Lost and Found

When I worked in public schools as a school teacher and counselor, we always had a "Lost and Found" box in the school office.  It was usually underneath a cabinet somewhere and when a sweater or shoes or jewelry came into the office and no one claimed it, those items were placed in that box in hopes that the owner would show up and claim them.  Many times, items would remain in the box until the school year ended and then if no one claimed them they would be donated to a charity or given away to anyone who wanted them.   Sometimes there would be some really nice items in the box, things that people would surely want to find but for some reason no one came forward to claim them so the things would find a new home somewhere else.

Jesus told parables about things that were lost.  This week we will think about a lost coin that a woman lost in her house and she could not be satisfied until she had swept the house and searched carefully.  When she finally found the coin, then she called her neighbors and told them the good news so they could rejoice with her.  Another parable is about a lost sheep that a shepherd lost, one of 100, but the shepherd that one was so important that he would leave 99 sheep behind to go out and search for the one that was lost.  He also would call his neighbors and friends and tell them about his find so that they could rejoice with him.

In both parables, Jesus sums them up with "there is joy in heaven" over one person who repents and finds his way even though there are many who have never been lost.  The angels in heaven rejoice when this happens.

Many people are lost and do not realize it.  They go through life and live each day but there is a feeling that something is missing and they do not know what it is.  They think that life is mostly complete but in the course of a day there is always a moment when they realize that a gap exists in their life.  They are lost in the sense that something needs to be added and they do not know what it is.  Many times people will describe their lives as "like a jigsaw puzzle with one piece missing".  They cannot put their finger on what it is but they know something is not right.

Jesus' parables about things that are lost and found emphasize that God is constantly looking for us.  When we are like that lost sheep, he values us so much that he will leave everyone else behind just to find us.  When we are like that lost coin, he will search everywhere to locate us and not be satisfied until we are found.  When finally we are located, then God send out the call for everyone to rejoice because finding a lost one is reason enough for a celebration.

We are so valuable to God that God will not give up on us.  God will keep looking until we can be found and then when finally we are in God's view, He comes running down the road to meet us as he sees us in the distance.....oh, that is another parable.  We will save that one for next week.

Busy People are Happy People

"Whatever your hands find to do, do with your might..." (Ecclesiastes 9:10a)

When I was a school teacher, I always thought it was best to keep my students busy, to give them enough work to do so that they would not have a lot of extra time to just sit and decide for themselves how to use that extra time.  Some students could finish their work and have extra time for their own activities and they knew how to occupy themselves.  Other students, however, did not know what to do with themselves if they had a block of time to use as they desired.  Invariably, these last students would get into some mischief or cause a disturbance to happen if they were left to their own devices.  Sometimes, students would complain to me that their workload was too great.  I would pull out the old motto that I use as the title to this post, "Busy people are happy people, and I want to be sure that you are happy."  Usually they would only sigh and frown at my attempt to be funny and return reluctantly to the work that I had given them.

I knew teachers who gave what they called "busy work" to students who finished their assignments.  That "work" usually was pages to be colored or word hunts that had nothing to do with the content of any assignments.  Many students recognized that such paperwork was only used to keep them busy and out of trouble.  I had a third grade student tell me once that she hated coloring because she had to do so much of it during her earlier years of school.  Extra work given to students had to have meaning in order for their to be the incentive for students to complete the assignment.

I think that the writer of Ecclesiastes was telling his contemporaries that there is plenty to be done in this world if we only take the time to look around and identify what is needed and then to set about doing the task at hand.  There are jobs that need completion everywhere and many times we are just the one to do the task at hand.  Either we have the right skills or sufficient energy or a unique talent that can be used to do what is required.  Sometimes it only takes a willingness to serve in order to qualify one for a task.

I love it when people volunteer to do things that they see needs doing.  I love for someone to ask if they can do a job that needs doing because they saw that it was unfinished or had never been begun.  Sometimes a person will simply identify a need but will not make an effort to get the job done.  Volunteering to do the job that has been identified (if one has the skills to accomplish it) brings a task to completion quickly.  The writer of Ecclesiastes would agree, I think, that if you find a job that needs doing, then volunteer to do it so that the problem will be solved.

