Blog Archives

Praying Like Jesus

7/28/2022

Luke 11: 1-13; Genesis 18:20-32

Based on a sermon by Scott Hozee: https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2016-07-17/luke-111-13/

As we cruise through our summer season, renewing our bodies and spirits through rest and warm weather, we continue our reflection on spiritual renewal of our church body our individual spirits through biblical concepts like being a good neighbor, through the practice of holy hospitality and sacred listening. Today we add the linchpin of prayer. What it means to pray like Jesus. To pray with shameless persistence, as the gospel tells us.
The Lord’s Prayer is hands down one of the most famous prayers ever. It is recited millions of times a day, in hundreds of different languages. For a prayer of such importance, it has ordinary, humble roots. Luke very casually says that when Jesus uttered this model prayer, it happened “one day” “in a certain place.” One disciple, who’s name we do not know, saw Jesus praying, and said, “teach us to pray, like John taught his disciples.” Spiritual teachers like John or Jesus had unique habits that set them apart from other groups. So, the Lord’s prayer sets us apart as Christ followers. It is a map to the values to a life rooted in Jesus.

Luke records nine prayers of Jesus, more than the other gospels. Jesus prayed ceaselessly, to use Paul’s teaching in 1 Thessalonians 5:17. Moreover, according to our gospel passage, we are to pray with shameless persistence. To prayer boldly for our needs. Prayer for Jesus was like breathing, it was woven into his very being, and formed the foundation from which all he did flowed. Ceaseless prayer, shameless persistence prayer, is a hallmark of a vital spirit, a vital congregation. So how does the Lord’s prayer transform us? The prayer we call the Lord’s prayer is really the disciples’ prayer, it is a guide we should follow.

We can divide the disciple’s prayer into two parts; the first part of the prayer reveals our relationship with God, and the second part describes the foundation of faith we need to lift up on a day-to-day basis. The disciple’s prayer reminds us: our relationship with God is intimate: We come to God with the utmost confidence that we would approve a loving father. Note it is not my dad, not your dad, but our dad. The disciple’s prayer is communal, it includes all people. While each one of us prays alone or privately throughout the day, prayer is more than a solitary act. We are also called to pray together and pray for each other. We connect to a God whose name is Holy, adored, worshipped, exalted. And before this Holy and precious Father, we claim the realm of God, God’s kingdom, and God’s will, as our most ardent desire. All prayer flows from this foundation. So, our primary orientation in prayer and the life of faith, a vital life, is to lift up God and his purpose for our lives. There is no finer prayer than to say, “thy will be done,” Isn’t that what Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane?

The second half of the disciple’s prayer establishing three interesting spiritual needs. We pray for our daily bread (actually for all the sustenance we need, perhaps strength of character, the resources to live out and nourish our day). Second, every day we need forgiveness and to forgive. That is a major teaching of Jesus. To remember we are fallible, we make mistakes, and we need to own up to them. Because by the measure we judge, Jesus reminds us, so we are judged. Third, we pray to be delivered from evil, because the truth is that the Evil one is always, constantly looking to pull us down, as God is always striving to pick up us. Peter reminds us that the adversary, the devil, is like a roaring lion, seeking to devour us (1 Peter 5:8). The disciple’s prayer begins connecting us to God’s love and will for our lives, roots us in the present, while the pray ends reminding of the reality of evil that tries to subvert us away from the daily resources that we need, to keep us from forgiving and being forgiven, and to ignore the evil in the world, evil that seeks to supplant God’s will.

While the content of the disciple’s prayer is important for us to meditate on and live out, Jesus stresses the shameless persistence of prayer as vital as well. Prayer should be ceaseless, imbedded in every thought and deed we do. The two brief parables examples that Jesus includes teaches us about the persistence in prayer. “The “Friend at Midnight” story reminds us that prayer pops up all the time and does not wait for convenient seasons or moments. The word “impudence” here is better translated as “shameless persistence.” If someone gives bread at midnight as the annoying persistence of a friend, how much more will God supply our needs?

