God Bless You, I Mean Something "Nice"

It has done our souls well to memorize parts of the Scripture. We wish we had more, so we work at it. I mull passages through my mind long before I preach them. Difficult situations arise and my mind goes immediately to Biblical narratives, or proverbs. Debbie and I talk about the Scripture every day. I love the wisdom of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, James, and Jesus short sayings. They resonate in my inner being. I have been reminded lately that "wisdom is proved right by all her children." Time will tell you, and every one around you, who was wise. Time tells so much. Time tells that the Scripture is true.

As you might imagine, I quote a lot of Scripture in my conversations. I believe the verse that says "the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple." (Ok, I believe all of them :-) ) I know that I have been simple and I have seen God bless others too. He has made them wise and hopefully He will continue to make me wise, but it is a process. The Scripture is a great part of the story telling I do. It gives me another standard, a true standard, to handle the world.   

In the process of communication I have developed my greeting. Any Saturday, it is my job to be door man and cheerleader at the free clinic at our church building. Most clinic days I great dozens of people individually. I resort to calling on God to bless perfect strangers.  "God bless you!" to a poor, sick, neighbor is almost universally a welcome, healing, balm. It is the help that the poor people know intuitively is our ultimate help. Those neighbors, the patients, usually smile and greet me with "God bless you too!"  I am equally helped and healed by this interaction. 

I greet the students who come from three Universities at the same door as I do the patients. These students hear the same greeting, "God bless you!" The students reaction calls to mind one of Jesus sayings "However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?" The students, with rare exceptions, put their head down and rush in to the clinic area.  It has become so noticeable that I have told the students in our group gathering that I mean something "nice" when I say it. They laugh, and now a few know that they should respond with "thank you" or "God bless you too." Yet it is an indication that Biblical literacy, a common place in American history, has long turned to illiteracy. God help those who know His Word to believe it enough to share it.

Psalm 19:7, Luke 7:35, Luke 18:8

Bad News, Real Hope

Bad news came yesterday. It is not life threatening but some of our fear have fallen on us. It was an unexpected diagnosis at our church's free clinic.  (That God has given our church a free clinic to care for the needs of our community and then in turn it cared for us is part of the beauty of the work we are in.) This mix of bad then good is one of the ways we see the glory of God in the world. We are called to lose our life for Christ and in doing so we gain real life, abundant life.  We see the pattern of bad then good often, but that does not mean that we don't struggle. There is often so much bad new in the city that we can feel overwhelmed.  We make jokes to help us in the trouble.  For this bad news we immediately tried to categorize what stage of grief we were in. I thought that we had skipped over denial (what do doctors know anyway?), anger (how can God do this to us?), bargaining (if you fix this Lord then…), and headed straight to depression, on our way to acceptance. At least that seem to be what the two boxes of Little Debbie's snack cakes said to me. I got the strawberry rollup kind for me, and the nutty bars for Debbie. We have never been good at bargaining any way. We want our comfort to be in God alone. But we struggle. "I'll have another snack cake. Thank you."

God, our Father has good in store for us. We have little doubt. We point out these verses to others, God, and ourselves. "All things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose." We then pair that with the fact that "Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." We expect to live this abundant life. It is a condition where we know we will live in the heights of joy and occasionally the depths of sadness, but whatever the feeling we know the presence of God. "We rejoice with those who rejoice. We weep with those who weep." Now, others will do some of the same things with us. They may share in our snack cakes, but what ever we all do, we will look to God to help.

We will call the elders to pray and anoint with oil. We have seen the Lord heal both quickly and slowly. We will expect that the prayer will accomplish much. We will check things out with other doctors. But like other trouble, we will look to the Lord to go through this with us. We will then comfort others with the comfort we have received. Praise the Lord. 

Job 3:25, Luke 9:24,Romans 8:28, 12:15, Isaiah 53:3, 
James 5, II Corinthians 1:4 

Rich in Faith, More Mustard Please

Lets get right to it!  We think that Christian people should identify with the poor on purpose. We have said for years that “we don’t minister to the poor. We are the poor.” The book of James says “did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith?” Of course, no sane individual wants the discomfort, disease, oppression, and sheer frustration that accompanies poverty. Who would want the lack of amenities, difficulties of blight, or crime that accompany poor areas? Who’s got time for that? None of us. Life is short! But we embrace what it means to be poor for the sake of being “rich in faith!” And we gently invite you to look squarely at what can be gained.

Individual Christians and churches of every stripe call out to God to work on their behalf. They read the Scripture and see that faith can move mountains. They then wonder why God doesn’t answer. What is lacking? Our God can do anything. He loves His children! Yet, no answer. No movement. The answer seems to be no.

Moving mountains takes faith the size of a mustard seed. You don’t even have to be rich in faith to see God act. It seems that such a small thing, like a seed, could be purchased for little cost.  After all, mustard is not rare. It covers the fields of the world in a beautiful yellow.  It springs up as a nuisance all over the midwest. Yet, you don’t see it spring up in sophisticated places. No, wealth mows down the opportunity for mustard plants to grow. Therefore mustard seeds are few. Affluence often does the same thing to faith. “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” Faith is hard for that individual to find.

More than a mustard seed of faith comes easily to the poor. The poor look to the Lord for every help, every moment. With that close of a relationship to God our provider, someone might want to rethink their view on what makes a person poor or rich. Someone might figure out where real riches are and how they are measured. Faith is worth the trouble of enduring some poverty.  It is worth the trouble of sharing what you have.  Having less money or stuff is a fair exchange for walking in faith.  It seems that the church should rethink its definition of poverty.  We think that the classification of who is rich and who is poor might need to be reversed. We want to be rich in something.  Faith!

James 2:5, Matthew 17:20, Matthew 19:24,