At one point in His earthly ministry, Jesus had some of His followers find the commitment too challenging and left, so Jesus asked His closest companions if they also were going to leave and Simon Peter answered Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."*

Ultimately this is my conundrum. I don't always like all the things I am asked to do as a follower of Jesus. Forgiving people who are mean and cause pain to me or those I love is really not fun, and it causes people to make fun of me at times. Loving people who are dirty, angry, lonely and really unlovely is not something I would have set out to do on my own. Giving up doing things my own way is definitely a bummer.

But what is the alternative? I either follow the teachings and will of God or I am left to make my own way, and that is MUCH less attractive than doing all the hard things God asks. AND God actually teaches me how to do all the icky stuff, so it is not like I'm left to struggle on my own. Oh, and after God teaches me I realize it is not icky at all. It is freeing, It is powerful. It is truly in my own best interest after all. 

El-Shaddai, source of all blessings, thank You for the abundant blessings You pour out on me, even when I don't understand why some of this stuff is a blessing. Your ways are always designed for my highest good. All my needs are met and many of my wants too. You are amazing, God. AMEN

*John 6:68

I remember being young and being a bit confused about the whole "all have sinned and fallen short" thing. I had murdered no one and robbed no banks. I went to church regularly and participated in Bible study and community out-reach to the less fortunate. I was quite horrified when I realized I had been insensitive and caused pain to someone.

But here is the deal. Being a follower of Jesus is not about what sins, errors and rotten things I have not done. It is not about how often I go to church or how often I serve in programs to minister to folks in need of clothing or food, in jail or ill. It is not about how many Bible verses I memorize or how much money I contribute.

It is about my relationship to God. And when I was growing up I would have not even have had the smallest understanding of what that meant. I always feel a little sorry for young pastors because, fresh from good families and conservative colleges they often struggle to preach sermons that have much meat. I suspect it is because many are like I was at their ages, at least a little proud of my "relationship with God."

But it was as I fell on my knees, on my face, on my keester, rolled down hills, fell from the high place I had perceived as my right, that I began to understand that I needed redemption. This was when I began to really pay attention to God, rather than be complacent about Him being on my team. Ah ha, that was the problem, the team was my team with my ideas and my goals. When I started to fall in love with God, when I began to give God the same attention and commitment that I had given my human relationships, goals and plans, then I began learning about the God who restores us.

You see, whether separation from God is "a little arrogance" or a major, public plunge into the "big" sins, it is still separation. I suppose this is why Christ told this parable in Luke 7:41-43: Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty.  Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?" Simon replied, "I suppose the one who had the bigger debt canceled." "You have judged correctly," Jesus said.

So, unlike the World, Christ assures us that those of us whose sins have left us with no illusions about our need for redemption are actually blessed because we have a truer and deeper understanding about the value of our gift of restoration.

Jehovah-mikaddesh, thank You for Your ability and willingness to restore our relationship with You, not by our puny efforts to be better that we are, or to be, God forbid, better than the person next to us, but because it is Your nature as You have revealed Yourself to us. You take my breath away with Your love for me. AMEN

I'm often quite sure what I want God to do for me, yet how often I am wholly wrong about what I need!

This is one of the great blessings I have found in my faith: I am not in charge! Things don't have to go my way to be going well. God does allow challenges to come my way because, hard headed as I am, I often don't learn any other way than to get a taste of what I think I need.

But Jehovah-jireh, the God who provides, provides only that which moves us toward being the best-self God created us to be. I have certainly been frustrated in my life when I felt things were going ever so wrong and sometimes that is an indication I need to change my attitude or behaviors or assumptions. But no matter how wrong I get it, at some point I realize God has truly redeemed the experience so amazingly that what I learned through that challenge is exactly what I need to understand or know at some further point.

So I really can rely on my God, who longs for me to become all I was created to be. I can't mess things up so much that God will give up on me and I can't run so far from God that it takes more than a whisper to re-start the conversation, or more than a breath of surrender to begin receiving God's best gifts.

Thank you, Jehovah-jireh, for always providing for my every need according to my highest good. Thank  you, Jesus, for sending the Holy Spirit to help me understand this even when my life seems dark and frightening. AMEN

This is my favorite name for God, Jehovah-Rapha, the God who reveals Himself as Healer. How many times have I turned to God for healing? 

For my parents as they battled fatal illnesses? 
For my nephew and his family as the little guy underwent (successful) cancer treatment? 
For folks in brick and mortar prisons whose souls are burden with the consequences of their errors and whose guilt grows as they watch their families struggling? 
For folks bowed down and overburdened with additions running from work-a-holism to heroin, pornography to emotional eating to running other people's lives? 
For expectant mothers and new parents anxiously scanning the horizon for any potential hazard to their child?
For those whose bodies are under siege from injury and illness, those who struggle with mental health issues, those whose souls are weary and sick?
For survivors of crime, fire, war, poverty, hopelessness, pain, fear, anxiety, and abuse.
For myself, those I love, those they love, members of our church family and those they love, folks whose stories make the newspaper and evening news, and folks whose stories come through social media or from the heart a weeping stranger?