“What about the father-son (parent child) analogy with which Jesus shares? As any parent can tell you, a son or daughter who asks for a fish or an egg is unlikely to make such a request just once. If anything kids are doggedly persistent. “Are we there yet?” “Can I watch TV now?” and so forth. “There are those times when, after being asked by your daughter for the fifteenth time in a row if she can have just one more cookie—and after your having said “no” to this request fourteen times in a row—sometimes even good, conscientious parents will finally throw the cookie at the hapless kid. “There! Eat it! You happy now?!” Our patience can wear thin.” For the cat lovers among us, who hasn’t dealt with a feline who walks on our face, meowing insistently at 5:00 am for breakfast? Shameless persistence! So like our child, we too are to practice ceaseless prayer, shameless persistence.” If we fallible human beings end up doing right by our badgering children, how much more attentive with God be? God welcomes our onslaught of prayer. Because God answers prayer in God’s time and in God’s way, not our time, or perhaps not the way we want it to be answered; we need to maintain courage, shameless persistence, hope in all we ask, in all we seek and every time we knock.

Look at the conversation between Abraham and God about the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham repeatedly goes after God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah. This illustration is a blueprint for prayer. We talk with God like Abraham does, perhaps more irreverently, when we are praying. It’s what God wants from us. To bring to him all our joys, concerns, troubles, thoughts and cares, over and over again.

Praying like Jesus, we become one with him and each other, and we awaken the Holy Spirit to bring us new life. That’s the purpose of prayer; not to change God, but to change us, so we pray above all things that God’s will be done, with shameless persistence and ceaseless effort. Such is the hallmark of a vital life, a vital congregation – to pray shamelessly, ceaselessly, boldly for our needs, hopes and for Holy Spirit power, trusting that it is our loving Father’s deepest desire is to grant us what we need, to protect us from evil, and in doing so, to bring about the kingdom of heaven in our lives as it is in heaven.

https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/scripture/52_115.pdf

0 Comments

The Better Part

7/19/2022

0 Comments

Genesis 18:1-10a, Luke 10:38-42

        Last week we began a time of summer reflection on what it takes to create a vital congregation; a congregation that is spiritually renewed, turned around, full of the life and the Holy Spirit. We discussed that at the core of a revitalized congregation is the practice of neighboring (to borrow the phrase from our congregant, Diane Wood) – acting as a good neighbor, like the good Samaritan was, fulfilling the Great commandment to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Even if that neighbor is difficult, oppositional, negative, perhaps even enemy material. Today our scriptures invite us to look deeper into the process of neighboring. Today we see that at the core of neighboring is the practice of sacred hospitality and holy listening.

        I remember a conference Forrest and I attended a few years back, when we were co-pastors at the Community Church of Little Neck, in Queens. We belonged to the International Council of Community Churches, formed by the historical joining of a black and white association back in 1950, long before desegregation took place.   So racial unity and cooperation has been at the forefront of the ICCC these 60 plus years.

The year of that particular conference racial tensions have been ongoing in our country, and it was a particularly acrimonious summer. The conference paused its usual workshops and took a time out. It called all the members, of all races to sit down and talk together about what was on their hearts in light of the racial conflict. African American members, pastors and high-ranking lay leaders shared their experiences, concerns and hurts. White leaders strove to listen in the presence of the pain and hurt in the room and shared their responses. The racial tension in the room, like in our country seemed an impossible divide. While we were far from resolving the tension, I witnessed a sacred practice of listening to each other, and the healing power of acknowledging each other’s pain and point of view, even in the -presence of differences.   The gift of listening and sharing is an incredibly hospitable act. It is an act of neighboring. It is an act revitalization.

