A Providential God...

Recently, our daughter shared with us an issue she had with an assignment from college.  In a book review, she shared that the author had misused the word "literally," choosing it over the word "figuratively" in the context of the novel.  She shared that one of her greatest pet-peeves is when a word gets used incorrectly, citing her high school English teachers for that newfound frustration.

It dawned on me how many times we have done just that with so many of the common words we use today.  We take a word that we think we know its meaning, and co-opt it for another purpose.  In Kaitlyn's example, the author said that the "wire literally wrapped around itself."  You know as well as I do, that wire does not wrap itself around anything without help. The author should have used figuratively, rather than literally.  Especially since the word "literally" refers to words themselves, spoken, written, or otherwise, and not to wire. 

For another example, the word Providence.  How many times have we talked about something begin providential? In that we mean that something has happened quite by accident, but the event has turned out somehow in our favor.  Literally (not figuratively!) the word "providence" refers to "the foreseeing care and guidance of God or nature over the creatures of the earth."  In this instance, we have taken God completely out of the picture, and yet, the very definition refers to God's care and guidance, knowing our needs even before we ask, and then providing it for us.

One can only assume that God would do this because God loves creation.  It is out of God's abundant care and mercy that we find God's nurturing love providing for our care.  Somehow, we've mistakenly believed that the word has nothing to do with God at all, but rather it is all by accident or chance, and we happened to have won the lottery of sorts.

The grace of God is not by accident.  The care and provision of God does not come by chance.  It is not a mere hypothesis of possibility that we are fortunate enough to have provided for us our next day, meal, or even breath. No, it is purely by the hand of the One who created all there is, and then stuck around to see how it would all turn out.  More than that, God has been actively engaged in helping us, nurturing us, and giving us what we need, sometimes even before we need it. 

When I was a child, my father taught me to be aware of what was going on around me, so that I could be of assistance.  When we worked in the garage, I was taught to be aware of what tool would likely be needed next, and to have it ready.  Only by becoming aware of what was happening would I be able to help out.  Does not our God do the same?  Standing beside us, especially when we are in need, offering us the gentle help and tender care of a friend, the warmth of a community of believers, the surrounding love of a family, the provisional needs to sustain us when we need it most?

God's eternal love for God's creation is everlasting.  It is here and now, and evermore.  God's love is providential.  All we need to do is trust it.  God is here with us.  And God will see us through all that is before us.

Grace and peace,
Brad

Not Just Another Fad...

                In my devotional reading for this morning, Paul spends time reminding the Colossian Church that the very essence of Christ is of God.  And in God’s intention to redeem all creation, God uses Christ’s body to purify and reconcile all to God.  He writes:

“Once you were alienated from God and you were enemies with him in your minds, which was shown by your evil actions.  But now he has reconciled you by his physical body through death, to present you before God as a people who are holy, faultless, and without blame.  But you need to remain well established and rooted in faith and not shift away from the hope given in the good news that you heard.  This message has been preached throughout all creation under heaven.  And I, Paul, became a servant of this good news” (Col. 1:23, CEB).

                Being well established and rooted in faith is the task of every Christian, regardless of time or place, generation or era.  And Paul says this with firm conviction – admitting even that he has made this task his primary goal in life.  To be well established means that we have become grounded on the foundation that our only salvation is in the blood of Jesus’ atoning sacrifice.  There is no other path we can follow that will achieve the same results. 

                But you know, as well as I, that there are many people who will follow after any other path, and sometimes every other path out there.  Their lives are empty, meaningless, and hopeless.  So they will turn to drugs, sex, money, power, greed, abuse – anything to ease that emptiness.  For the Colossian Church, the temptations were much more subtle.  Their desires were to follow any path that would lead to enlightenment – even the worship of angels.  They believed that the physical world -including Jesus, who was incarnate-was evil, and therefore not to be trusted.  It could not possibly be that anything of this earth would ever offer the gift of salvation.  Therefore the only hope was to look to the heavens for help – and the worship of angels drew their attention away from Jesus.  Paul wrote them back to remind them that their faith is not rooted in anything less than Jesus himself, and his atoning sacrifice on the cross.  To pursue anything else was hopeless.

                The vain pursuits of happiness through “stuff”, or pleasure will not lead to fulfillment in life.  These are just fads that are here today and gone tomorrow.  What counts is that which is eternal.  We therefore need to remember to be well established and rooted in faith.  Not blown about by every new thing that comes along.

                See you in church!

                Grace and peace,
               Brad

A Wandering Aramean...

Life is a journey.  It is something that happens one step at a time, step by step, moment by moment.  Each step is a gamble.  Will I stumble or fall?  Will I climb up? Will I descend down?  Will I move forward or retreat backward?  Each step is treacherous.     Each step is filled with a mixture of awe, fear, hope, anxiety.  But each step taken, is a   step on the journey of life.  Someone once said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  (I think it was Gandhi, or was it Groucho Marx?)  But every step is important.