God knew that my life in this temporary home would include much suffering and struggling and weeping and exhaustion, yet millennia before I was born revealed Himself as the God who Heals. The joy of prayer for the suffering is that it comforts and heals both the object of the petition and the prayer of the petition.

God heals in so many ways. Today we thank God for the life of a beloved family member, Woman of God, whose prayers to go home were answered on Christmas Day. Her family will miss her, but so much of what was amazing about her lives on in her children and grandchildren. Her deepest longing to meet her Creator face-to-face was granted. And she left confident, not only in her own destination, but in God's commitment to offer comfort and compassion to the children and grandchild whose lives here feel diminished today.

Jehovah-Rapha, we thank you for healing our beloved sister in Christ, and for Your tender care of her family as they learn to live with the new normal. AMEN

 A few years ago I became interested in a feature of the Old Testament. I learned to pay attention to the names of God recorded there. Oh, many folks know that in the Old Testament of the Bible, speaking the name of God is strictly prescribed because the people of God believed it was a special blessing to be allowed to know the name(s) of God and to speak them.

In an age where folks frequently use the names and symbols of God in the most abasing manner, such respect is considered superstition or foolishness. (I suspect folks would be drummed out of decent society if they used the names Allah, Bahá', Vishnu, Satnamor, Odin or Te with such disrespect for the beliefs of others.) But when I began to consider the names of God it was interesting, even enlightening.

The most commonly recognized name of God from the Old Testament is Jehovah. God directs Moses to lead the Isrealites from captivity in Egypt by telling them to follow Moses as God's representative out into the dessert. I can imagine that Moses knew this would be a hard sell, so he asks, "Who shall I say sent me? What is Your name?" And God answers I AM. When one is God, one does not have to say more, but through the ages God has chosen to reveal more to His creation about the nature and character of their Creator. 

But to begin, God states this most basic truth: "I AM". For if that is not so, then what else is of interest to any of us? God discloses the essential source of all and the crux of God's desire to have a relationship with God's creation. God does not "make a case"; solicit homage, or demand tribute. God simply says, "I AM." And follows up by providing for God's chosen people. By revealing God's own nature to the Isrealites, God began leading all of us to know and understand the nature of our Creator.

So the name Jehovah is our most basic acknowledgement of God's essential status as our Creator, our Author, our Designer who, in revealing God's nature to us, reveals our own nature to us. We were created to love the God who begets us and trust that God's greatest longing is for our greatest good. We fail and fall as we let fear be our god, but still the Great Jehovah pursues us, loves us and calls us back into a holy and freeing relationship as God's child.

My Prayer for Today:  Almighty Jehovah, thank You for revealing Yourself to me, to each of us. Thank you for never giving up on me as You continue to be the great I AM. No matter how far I stray from trusting You, how often I fail to turn to You for wisdom, strength, hope and stray from the journey to become all You created me to be, You continue to love, to call, to woo, to whisper truth in my heart. Thank You for Your patience and Your unchanging nature. AMEN

"Then Moses said to God, “But if I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors sent me,’ then the people will ask, ‘What is his name?’ What should I tell them?” Then God said to Moses, “Tell them, ‘I Am Who I Am.’ When you go to the Israelites, tell them, ‘I Am’ sent me to you.” And God said, “Tell the Israelites that you were sent by Yahweh, the God of your ancestors—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. This will always be my name. It is how I want the people to remember me from now on." Exodus 3:13-15 EVR

You have shopped with care, expending funds, energy and intellect to place before your beloved a truly unique and valuable gift. And when the gift is opened it is given only a moment's notice before your beloved enthusiastically opens other packages in the search for blingy, shallow and even dangerous items touted by the culture of "me" as what we deserve to make us happy.

I know I would have little patience for such behavior.

Yet we do that every day to a God who gives us His Son so that we might have the "free gift of God which is eternal life." 

We poor human beings are so easily distracted by everything from great challenges to great material blessings, always thinking we will get around to thinking seriously about God later when our schedules calm down, when we are through school, when we have kids, when we get the kids raised, when we are less stressed caring for our aging parents, when our careers are assured, when money is more plentiful, when time is not in such short supply.

And what does God do? Does He shoot lighting bolts from the clouds? Does He ignore us to get even? Does He give all the good stuff to those who are pious? No, none of that.

God loves, woos, and cares for us with eternal patience longing to fill us with peace, joy, hope and a future of purpose and growth. If only we can escape the confines of our human perspective of time and importance, to instead give Him our attention, our conversation, our willingness to learn how to accept His finest gifts!