This Sunday I will be talking to the kids during our Children's Sermon about how all of us in the church should work together.  There is a kid's song we will sing at the conclusion of the Children's Sermon.  It is called, "When We All Pull Together".  It is an old song I learned when I was a child.  Each person has to have a partner and they hold hands while looking at one another and then pull in rhythm with both hands.  The song says, "When we all pull together,  how happy we'll be.  For my work is your work and our work is God's work, when we all pull together, how happy we'll be."

In God's Kingdom, there is not "my work" or "your work" but there is only "our work" because "our work" is truly "God's work."  When we are enlisted in working for God, then we do not care who gets the credit for doing the work.  We only want the job to be accomplished so that the outcome will be one of love and grace and peace for all in God's world.

Busy hands are happy hands.....as are busy people.  Stay busy, stay focused, stay alert to what is around you so that you can recognize what God would have you to do for God's Kingdom today.

Where's the weed killer?

I am presenting a seven week sermon series about the Parables of Jesus.  Last week we looked at the parable of the sower and how he went out extravagantly throwing seeds everywhere in hopes of a harvest.  Seeds were thrown in places where the chances of their growing into plants were small but the sower threw the seeds all over in hopes that something would happen.  Jesus said that is what the Kingdom of God is like.  It is like that sower, foolishly throwing seeds everywhere hoping that something would grow.  Grace is scattered throughout the world to everyone and the persons who receive the word are like those kinds of soil that either accept the word and grow into fine plants or do not allow the word to grow because of the circumstances of life.

But what if you plant seeds to grow wheat and suddenly find weeds all over among your wheat plants?  What if someone maliciously planted weeds among your wheat just to be mean?  That is this week's parable from Matthew 13 that Jesus tells the crowd gathered to listen.  Someone planted weeds among the wheat and when that is discovered it has to be decided what will be done about it.  The servants suggest that they go out and pluck up the weeds but the master says that they will pull up good wheat at the same time so he tells them to leave it as it is until time for the harvest and then they will be able to tell the weeds from the wheat because wheat plants bow over with weight while the weeds stand straight up since they have little substance to them.  At least that was the situation in the Mediterranean world of Jesus' day.

So, Jesus concludes the parable and explains to his disciples privately what the parable means.  The one who does the planting is Jesus himself.  The field represents the world.  The good seed are the ones who are part of the Kingdom of God while the weeds are the evil persons in the world.  Jesus tells the disciples that if they will just be patient until the end of the age, God will sort out things and evil and good will be divided and the evil will be burned even as the weeds in the parable were.  Then the righteous will shine like the sun.

So, what does this parable teach us about life?  It has something to do with the frustration that many of us feel when we look at the world around us and see so much evil and wonder what can be done about it.  We work for peace and justice and we pray that everything will be set right and it seems that evil abounds even more even in the face of our prayers.  Those who do evil things continue to do them and even all the forces of good working together cannot completely eradicate them.  Jesus words tell us that it is God's work to bring about the end of evil and we have to be patient and trust that God is in control.

There is a movie that began playing in theaters a few weeks ago called, "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel."  It is the story of a group of retired persons from the UK who decide to move to India to live in what they think will be a retirement hotel and when they arrive they find a run down hotel nothing like the one in the brochures or on the ads.  They complain to the young man who is the manager and he tells them a platitude that is the theme of the movie, "All will be well in the end.  If it is not well, then the end has not yet come."

I think that is what Jesus is saying to us all.  All will be well in the end.  God will take care of us and the whole world but we have to trust God to be the one to make things right in God's own time.  God's time is called "kairos" while we think in human time or "chronos".  We see time much differently than does God.  The time we have living on this planet is so small in comparison to the time of human existence that God has witnessed and will see in the future.  God will make all things right if we trust God to bring it about.  It may not come to pass in our lifetimes but it will happen someday.

