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 114: To pray as if you were Christ

"And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 
If you ask anything in My name, I will do it." John 14:13-14

Derek Webb has this song titled The Spirit Vs. The Kick Drum which contains the lyric "I don't want the Father, I want a vending machine." That, all too often, is where we find ourselves, wanting God to be a vending machine, or perhaps more seasonally appropriate, Santa Claus. It is my belief that we often get there because we misinterpret passages like this one, reading it for face value and thinking "If I just add 'In Jesus's name' I will get what I pray for." Unfortunately this mindset is at times exasperated by the local Christian ghetto, I mean bookstore, take the wildly popular book The Prayer of Jabez from a while back. Here was a book that posited that the reason this one verse was in the Bible was due to the fact that if you prayed a prayer from the Book of Chronicles, of all places, you would get what you want in life.

Our rational brain tells us this isn't true, I am sure that you, like me, have prayed more prayers that weren't answered the way you wanted them to be than you have prayed that were answered the way you wanted, but inevitably we often just go back hoping that this time God will do exactly what we want. As I said, the problem is interpretation, isn't it always? The question we need to ask in conjunction with this particular verse is, what does it mean to 'ask anything in My name'? [Spoiler alert: it is not adding 'In Jesus's name' to the end of prayers] I believe that it means that we need to pray like we are attempting to live, 

The apostle Paul says that it is no longer he who lives but it is rather Christ who lives in him, the same is true for those of us who attempt to follow Jesus. If Christ is living in us then our lives need to reflect his life, our actions reflect his actions, our words reflect his words, and...our prayers reflect his prayers. If Jesus is our example then our prayers should be aimed at wanting God's will to breakthrough to this place. If Jesus is our example then our prayers should be about the needs of others as opposed to our wants. If Jesus is our example then even when we ask for things that we would like to see happen we should always surround them with, 'not my will but thine.'

+ Do you pray like Jesus?

+ What gets you in the vending machine, Santa Claus mindset?

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 113: Are we loving the rules or following the rule of love?

"If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and my Father will love him, 

and We will come to him and make Our home with him." John 14:23

It's interesting, isn't it, that how well we follow Jesus, in his mind, depends on how well we love Jesus. It's interesting, but as I sit here it makes total sense to me. Are you married or dating? If you are this should make sense to you. Are you a devoted child or parent? If you are this should make sense to you. Are you a really good friend? If you are this should make sense to you. Are you a total loner without connections? You may be a bit foggy right now.

When you love someone it does things to you, it changes your views, or in the words of Rob and Kristen Bell, it changes your center of gravity. In their book The Zimzum of Love they discuss how when you begin to care for someone else your whole world begins to shift towards them, no longer do you just care about yourself but you are beginning to be concerned about their well being as much as, or more than, your own. It's a simple, yet profound truth, when you love someone what they want matters to you. They are speaking of marital love, but the same is true in any love relationship, and it is especially true when we are talking about love of Jesus.

Loving Jesus causes us to begin to see the world as Jesus sees it. Loving Jesus causes us to begin to interact with the world the way Jesus wants us to. Loving Jesus causes us to begin to live in the world the way Jesus lived in it. We can love God and neighbor and enemy well only when we love Jesus well, and by loving more and loving well we keep Jesus's word better.

Too often we in the church seem to shift the focus away from 'loves Me' and onto the 'keeping My word' part; we give out a list of rules and tell people if you really want to be a part of our group this is how you should and should not act. In reality we should be telling people this is how you should and should not love. Their is a huge gulf between looking out for your own interests and compassion, between the holy huddle and inclusion, between hatred and equality, between following the rules and loving the savior.

+ How is your love for Jesus connected to living and loving like him?

+ Where have you traditionally focused, on the love or the rules?

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 112: Putting the Bible back together again

"I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me." John 14:6

Sometimes I hate verse delineations. In fact, there are times when I wish I could travel back in time and have a little chat with Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, who decided that the Bible should be broken into verses and if not punch him, at least flick him in the ear or stick my tongue out at him. I can understand his reasoning, it is easier to find a chapter and verse than a random sentence in the 1000 plus pages of the Bible, but still... there are times when I feel we lose things by dividing the Bible into verses. I usually point to John 3:16 & 17 which in essence is one compete thought broken up into two. I find the same problem here in John 14, we take verse 6 and quote it a lot more than verse 7, which explains what Jesus means by 'no one comes to the Father except through me.'

