Blog: E-Lifts

Even More Change!

5/19/2020

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8)

Listen to:  Francesca Battistelli  "Holy Spirit ' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoZd7ZXh9yY

You know you might be Presbyterian if you can name some or all of the following:

PCA, PCUS, PCUSA, PC(USA), PC(U.S.A.), PCUSA(NS), PCUSA(OS), RPCES, RPCNA-GS, RPCNA, EPC, OPC, ARP, NAPARC, CRC, RCA, BPC, BPC-Collingswood, BPC-Columbus, CPC, TE, RE, WCF, WLC, WSC, BCO, UPC, UPCNA, UPCUSA, NPC, COM, CLP, CPM, NFoG, ECOP.

Presbyterians. We even do change "decently and in order!" Think of all the change in denominations and committees this list represents over time.

We are a world in flux, in a denomination facing enormous change, a congregation in time of significant transition, each of us is facing change in some area of our lives. The Conronavirus has turned our world upside down, and seems to have taken away everything that gives us stability. We are in a "new normal" but we are still groping around in the dark. Life seems to be falling apart, when in reality it is reconfiguring,beckoning us to move forward to a more alive, more whole, more vibrant place.  Thank God we have a God who is eternal, and can change us, mold us in the image of Christ, loving and serving others. Thank God we can turn to Christ as our rock. His example and help will hold us steadfast and guide us through whatever we face.

The Bible is a change document. It teaches us how to embrace change (and sometimes how not to!) with discernment, trust, faith and hope in God, the author of the future. Think of, for example: Abraham and Sarah, Jacob, Moses, Joseph, Ester, Ruth, Peter, Mary, Paul -- and the change they lived through following the Lord. So pick your favorite character this week, study it, and you will find some challenge to grow and change. Name the choices and actions that made a difference. So what is your challenge? How can you change, and help the church to change in a spiritually healthy manner?

Remember Charles Darwin's observation: "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."

PRAY:  "God, show me where I need to change"

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More Change!

5/13/2020

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Jesus said, "Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 18:3)
Listen to:  Change,  by Tracy Chapman,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bukXKdzyGEY

This guy gets a parrot but it's got a bad attitude and foul vocabulary. He tries everything to change the bird's attitude and clean up its talk but nothing works. Finally, in a moment of desperation, he puts the parrot in the freezer. For a few moments he hears the bird squawking, kicking and screaming and then, suddenly, all is quiet. He opens the freezer door. The parrot steps out and says, "I'm sorry that I offended you with my language and actions. I ask for your forgiveness. The guy's astounded at the bird's change in attitude and was about to ask what changed him when the parrot continued, "By the way, may I ask - what did the chicken do?"

We've been talking about change, how life is a process of change and growth particularly i the time of COVID-19, when we are forced to reexamine our assumptions and choices.

One of my favorite characters in the Bible who is asked to change is Jonah. God asks Jonah to go to Nineveh (Assyria), and call them to repentance, or face the consequences.  But Jonah doesn't want to do this --- he hates Nineveh, and would love nothing more than see God overthrow the Ninevites. Jonah runs away -- as far as he can go. He causes the ship he's traveling on to almost break apart. He's thrown overboard. He's swallowed by a big fish. He finally begrudging does what God asks, and the Ninevites repent. This angers Jonah even more! And he throws another hissy fit. The story ends, and Jonah's attitude hasn't changed. But God' s did. God changed his mind about destroying Nineveh when they repented. God cares for all people -- even the people we don't care too much about. People who have hurt us. So change is messy!

We often fight change, like Jonah. Even when we resist God's call to change, God is persistent. God loves us too much to let us be less than we can be. God will even work through our our time of self-sheltering, our resistance, our rebellion, to help us see the bigger picture. We may struggle like Jonah. But thank God -- God uses us, and doesn't give up on us even when we have a bad attitude! God knows, change is a choice. Will we accept it?