The psalmist says it this way: "Do not fret because of the wicked; do not be envious of wrongdoers, for they will soon fade like the grass, and wither like the green herb.  Trust in the Lord, and do good; so you will live in the land, and enjoy security.  Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.  (Psalm 37: 1-3)

Lessons We Learn From Our Dogs

I am very much a dog lover.  I love dogs, every breed, large or small.  There are some dogs that I like better than others, of course.  That is the way life works.  We prefer some things over others even if we love or like an entire genre of things.  We own two small dogs, one is a Yorkshire Terrier who is about six years old.  His name is Bo or his whole name is Mr. Bojangles but we call him Bo for short.  He is very small, weighing only about 5 pounds.  Our other dog is Bushy, a mixed terrier breed with ears that go up like a fountain and a corkscrew tail that goes over her back when she is happy.  She was a rescue dog and her age is unknown but sources who knew her in the past say she could be 20 years old.  She is nearly death and somewhat blind but is a happy dog over all.  Bushy stands nearby when I eat meals.  She is always ready in case a food should hit the floor or in case I should hand her a bit of food.  She watches me eat and is ready to try anything in case I should give her a bit of food.  Bo is happy to have a small piece of bread and then he goes to lie down until we are finished with our meal.  He is content to just be in the same room with us when we eat.

I came across a poem recently that compares humans with dogs and how we relate to God much as dogs relate to humans at meal time.  It is written by Rodney Clapp and was published in the February 18, 2008 edition of Christian Century Magazine.  I will type it here and leave it without comment so you can read it and then reflect on its meaning for your own life.

Lessons in prayer, from a dog

He assumes his still posture
two feet from the table.
He is not grabby,
his tongue is not hanging out,
he is quiet.

He wants to leap,
he wants to snap up
meat and blood.
You can tell.
But what he does is sit
as the gods
his masters and mistresses
fork steak and potatoes
into their mouths.

He is expectant
but not presumptuous.
He can wait.
He can live with disappointment.
He can abide frustration
and suffer suspense.

He watches
for signals,
he listens for calls
of his name from above.

At hints that
he may be gifted
with a morsel,
he intensifies his
already rapt concentration,
he looks his god
in the eye
but humbly,
sure of his innocence
in his need,
if his need only.

On the (often rare) occasions
when gifts are laid on his tongue,
he takes them whole,
then instantly resumes
the posture of attention,
beseeching, listening, alert,
the posture of hard-won faith
that will take no for an answer,
yet ever and again hopefully
return to the questioning.

Weeds, Flowers, and Other Plants

Years ago, way back in the 1970s, there was a song popular on Christian radio, which I actually listened to in those days, about weeds.  I cannot remember the singer but I remember most of the words of the song.  The refrain said, "Weeds, we are born weeds, full of sinful nature and strife, weeds, just ugly weeds, planted in the garden of life."  The idea behind the song is that all humans are like weeds, not too pretty to look at, and not really worth growing, but we are planted in this life so we have to keep living and growing and maybe we can be transformed into a "pretty flower" someday.  "You can be a flower, if you let the Lord be yours, and you won't be a weed anymore."

Jesus told a parable about seeds and how they are planted here and there.  The method of planting seeds in the ancient world was by broadcast planting, where the one planting simply threw a handful of seeds and the seed would land here and there with the hopes that some seed would grow a good and useful plant.  Some seeds fell on the path--not a good place as they became lunch for hungry birds.  Some seeds fell on rocky ground, again not a good place because due to the lack of the proper amount of soil they would grow fast and wither fast, scorched by the hot Mediterranean sun.  Some seeds fell among thorns that choked them to death.  Finally, some fell on good soil with just the right growing conditions and those seeds brought about a harvest of abundance.

Jesus' listeners would have been very familiar with what he was describing.  Most of them had done broadcast planting because that was the method of planting common to them.  They had known all of those conditions that had stopped their plants from growing.  Now and then, however, everything worked out okay and they reaped a bumper crop of what they wanted to grow, enough to supply them and their neighbors with grain or vegetables.