 Recently, I have taken several steps that have propelled me into a different direction from where I originally started.  I remember being in seminary, and hearing a missionary come and speak to us.  He said, "the only thing holding us back from following God is this - ," and he held up a keyring with lots of keys on it.  He said, "we have come to believe in our world that in order to be successful, we have to have a lot of keys.  Keys to our houses, our cars, our safe deposit boxes, our workplaces, keys to our storage lockers, keys to everything.  We cannot feel secure in our world unless we know we have all our stuff locked up.  And we have to hold the keys to feel secure." 

His speech ended with his decision to leave his keys behind at the university where he taught, and enter the mission field with only his small knapsack filled with clothes and essentials.  For him, the journey was a decision to leave behind all that had ensnared him into believing he wasn't successful unless he had those things that needed keys.  Walking away from all that was his first step on his new journey to be faithful to what God called him to be. 

In many respects, I thought he was nuts.  He walked away from his family, his wife, his job, his home, - everything.  I didn't see him as being faithful to anything except his own escapism.  I understood what he was trying to say, but I couldn't quite get his point.  I wasn't feeling trapped.  I didn't believe that the Church in America was a waste of time.  I felt as though everyone needed to hear the saving Word of Jesus' love.  Even folks in the congregations in America.

So, I chose to pursue ordination to parish ministry.  I followed the program, found myself working in a church, and ultimately graduated seminary.  I worked through the ordination system, was ordained an Elder, and began a ministry of reaching people in the pews.  It was safe.  It was comfortable.  It was familiar.  It was home.

Twenty-two years later, I am sitting in a different home, and pondering these last several steps on this journey of faithfulness.  The local church still holds a special place in my heart, but I had an opportunity to see firsthand what that local church looked like when it was first starting out two thousand years ago.  Ironically, it shook me to the core.  What I saw had little to do with board meetings, bake sales, and potluck dinners.  It had everything to do with survival.  For those folks in that far away place in Eastern Europe, where Christianity had been suppressed and oppressed for over a century (that's at least four or five generations), it was all but gone.  But here, in this small town, under the leadership of a Spirit-filled, God-called young pastor, there was a church.  A true church.  Struggling to learn what it means to be different in a world filled with cookie-cutter sameness.  And their zest for the Gospel, their zeal for learning more about this itinerant Jewish Carpenter and his ancestry, showed me just how comfortable I had become in my nice, suburban, clean sanctuary filled with yawning, dozing, comfortable Christians. 

Don't get me wrong.  These folks in the pews where I served were faithful.  Many of them had been on a journey of faith for years.  Their passions led them to get up and move outside of the sanctuaries and into the highways and byways to find people in need, and help them in powerful ways of witness and Spirit.  It wasn't them who had become complacent.  It was me.  I was the one yawning, dozing, and comfortable. 

What I saw in that young church in Eastern Europe was nothing like I had become.  And I wanted to change that.

When the system called me to do what we Methodists have been doing for over two hundred years- itinerate - I saw my chance.  I decided that it was time for me to drop my keys, and follow that itinerant Jewish Carpenter.  To follow in the footsteps of that wandering Aramean, to go to the place where God would show me.  I stepped out of the routine, and onto the path less traveled.

I don't share this to make myself sound more superior than any of my sisters and brothers in ministry, nor than any of my sisters and brothers who sit in the pews.  Rather, I share this because it is a step that I have taken in a different direction - a different trajectory than I had been on for the last two decades.  To follow God's leading, to follow Jesus' teaching and example, to follow the Spirit's prompting, is a scary unknown journey. 

It is like trying to walk in the darkness of the forest, hidden from the lights of the moon and stars, with only a small candle to guide your way.  You cannot see beyond your next step, but then again, you are not supposed to.  Journeys of faith are like that.  If you knew every step in the path before you even started, you might be tempted to look for shortcuts, easier paths, smoother roads.  But that isn't what faith is about.  It is about taking one step at a time, finding that sure-footedness that God has placed under you, and trusting that the path will not give way.  The steps are not conducive to running, nor are they meant to be taken all at once.

One step at a time.  Stepping, stopping.  Waiting.  Being still, and waiting on God to show you the next place to rest your feet.  Following the light.  And knowing that you do not take any step in the whole journey alone. 

Sometimes the steps lead you to places where you never thought you'd travel.   Through rivers, amidst fires.  But never alone. 

                 "When you pass through the waters, I

                                will be with you;
                and through the rivers, they shall
                                not overwhelm you;
                when you walk through fire you shall
                                not be burned,
                and the flame shall not
                                consume you. 
                For I am the Lord your God,
                                the Holy One of Israel, your Savior...
                Because you are precious in my sight,
                                and honored, and I love you..."(Isaiah 43:2-4 NRSV)

We follow the path of a Wandering Aramean, and in the footsteps of an itinerant Jewish Carpenter.  We've been on a journey - but we do not travel alone.  We've got many witnesses to the path we trod, as they have journeyed on ahead of us.  And we are slowly but surely becoming the witnesses for those who would follow after us – one step at a time.  Step by step, in faith.

Grace and peace,

Brad