        Our lessons today seem to present us with impossible situations as well.   Abraham and Sarah offer traditional hospitality to three strangers are reassured of God’s promise of a son.   How impossible is that?   Abraham would be 100 years old, and Sarah 90 years when this prediction came true. How could this dream, that has filled their hearts all their lives, led them to leave their homeland some 25 years earlier, ever come true?   Yet during the hospitality, the listening, a promise is given, a miracle happens. A year later, a son is borne.

        For Jesus, if there ever was an impossible situation it was dealing with the two headstrong sisters, Martha and Mary. Although they have a brother, Lazarus, he doesn’t figure in the story, which is striking. He should be the one welcoming Jesus into the home.   Yet it is Martha, who is named first. Martha is busy with the rites of hospitality, which are sacred and not to be ignored, unless shame be brought upon the household.   Yet she is pulled in many directions, the demands of preparing meals, worry that everything will work out, and most of all why her supposedly younger sister isn’t obeying her and helping her get things ready?

Mary herself is in a culturally impossible situation: she is bucking the system that would relegate her to preparing the meal and service and choosing instead to sit at the feet of Jesus, in the position of disciple. Finally Martha, pulled in so many directions, demands that Jesus send Mary to the kitchen to help her.

Jesus listens carefully to Martha. However, Jesus defends Mary, as he will again when Judas makes criticisms when Mary anoints the feet of Jesus with a costly nard the week before his death. Yet Jesus gently lets Martha know it’s not the hospitality that’s the problem; it’s the distractions that are pulling her in many directions that are the problem and making life unmanageable.   Jesus points out that Mary’s focused discipleship is better than distracted and resentful service that results in bitterness and breaking of relationship. So, Jesus defends Mary, but he reaches out to Martha as well, to heal her spirit, and also preserve the family relationship. Martha’s and Mary’s hospitality, demonstrated in different ways, demonstrate how the church should demonstrate hospitality by balancing action and listening like Abraham and Sarah do. Such hospitality leads to communication and connection, which is at the heart of a healthy spiritual life, a renewed life, a revitalized life.

We find ourselves daily in impossible situations that call for us to choose the better part. We find ourselves embroiled in impossible situations as citizens of a polarized society. We face challenging health matters, or family predicaments with Mary and Martha conflicts, or persistent longings of Abraham and Sarah. All impossible to solve on their own. We need God’s help to choose the better part.

At that conference I attended, leaders were pleading for direction out of the impossible. For answers. What do we do next?   How do we get to that better part?   Lots of ideas come forth some conventional others challenging.   Pray and fast. Encourage community development and conversations that includes police departments. Develop stronger ties between churches of different races, encourage pulpit swaps. All pieces of the puzzle that can help make the impossible possible if we get involve and serve and be hospitable.   So, Jesus calls on us to choose the better half—to do our part in the impossible situations we face. That’s how we become a revitalized people. We face the impossible with hospitality and listening to each other. We take the time to be together in fellowship, away from the business and busyness of church life that distracts us from our true purpose: a relationship with Jesus Christ grounded in prayer and worship, expressed in hospitality and service of our neighbor. We may not see eye to eye, but we can, through Jesus, connect heart to heart. That connection with one another is the foundation of a renewed congregation.

Toward the end of the conference, a long-time youth leader got up and shared.   She shared her observance of groups of youth, black and white, weren’t mingling.    So, she decided to work with them. She had them write out what they had heard about the other group. On the list from black a youth commented :“white churches are so quiet” because once at a white church he wanted to applaud a powerful performance, but was stopped because no one else did. On the list from the white youth was written “not interested in college” The leader probed further. A white girl began to cry. She said it wasn’t true, what she was taught. At the conference she met many black youth very interested in college. The group discovered they had learned things that were stereotypes. There was more to the story, the youth learned. It took spending time together to learn what was true.

Ultimately, each family, each church, each community, must figure out is the better part to what God is calling us. The 225th General Assembly of the PCUSA, meeting in Louisville KY, in the listening process on race relations, has recently issued a formal apology for the sin of slavery and its legacy, with a commitment to repairing the breach caused by the ongoing effects of racism. We have chosen the better part.