This is my Christmas Prayer for us all: Gracious Lord, Almighty God, thank You for loving us even when we are foolish. Thank you for always being willing to listen, teach, love and guide us. Send Your spirit that we might be still and know that You are God. and that I am Your beloved child. I love you so. AMEN

"The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord."  Romans 6:23 (NRSV)

It is interesting that so many conversations between angels and humans start with the words "Fear not." From this I deduce that the cherubic and girlish portrayals common in Christmas card art are far from accurate.  There are more frightening images of angels: imposing, powerful, majestic forms that I would much prefer begin any conversation with me with those very important words "Fear not."

A particularly wonderful minister friend gave a Christmas sermon some years ago noting that neither Sadducees (liberals) nor Pharisees (conservatives) nor the ruling king and his court (powerful and influential folks) nor Rabbis (church leaders) nor merchants (business owners) were the recipients of this world changing news. My friend postulated that was because in all of Judea, the shepherds were the only people with the capacity to hear the news without immediately veering off into thoughts of how it affected their own power or position. Instead these shepherds just followed directions ("You will find the babe....") and went to worship their King and Savior.

So on this night when we remember this amazing gift to us, let us all commit a space of time to ponder what it means that God asked and His Son agreed to become a vulnerable baby, slowly learning to control His body and develop His gray matter just like all babies must, so that He might in a little over three decades endure an excruciating, public death in our stead and raise again that we might have life eternal. 

I love the King James words, "good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people". This is not a promise for a later time or for a limited few, but rather for all times and for all peoples. Rejoice today that this is true for your loved ones in jails or prison or other forms of limited living and for you, too.

Surely this is the kind of news that would indeed be delivered by a truly imposing multitude of heavenly heralds of imposing presence. Let us hear their news and consider that running full-tilt to the manger is indeed a fitting use of our time today.

" Shepherds were in the fields near Bethlehem. They were taking turns watching their flock during the night. An angel from the Lord suddenly appeared to them. The glory of the Lord filled the area with light, and they were terrified. 10 The angel said to them, “Don’t be afraid! I have good news for you, a message that will fill everyone with joy. 11 Today your Savior, Christ the Lord, was born in David’s city."  Luke 2:8-11 

I've always thought it odd that we count the days to Christmas rather than to Christmas Eve, since for many folks church services and family activities often start the day before Christmas. Our Church is even having its first Christmas celebration at 10:00 a.m. on Dec 24th. Like most churches in this age, there will be no service on Christmas Day.

For folks celebrating Hanukkah this is one of those years where the days of celebration culminate on the 24th of December. 

So for practical purposes everything needs to be ready today for the Holiday celebrations. As much as adults may anticipate Christmas traditions and activities, most are pretty ready for the Christmas to New Year's period of eating left-overs and pots of soup, not having to chase the clock with school bus schedules and at least for some, days off work.

Maybe this is the best day of the year for me to remember the 25th verse of the 31st chapter of Jeremiah: "I will give rest and strength to those who are weak and tired.”  Because for all the joy of family and celebration and the often more generous actions of folks this time of year, it is also traffic snarls and budget angst and tense family moments and an unexpected tear at a touching memory. 

Yup. I'm definitely ready for God to give me rest and strength. And even more important is this: I am deeply grateful for my God who cares about my weakness and exhaustion on all the days of my life.

Peter, in the House of Cornelius, began to speak: “I really understand now that God does not consider some people to be better than others."  Acts 10:34 (ERV)

Is this the absolutely most difficult thing to learn? It seems we get it wrong such a staggering amount of the time. Seems like everybody has somebody they think they are better than--rich over poor, churched over 'heathens', one skin color and ethnicity over another, one nationality over another, one neighborhood over another.

Even in prison there is a cache for certain crimes and a 'most horrible' for others, though often on the outside it might be hard to understand why a major drug dealer who has caused the abuse and deaths of many children due to the physical and mental challenges of addicted mothers and father is "higher' in the pecking order than a molester. Or why NA folks can be snarky to people addicted to marijuana or alcohol as though there is something 'better' about being 'badder'.

And, of course, folks in the free world, even some church folks, feel better shunning folks who are struggling with public sins even as they are mired in secret sins, or the more acceptable 'white collar sins' of gossip, mean-spiritedness, laptop porn, too much booze too often, mental cruelty and uncounted others that we justify "because other folks are worse."

Really, Paul speaks to all of us because at one time or another we have all been guilty of judging the homeless or bad drivers or the parents of unruly children or the children of cantankerous old people or somebody somewhere sometime.

So let's just let go of the finger pointing and get on with doing better. Let's respect women...and men, let's respect folks with all skin colors and from all locales on Earth, speaking all languages at all levels of efficiency, from all socio-economic strata, youth and aged folks, people who eat all kinds of foods with all kinds of spices and listen to all kinds of music and wear all kinds of clothes. Oh, and folks falling on the full range of the political spectrum and folks who are smart and folks who are not. Because God has made clear the measure of worth: "God does not consider some people to be better than others." And the converse must also be true, God considers none inferior to others.

Even specific behaviors that are unhealthy or dangerous cannot be attributed to anyone other than the person so behaving because there IS NO them or all them or all those or those folks...there is only us, my friend.

So just stop. Now. Permanently.

God says.