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Beloved

4/29/2020

"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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"What Are Mere Mortals?"

4/14/2020

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"What are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?" Ps. 8:4
Casting Crowns, "Who Am I?" http://www.youtube.com/watchv=mBcqria2wmg&feature=related

The Easter Season is a glorious time. We celebrate the triumph of life over death. We see around us the manifestation of new life in all of creation, and within ourselves. We celebrate how the Risen Jesus appeared, for a period of time, to his disciples. Before his ascension into heaven, he continued to minister to them. He patiently explained the scriptures. He ate with them. He walked with them. He gave them peace, and sent them to forgive and retain sin, and to baptize in his name.

It was an overwhelming time for those first disciples. They were still reeling from the horror of Jesus' death. They were still feeling the sting of their complicity in Jesus' suffering. After all, as a group they didn't speak up when Jesus was being judged. They vanished. Judas betrayed Jesus. Peter denied him. So in the midst of joy, the disciples had to come to terms with their spiritual deficits.

Easter teaches us that nothing we do can stop God from loving us. Jesus conquered death, but not because we earned it or merit it from anything we do. The lesson to permeate our souls is "nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" Romans 8:39.. Our failures, faults or sins will not stop God from being God. It is God's nature to love unconditionally. It is God's nature to save. It is God's nature to use our faults, to transform them, bring good from them. It is God's nature to be forgiving. We may reject God -- but that won't never stop God from acting as God's nature dictates.

The Easter Season invites us in to this miraculous celebration. We are just little specks in the ever-flowing stream of life, yet God is able to love each of us as if we were the only one. How can we comprehend the power and ability of such love? We can't. So we just gratefully, humbly received it - let it transform us and mold us into its agents of Holy Love on earth.

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Love Never Ends

4/11/2020

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"The Lord's love never ends; his mercies never stop. They are new every morning; Lord, your loyalty is great. Lam.3:22-23"

LISTEN TO: Chris Tomin, "Our God"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlA5IDnpGhc

"
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Love never ends. Or, some translations say, "Love never fails." The root word here is "fail," to suffer collapse or ruin. This doesn't happen with Love. Love doesn't collapse. Love isn't ruined. Love doesn't look at the dire circumstances of our world and give up. Love continues to exist even when our dear one takes a last breath. Love doesn't whither in the face of defeat, rejection or when we make grave mistakes that change the course of our life. Love is eternal. It has existed before we were born, and will continue to exist when we cease to be a memory. We see all the injustice in the world and are tempted to despair or grow cynical. Love sees the injustice, but will resolutely pour itself out, on anyone who will listen and respond, will never rest, never give up until its purposes are achieved.

Love is God -- God is Love (1, John 4:8). Our faith is based on this fact. Eternal love took on human temporal flesh in Jesus. By following Jesus, we are stretched to love with this divine, eternal agape love, to allow this eternal power of Love resonate in our lives. Step by step, we do this, as we stay rooted in presence of God through prayer, scripture, and service. We may fail, but God's spirit in us won't let us give up. Love never ends.

This week, Holy Week, is an important time to reflect on the power of love -- and remember that love never fails. Even on the Cross as Jesus cries out "It is finished" (John 19:13) he is not talking about love being done, or the world coming to an end. This is a word that means "paid in full." Love stepped in and paid the price for sin. That is what love does. Love was betrayed(Luke 22;48), abandoned (Matt. 27: 45,46), denied (Mark 14:66-72), tortured (John 19:1-3) before dying on the cross (Matt.27:50) Evil threw everything at Jesus. Jesus did not fail us. That debt we incurred, caused by sin and brokenness, no longer exists when we turn to Jesus and place our trust in him. So let us meditate on the power of love this Holy Week, turn to Jesus during Eastertide, so we may be molded to act in his ways of unending, never-failing love.

Have a blessed Holy Week.

PRAY: "Lord of never-failing love, help us be vessels of your Eternal, loving presence in how we choose to act. Teach us how we don't have to give up or give in --- but rely on your Power to Love. "

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Beloved

Be a Blessing!

"What Are Mere Mortals?"

Love Never Ends

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