To what acts of hospitality and listening are we being called to do so that the love, mercy and justice of God in Jesus be manifest in our midst?   Surely, we can reach out with food like Sarah and Martha did, it’s one of our most common forms of hospitality. However, like Mary and Abraham, we can be hospitable by listening, listening to the stories that others need to tell. As we get involved in each other’s lives, from this group here, to all the groups out there, we learn what we once considered impossible becomes possible through the power of divine love. That is the practice of neighboring. That’s how we begin the process of congregational revitalization, of spiritual renewal of our own souls.

Abraham & Sarah’s hospitality made possible a new generation to be born. In Mary and Martha’s struggle, a community is born guided to always listen to each other, to balance our differences to serve one another. In these impossible times, let us choose the better half, found in the practice of hospitality. This summer, let us begin the process and reach out and get to know each other’s stories. Can we do this intentional act of hospitality? For this is how we begin to renew, heal, become vital: through hospitality and listening, loving our neighbor as ourselves. Just select someone in the congregation that you don’t know well. Go out for coffee and get to know each other. Give the gift of time to someone and see what a difference it makes in your life. So by sitting at the feet of Jesus, may we learn to listen and to choose the better part. Amen.

0 Comments

"Go and Do Likewise"

7/12/2022

0 Comments

Amos 7: 1-8; Luke 10:25-37

Sermon inspired by:
https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/the-good-samaritan-edward-hardee-sermon-on-missions-170309
https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/the-good-samaritan-marty-baker-sermon-on-jesus-teachings-55905?page=3&wc=800

This past week, Forrest and I had to take our beloved dog, Betty, whom some of you know, to the vet’s office in Plainview for a post-surgery visit. While at the vets we ran into car trouble and had to call for a tow. Andrew was in the midst of a final and could not be reached. While we were sorting out our options, a couple of people expressed sympathy, but when on their way. Then a couple, a husband with a scruffy beard and loaded with tattoos, cuddling their pouch, Rambo, came over and offered us a lift. They lived in Shirley, so Freeport was not exactly on the way. We didn’t want to put them out, so we initially declined. After another ½ hr., with their offer still in place, we gratefully accepted. They refused any gas money, and we had a wonderful conversation about dogs and life.

We live in a day and age where the need is great yet it’s hard to accept help. We are raised to be rugged individualists, not reach out for help, and not put anyone out of the way. It’s hard enough to accept help from someone we know well. Imagine accepting help from a stranger, or worse, someone we dislike intensely, perhaps even consider an archnemesis, or an enemy. Imagine being at the giving end of things. We can probably be persuaded to give to someone we know and like. But to someone we despise or feel negatively towards?

Our gospel lesson places such an issue before us. Jesus tells a parable about an injured man who is helped not by a fellow Jew, but by a hated Samaritan. Jesus is clear: we too are to help. We too are to give. Even if it’s an enemy. Jesus is clear and tells us pointedly: 27 “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:25). Paul in Romans 12:20 reinforces this teaching aby admonishing us: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.” Helping our neighbor, even if an enemy is the plumb line of faith, the gold standard, as the prophet Amos would put it. A neighbor isn’t just someone who lives near to us on our block. Neighbors aren’t, as the people of Jesus’ day thought, just fellow Jews. A neighbor is anyone in our proximity with whom we can share God’s love. Even if an enemy.
This gospel lesson is one of the most well-known stories of the gospel-- we famously call it “parable of the good Samaritan.” Jesus is posed a hypothetical question by a lawyer or an expert of the law, about how to gain eternal life. When Jesus responds, “Love your neighbor as yourself” the lawyer presses him further: “who is my neighbor?”

So, Jesus describes a man, supposedly a regular Jew, taking an ordinary trip to Jericho, but falls into a gang of robbers who beats him into an inch of his life.