PRAY:  "Help me to with my resistance to change "

HAVE A BLESSED WEEK!

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Change

5/5/2020

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"Therefore if anyone is in Christ, s/he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come" (2 Corinth. 5:17)

Steven Curtis Chapman, "Together, We'll Get Through This"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-U7X2DR2C4

What did the Dalai Lama say to the hot dog vendor?

Make me one with everything.

The hot dog vendor said "that will be $2.50" and the Dalai Lama handed him a five.

And waited. The Dalia Lama said "Hey where's my change?"

The hot dog vendor said "ah, change must come from within....!ust come from within"

The Christian life is a life of transformation and change. Change is written on each page of the bible. It is written in the fabric of our bodies: While we are sitting here we are changing. During this message about ½ million cells in our body are going to die and be replaced with a half a million new cells. Our skin replaces itself every month. Change is natural. Our families change. our societies change. Our churches change. Everyone changes.

Ideally as we change, our emotional and spiritual responses begin to change too. We learn to know God is in charge. We learn to trust. We respond to change in more healthy ways. We learn to handle the sadness and fear that can come with change, and through it, learn to hope.

Because of the pandemic of the coronavirus, church is entering a time of accelerated change. We have been forced into a time of digital worship, and learning, and called to be creative with our fellowship. What will we look like when this is all over? So it's important that we reflect together on change; understanding and recognizing it, responding in healthy ways to it, supporting each other and growing in faith together. Saying goodbye and letting go to what is now past. So think about your changes around you, in you, and in the church. Begin to name them, make a list. Think and pray about how change is affecting you.

For now it is good for us to remember the prayer of change from the great Reformer, Martin Luther:

"This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.”

PRAY: "Show us to embrace and manage the changes of life with grace, courage and trust in you. Help us be sensitive and caring to others in the midst of their changes."

HAVE A BLESSED WEEK!

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Beloved

4/29/2020

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"How great is the love that God has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!" (1 John 3:1)

Jason Gray, "Remind Me Who I Am" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSIVjjY8Ou8

Remember the parable where Jesus speaks of the Realm  of God being like a person who, having found a treasure in a field, sold everything he or she had in order to buy the field and gain the treasure.(Matthew 13:45-46). We are usually taught that we are the person in the story who needed to give up everything in order to gain the Realm of God. However, in the other parables surrounding this one, the “person” in the story is always God.

What if God is cast as the person in this parable, too?

Is God the one who gave everything in Jesus in order to recover us?

Could it be that we are God’s treasure?

Could we be God's Beloved?

Beloved is one of the most beautiful words in the Bible. It's a key principle God teaches us about Godly love.The word "beloved" derives from the Hebrew meaning "to breathe" to "long for." It is used of human love as well as divine love. It is a word indicating an action on the part of the one doing the loving. The God of the universe, the same God who paints a sunset, shapes a mountain and plans the waves at the beach -- longs for us. Our role in this is to BE-LOVED. As automatic as it is for us to breathe, so God loves us. Can we stop ourselves from breathing, under normal circumstances? No. So God doesn't stop loving, caring longing, for us.

So our spiritual task is to daily open to divine presence so we can live in such a way that God's love "breathes" through our actions and words. This is, in part, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s vision of his social justice work: the creation of a "beloved community" where we would all live by the dictates of this God-breathed love--which translates into justice, fairness and integration, mutual care, in our community life.

Everyday, remember you are God's Beloved. So take action -- make your corner of the world a Beloved place!

: " God help me act and speak with love"

HAVE A BLESSED WEEK!

"How great is the love that God has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!" (1 John 3:1)

Remember the parable where Jesus speaks of the Realm  of God being like a person who, having found a treasure in a field, sold everything he or she had in order to buy the field and gain the treasure.(Matthew 13:45-46). We are usually taught that we are the person in the story who needed to give up everything in order to gain the Realm of God. However, in the other parables surrounding this one, the “person” in the story is always God.