Jesus used this illustration to explain why life works the way it does.  Why do some people respond to God's love so quickly and grow up into a lively, strong plant?  Why do some people turn away from God's Word and fail to connect, lacking the roots needed to understand and grow?  Why do some people simply reject God and the love God has shown to them, wanting to live without God at all in their lives, withering and dying spiritually?

Parables were used to describe the Kingdom of God by Jesus.  The parable of the sower is one of the few that Jesus actually interpreted for his listeners.  Jesus said that the different types of soil represent the different kinds of people and the seed is the word of God that is planted in their lives.  People allow the cares of life or the desire for wealth or power to get in the way and they do not internalize God's Word when they hear it.  Some people hear the Word but lose track of it when things happen to them that they cannot understand and they "fall away."  Some hear the word and understand it and their lives bear much fruit.  This is Jesus' own interpretation of the parable.

I love to try to grow plants.  You understand the word "try" because sometimes despite my best efforts, the plants either never materialize or they grow and seem to be doing well and then suddenly take a nose dive.  Maybe I did not enrich the soil before I planted them.  Maybe I gave them too little or too much water.  Maybe I did not consider that our hot Texas climate is not the proper one for plants such as them and they died quickly.  The plants represented promise and hope, that they would bring about something good that I would enjoy.  The planter did not know what was best for them at times and their fate came about due to my ignorance.  Regardless of my best intentions, the end result is not always fruitful.

Jesus' lesson in the parable has to do with life and faith and understanding.  We may plant and someone else may water but it is God who brings about the final result.  In our own lives also, we do our best to live good lives but sometimes we must trust God to bring about the best for our lives and for the lives of others we love.  Life is complex at times but simple trust in God helps us to know that God will guide us as we live so that our lives will be fruitful and abundant for God's Kingdom.  

"God, you don't have to talk so loud."

The author and theologian C.S. Lewis once said, "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts to us in our pains: It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."  You can interpret that statement as you will and judge Lewis as you desire but when one lives with pain for a longer than usual time, one begins to think about what it is that you should be learning from the experience.

I had a stupid accident that was of my own doing in early April.  It was one of those things that forgetful or non-observant or clumsy people do, running into something that I should have seen but did not.  It stunned my body and wrecked my left leg and since that moment I  have not been totally free from pain.  I have been taking all of the over the counter pain medicine that is allowed by doctors since then and only that helps to alleviate the pain somewhat.  I have seen an orthopedic doctor who assured me that I did not break anything and who gave me a shot in the knee of a steroidal medicine that had little effect and have been taking physical therapy twice a week for the last month.  That has given me some relief but there are days, such as this one, when I woke up with pain in my leg and hip and it has not subsided.  It is not as noticeable when I am sitting down but when I begin to walk around the pain shouts at me and demands that I stop it.

I have now seen an assistant to a neurologist with hopes of seeing the actual doctor once I have the required MRI and hope that the result will be some form of treatment that will cure this issue and allow me to return to the once active lifestyle that I enjoyed.  I miss my 2 mile daily walks around town.  I miss riding my bicycle now and then.  I miss being able to get out and enjoy the countryside when we have a time away.  I want all that back and more.

So, what is God shouting at me through this experience?  Perhaps I have obtained just a bit of added compassion and understanding of what others experience who have lived with pain much longer than I have.  Some persons I know who have long term disease live with constant pain.  Some have had this as their plight for years now.  The pain I have experienced in minuscule in comparison to what they suffer daily.  Maybe this has taught me a bit of patience too.  I wanted this to be over quickly.  A week or two of dragging my leg around, taking vast quantities of medicine, and rubbing myself with various lotions was enough for me.  I wanted it over then so I could go on with life but that was not the case for me.  It has been nearly two months now since the accident and I have had to learn to be patient and wait for the answer to come eventually.  I have had to be satisfied with the unknown and think that maybe someday it will be okay.

