Hope or Despair

Every person has a choice in how they will live their lives. We can focus on our badness, our failed attempts at life, our weaknesses, our sickness, our brokenness or we can focus on God’s goodness that is revealed in Jesus. It is a choice between despair and hope. The story of Christmas is a story of hope. It is the story of God still believing in us. Some of us think that God has stopped believing in us. You are focused on your circumstances and situations and everything looks hopeless. I want you to know that there are no hopeless situations. I want you to know that God has never stopped believing in you.

Thanksgiving Prayer

Accept, O Lord, our thanks and praise for all that you’ve done for us. We thank you for the splendor of the whole creation, for the wonder of life, and for the mystery of love.
We thank you for the blessing of family and friends, and for the loving care which surrounds us on every side.
We thank you for our successes which satisfy and delight us — but also for the disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone.
Above all, we thank you for your Son, Jesus Christ — for the truth of his Word and the example of his life. We thank you for his dying, through which he overcame death — and for his rising to life again, in which we are raised to the life of your Kingdom.
Father, may we at all times and in all places, we give thanks to you in all things. Amen.

Talking To Myself

Sometimes I talk to myself. I know what your thinking. Psychologists have never fully understood the phenomenon of self-dialogue. Whatever may be the cause, talking to yourself is not consider normal behavior. There are times, however, when such a conversation can be helpful.
Take for instance the story of the Prodigal Son in the Bible. It is a story about a young man who had a talk with himself. One day, according to the story, the young man got tired of the discipline of his father’s farm. Gathering all he owned, he ran away to a distant land where he thought life would be free and easy. Things didn’t go well for the boy. His money ran out, and he found himself in the fields, eating with the pigs. In the story there is this line, “And when the boy came to himself.” Perhaps the boy didn’t have a verbal conversation – I don’t either for those who are curious – but he did a lot of soul searching.
The boy learned a lesson. He found that his old home was better than he thought. Sometimes it takes the absence of a thing to make us appreciate it. Our freedom is a priceless possession. We cannot live without our health. Work can seem like drudgery until we can’t find work. Our families can at times seem to require endless time and effort. But life without loved ones can be lonely. The wondering boy in the story reminds us that some things we treat so carelessly are in fact our most priceless treasures.
Have you talked to yourself lately? Every now and then it helps to sit down and do a bit of soul-searching. Life could be better for many of us if we took time this Thanksgiving to reflect on all we have to be thankful. Just don’t start talking to the turkey!

Church of the Second Chance

In Anne Tyler’s novel Saint Maybe, nineteen-year-old Ian tells his parents, Doug and Bee Bedloe, of his decision to leave college and become an apprentice cabinetmaker. This will enable Ian to raise the young children of his deceased brother, Danny. Ian has arrived at this decision because of the influence in his life of Rev. Emmett and the Church of the Second Chance, a congregation that believes in actual atonement, that is, that you must do something “real” to be forgiven for your sins. Ian’s sin was that he led his drunken brother to believe that his wife was unfaithful, after which Danny committed suicide.In the crucial scene in which Ian tells his parents of the change in the course of his life, church and faith enter the conversation. Ian explains that he will have help from his church in juggling his new job and the responsibility for the children. This alarms his parents.
"Ian, have you fallen into the hands of some sect?” his fatherasked.“No, I haven’t,” Ian said. “I have merely discovered a churchthat makes sense to me, the same as Dober Street Presbyterian makes sense to youand Mom.”“Dober Street didn’t ask us to abandon our educations,” his mothertold him.“Of course we have nothing against religion; we raised all of youchildren to be Christians. But our church never asked us to abandon ourentire way of life.”“Well, maybe it should have,” Ian saidHis parentslooked at each other.His mother said, “I don’t believe this. I donot believe it. No matter how long I’ve been a mother, it seems my children can still come up with something new and unexpected to do to me.”
Ian’s is a story of two kinds of churches. Dober Street is a church that mainly confirms people’s lives as they are. The Church of the Second Chance disrupts lives in the name of Jesus so that people can change.We have too many Dober Street churches!

Sharing Christ

Virginia Cobb says, "Our message is a person we've experienced, not a doctrine, system, religion, book, church, ethic. " First and foremost the Christian faith has nothing to do with knowing a creed, or living a set of moral laws, or believing certain doctrines, but rather everything to do with knowing a person. The problem is that many Christians try to present Christianity as a better religion. In my own experience I have discovered that people are interested in Christianity not because it is a religion but the experience that people have with the living Jesus. Yet is often to see Jesus for all the religious and cultural baggage surrounding him.

Voice for the voiceless

In his blog Adam Taylor says,
"In the all too familiar script of presidential elections and debates, these words (middle class) have essentially replaced the words of Jesus. Candidates campaign on platforms based on a distorted remix of Mathew 25, replacing the all important middle class with Christ’s concern for the “least of these among you.” I listened carefully to the entire presidential debate last night, hoping that one of the candidates would have the foresight and courage to mention the poor in the context of our economic crisis and our foreign policy priorities. The first two debates have rightfully focused on the duress and hardship associated with the meltdown of Wall Street and the crumbling of our economy. Yet somehow candidates manage to systematically ignore the 36 million Americans living in poverty and the nearly 2 billion people around the world living perilously on less than $2 a day. Too often politicians follow the lead of our society in devaluing and dismissing the needs of the poor, exacerbating their marginalization."
The reality is that the candidates are following the lead of the media who in returns feeds off of public opinion. This is where the church must step up. We are called by Jesus to speak on behalf of the poor. We are to defend the poor. My pick for a candidate is one who will be a voice for the voiceless. I guess I will just have to keep looking for that candidate!

Next Christendom

Excerpted from "The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity" By Philip Jenkins. "If there is one thing we can reliably predict about the 21st century, it is that an increasing share of the world’s people is going to identify with one of two religions, either Christianity or Islam, and the two have a long and disastrous record of conflict and mutual incomprehension. For the sake of both religion and politics, and perhaps of simple planetary survival, it is vitally necessary for Christian and Jewish Northerners to gain a better understanding of Islam. But odd as it may sound perhaps the more pressing need is to appreciate that other religious giant, the strangely unfamiliar world of the new Christianity. Southern Christianity, the Third Church, is not just a transplanted version of the familiar religion of the older Christian states: the New Christendom is no mirror image of the Old. It is a truly new and developing entity. Just how different from its predecessor remains to be seen."
According to Jenkins, “If we want to visualize a ‘typical’ contemporary Christian, we should think of a woman living in a village in Nigeria or in a Brazilian favela” (page 2).
What do these facts mean for us - "christians" in the Western world?