What if God is cast as the person in this parable, too?

Is God the one who gave everything in Jesus in order to recover us?

Could it be that we are God’s treasure?

Could we be God's Beloved?

Beloved is one of the most beautiful words in the Bible. It's a key principle God teaches us about Godly love.The word "beloved" derives from the Hebrew meaning "to breathe" to "long for." It is used of human love as well as divine love. It is a word indicating an action on the part of the one doing the loving. The God of the universe, the same God who paints a sunset, shapes a mountain and plans the waves at the beach -- longs for us. Our role in this is to BE-LOVED. As automatic as it is for us to breathe, so God loves us. Can we stop ourselves from breathing, under normal circumstances? No. So God doesn't stop loving, caring longing, for us.

So our spiritual task is to daily open to divine presence so we can live in such a way that God's love "breathes" through our actions and words. This is, in part, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s vision of his social justice work: the creation of a "beloved community" where we would all live by the dictates of this God-breathed love--which translates into justice, fairness and integration, mutual care, in our community life.

Everyday, remember you are God's Beloved. So take action -- make your corner of the world a Beloved place!

Listen :  to Jason Gray, "Remind Me Who I Am" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSIVjjY8Ou8

PRAY: " God help me act and speak with love"

HAVE A BLESSED WEEK!

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Be a Blessing!

4/23/2020

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"I will bless them and the places surrounding my hill. I will send down showers in season; there will be showers of blessing. -- Ezekiel 34:26"

LISTEN: Laura Story, "Blessings"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQan9L3yXjc&list=RDXQan9L3yXjc&start_radio=1

Blessings is one of the great themes of the Bible. The word in its various forms occurs well over 400 times. Blessing is related to the root "to kneel" -- promoting a humble position, a open attitude to the workings of God -- so critical for blessings to manifest.

It s in God's nature to bless. Divine blessing conveys abundance of life's material and spiritual riches, to make holy, To make happy or joyous; to confer prosperity or happiness upon; to grant divine favor to. As humans we are called to bless others (especially our children) to express a wish or prayer for the happiness of; to invoke a blessing upon.

It is a challenge of our faith then when we do not feel God is blessing our paths, and we face obstacle after obstacle.
There two important spiritual lessons God wants to teach us: 1. Blessings come in disguise; 2. we need to count our blessings, even in times of trials.

Songwriter Laura Story, wrote her song, "Blessings," while sitting in her car, on the back of a receipt, after she found out her newlywed husband had a brain tumor. It's been a rough time since that diagnosis, but Laura says"
" I feel like we’ve kind of gotten to a place of having to make a choice. Are we going to judge God based on our circumstances that we don’t understand, or are we going to choose to judge our circumstances based on what we know to be true about God? Not that I choose the right thing every day, but I’m learning that every morning when I wake up to choose to trust God."

Because of this, one of the most neglected spiritual practices is counting our blessings. We are called to bless each other, especially our children. Do we hug them, or touch them lightly (depending on their age!) and say a brief blessing -- "May God Bless you and make you like Sarah, or Abraham etc..." or someone else they can relate to? We can take a page from the Sabbath service, where children are blessed weekly. In blessing, we become more trained to see how God is using us, even in very difficult circumstances. So one of the greatest spiritual practices we can do is to count our blessings, start by naming 1-2 blessings, and working up. Practice blessing counting as a family, or with a prayer partner. What would it be like for us as a church to go on a "Blessing Challenge?" What a difference it could make in our lives!

God wants to bless us. God wants to use us to bless others. As John Calvin remarked: " All the blessings we enjoy ...should be dispensed for the benefit of our neighbors."

"Lord, open our eyes so we might see blessings, in all its forms, in our lives. We bless you! We bless those around us -- may they know your love through all the circumstances in life."

HAVE A BLESSED WEEK!

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