I think I have also learned that faith in God does not mean that God is going to answer our prayers as we request or when we request it.  I grew up in a faith tradition that quoted the Bible and applied its verses personally to the lives of its adherents.  "Ask anything in my name and it shall be done" was said many times in worship as people would be prayed for.  They believed in instant healings and in instant miracles.  After all, if Jesus could work wonders, "greater works would follow those who believe."  Those ancient words are very true but I think I have learned from this experience that our interpretation of them may not be what was intended originally and the words themselves may hold greater meaning than we can ever imagine in our English translation of the Hebrew or Greek or Aramaic.  The asking part may be the same but the receiving part from our prayers may mean something entirely different than we imagine with our 21st century minds.

God does answer prayer.  The answer we receive may not be the one we seek, however.  We cannot direct God how to answer prayers.  We can only pray for God's will to be done for us even as it is done in Heaven.  "All things work together for good..." was the beginning of the verse that people would quote as they ruminated over what they considered to be unanswered prayers.  They rarely added the rest of the verse that says, "...for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose."  (Romans 8:28)  To me this means, that God has an overarching plan for our lives, from the time we are born until we go on to meet God, and everything that happens in life is for our good.  It does not mean that everything that happens to us will be good but it means that we will live and learn and grow through all of our life's experiences and the end result will be a good one for us as we end our earthly lives.

So, God can whisper to me again once I am finished with this learning experience.  I may be a little bit more deaf than I was when I was in my 20s but I still hear fairly well.  God can whisper in that still small voice and I will try to be ready to listen.  I dont need nearly as many shouts as I seem to be getting lately in order to know that God loves me and wants the best for me.

Eggs, Water, and God

Well, we celebrated another Pentecost Sunday this past weekend and it was a wonderful day.  Church attendance was a bit more than the past two weeks so that made me feel good.  People wore red clothing to represent the fire of the Spirit.  Our choir sang a special anthem especially for the special day.  My sermon was all about the wind of the Spirit and how it has blown throughout all time and still blows today.  It was a very satisfying day and worship experience.

Now, this Sunday is called Trinity Sunday and it is the day when the Church considers what it means to believe in the Holy Trinity...God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  There are strains of Christianity who have chosen not to believe in the Trinity, the Unitarians, for instance, but the vast majority of Christians do hold a belief in the Holy Trinity.  The Church came to that understanding long ago, in the 4th century, when the Council of Nicea hashed out all the ideas concerning what Jesus' human body was made of, what he did while he was on earth, and what happened to him once he left to go back to heaven.  When we say the Nicene Creed in worship, we use those historic words which are more like a formula than inspirational material..."God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father."  One wonders why they thought they had to say it in so many ways but the ancient mind seemed to need such elaboration in order for it to be perfectly clear.  Perhaps our minds need it said more than one way too.

People have tried to explain the doctrine of the Trinity so that others can understand it.  We casually say, "Three in One" to help explain what it means.  Others have compared it to an egg having a shell, a yoke, and a white but being of one substance.  Still other have compared it to the states in which you can find water--liquid, steam, ice--but all three being water.  Some have tried to compare it to humans such as a woman being a daughter, a mother, a grandmother but still being the same person.  Regardless of the comparisons we make, it still remains a mystery, a holy mystery.  We cannot adequately describe it because it is indescribable.

When the Council of Nicea met back in the 300s, they wanted to know exactly what kind of being Jesus was.  Some said he was all flesh and totally human and they denied the miracles of the Bible.  Others said he was totally spirit, only giving the appearance of having a human body but not really human so that all the miracles he did were true and his resurrection was explainable.  The Council hashed it out for a long time and finally came up with the formula that Jesus was "totally human and totally God."  So there....he can be both totally and at the same time.

Belief in the Holy Trinity is historic and doctrinal but not easily understood.  We sing "Holy, Holy, Holy" on this Sunday with the phrase, "God in three persons, blessed trinity" included.   It is easily sung but not easily explained.  Our friend John Wesley used to tell his preachers to "preach it until you believe it" when they encountered doctrinal issues that were hard to explain.  Perhaps that may work for us too.  Don't worry about it, just trust God that it will all work out in the end.  Until then, live life and be happy.