"If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; 

and from now on you know Him and have seen Him." John 14:7

Jesus's point is that we can now gain access to God because we now know what God is like, if you see Jesus you see God. If you see love, there is love. If you see healing, there is healing. If you see forgiveness, there is forgiveness. If you see compassion, there is compassion. If you see grace, there is grace. Before the manger and the cross and the time in between we had to rely on second hand accounts, long ago stories, history written by the winners. Since the manger and the cross and the time in between we have the words and actions of Jesus to remind us of who God is.

Through the lens of Jesus we can interpret everything that we have traditionally believed about God, does it match up to the example that Jesus showed? Through the lens of Jesus we can interpret our thoughts on God, do they match up with what Jesus spoke? Through the lens of Jesus we can interpret everything we experience about God, does it match up with how Jesus lived? Through the lens of Jesus we can interpret the whole of scripture, is there anything that goes in direct conflict with Jesus? [A fourfold look for my Wesleyan Quadrilateral peeps.]

+ What chapter/verse delineations do you have trouble with?

+ How has reading the Gospels changed your view on God, scripturally, traditionally, experientially, rationally?

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 111: The End is Hopeful

"In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. 

I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, 

I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also." John 14:2-3

There are people who talk of heaven as if it will be this exclusive country club for the limited few. There are people who read Revelation and can give you an exact number, never mind that it is a symbolic one. There are people who want heaven to be limited, only people like them will be there, only the ones who went to the church with the same sign over the door that they went to. There are people who only want people of their political persuasion there. There are people who only want people of their own skin color there. There are people who only want people who speak their language there. There are a multitude of people who hope that there is not a multitude of people there.

The truth, all of those people couldn't be more wrong. There is no church with a monopoly on heaven. No skin color that is better than another. No country that gets special treatment. Heaven will be purple, not red, not blue. Heaven will be a place of diversity, which is how it should be.

There are people who talk about Jesus's second coming as if the purpose of it is to draw a line in the sand between the worthy and the unworthy. There are people who see Jesus's return as a time for judgment. There are people who think of hell with a glint in their eye. There is a multitude of people who hope that Jesus wipes out a multitude of people.

The truth, once again, couldn't be more wrong. Jesus isn't coming back for a horror movie sequence. Jesus isn't coming back to kick the nonbelievers down a notch. Jesus says why he is coming back in these two verses, he's coming back to take us where he already is. Jesus is coming back to gather people to him, to reform his family. To take those who are rightfully his to the place that is rightfully theirs. Will there be judgement, yes. What form will that judgement take? I don't know, but I believe that God's judgment is for the good of us, not the destruction of us.

+ Do you believe that Jesus is preparing a place for you?

+ Do you believe that Jesus will return to gather his flock back to himself?

Red Letters/Black Letters: Day 110: An Untroubled Heart?

"Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me." John 14:1

It has been a bit since my last entry, because life has taken a few turns, some expected (Thanksgiving) and some not (hospital stay for my mother-in-law and a hospital visit for myself.) Needless to say it has been a little difficult to sit down and think about this verse in any sense of depth. My heart has been anything but 'not troubled'. Thanks to my hospital stay and the medicine associated with its recovery my sleeping has been erratic which when combined with a 2 year old has made me for an unhappy camper the past four days or so. Luckily I only have one more day of pills and then maybe, hopefully, prayerfully, please dear baby Jesus I will get back to my normal sleep (which in itself is not the greatest).

As I say, my heart has not been untroubled, and I'm sure you have been there, perhaps you are there now, and I don't know about you, but Jesus commands to be untroubled or unworried are the commands I have the hardest time with. I was not always like this, there was a time when I would have said that I had a 'no worries' kind of life, those days are further and further in the rearview. Nowadays I find that I believe in Jesus, I believe in his teachings, I believe in his mission, but I find it hard to believe that I need not worry, that my heart can actually be untroubled. And I think that, that is all right.

Jesus is not a simple guy to follow, many of his commands the best of us [and I am not including myself in that plural] have a hard time following. We are commanded to love our neighbors and our enemies and we don't want to. We are told to love God with all of our being and we stretch our love thin over a wide area. We are told to care for widows and orphans yet we don't want to fund the government programs that would do it, nor do we want the church to actively participate in their troubles. We are told to lift up our cross and lay down our life daily and we lay down the cross and lift up our lives instead. We are not perfect, and I think that, that is all right.

Have you ever realized that we are called to follow Jesus, not actually be Jesus? Over and over again Jesus called for people to follow him, and following does not equal being, because frankly we have a hard enough time following. Advent is upon us, a time of preparation, a time when we wait for the coming of Jesus into our world and into our hearts. This advent may you prepare a new place for Jesus to enter, it won't be a perfect place, but I think that, that is all right.

+ How is your heart, troubled or untroubled?

+ How can you move it to the untroubled side of the equation?

+ How will you prepare a place for Jesus this advent season?