The first person to come by the crime scene was a Priest. He faced an enormous moral dilemma. His office required him to remain ritually pure. If a priest came in contact with a Samaritan, a Gentile, or a dead person, he would be considered ritually defiled. As a result, he would have to go through an extensive purification ritual to be restored so that he could perform priestly duties again. Not wanting to risk defilement, he doesn’t even investigate if the man is alive or not. So, the priest plays it safe, crosses the road and passes by. His conduct was acceptable, following the law.

The next person on the scene is a Levite. The Levite was of the tribe of Levi, the tribe from which the priests came, but this Levite was not a priest. Levites would follow the same ritual law of not touching a dead body. He looked at the man lying there and he too, walks on by. His conduct was acceptable, according to the law.

If we were in Jesus’ audience listening to this story, we would be anticipating the next character. Jesus started with the priest, and the the Levite, and next in line will be an ordinary Israelite.

Jesus, however, introduces a radical twist to the story. The next character is not an Israelite but a despised Samaritan! The Jews considered the Samaritans as half-breeds, dogs, and the lowest of the low. If anyone were expected to avoid an injured Jew, it would be a Samaritan. But not so in Jesus’ story.

The Samaritan came upon this injured man and is filled with pity, or compassion, a feeling usually reserved to describe Jesus in the gospels. The Samaritan stops. He draws near. He kneels and takes wine and oil and applies it to the injured man’s wounds. He then places the man on his own donkey, inconveniencing himself. He takes him to an inn to recover. He pays the bill and promises more on his return. The Samaritan goes up and beyond the call of duty, breaking the taboos that surround the interactions between Jews and Samaritans.

As Jesus comes to the end of this story, he asks the lawyer, "Which person proved himself to be a neighbor?" The lawyer has to conclude, "The one who showed mercy." Jesus commands, "Go and do likewise.”

        It is easy to be good, to be a Christian, to be a neighbor, when times are going well, and the people who need help tick off the boxes as deserving. Down through the centuries the church and larger society made distinctions between the deserving and undeserving poor; people who are not lazy or shiftless, they are old, infirm, or disabled. Jesus, who teaches us not to judge, asks us in this parable: Who will stop and see?   Who will bandage and pour oil and wine on the wounds? Who will carry the victims? Who will find the Inn? Who will pay the price?   Who will show compassion?   A neighbor is someone near us. Period. Even if we consider them an enemy. If we are to follow Jesus, we must be willing to turn the law on its head and be willing to help and get involved. Even if it puts us out of our way and demands our resources, our time and effort.

        As a congregation, we are beginning a process of discerning what it means to be a vital congregation. This parable today is the most appropriate example of what we need to do to turn our church around. It is easy to be trapped like the Priest and Levite, who are by the way, good people, but stuck in the box of thinking what is the right way to be and do. Our very religious conditioning traps us and keeps us from transformation. It is only when we are willing to stop, be moved by compassion, help outside the box, even if its somebody who is a stranger, someone we are opposed to. Jesus tells us that is what being a neighbor is all about. That is what we as Christ followers are called to do. Being a neighbor is the key to turning our lives, our churches around. We have to follow the example of the Samaritan in the story. To become a vital Christ follower, to become a vital congregation, we got to think and act in new ways, foreign ways, perhaps in ways we think are religiously unacceptable. If we want our church to survive, if we want to thrive, we need to become neighbors. Not just to those we like or approve of, but to all that cross our path. Jesus says, we need to learn to act like Samaritans – the people who didn’t follow the law properly, the people considered impure, half-breeds. Even undeserving, using the terms of church and society.

We need to challenge ourselves to stop and see the wounded laying at the roadside. And not cross over. We need to challenge ourselves to have compassion.

We need to challenge ourselves to be in the business of binding up the wounds, of pouring out the wine and oil of care and concern. We need to challenge ourselves to get the wounded to a safe place, to pay the price. To make a difference. Because Jesus says Love our neighbor. Because while we were sinners, Christ loved us and he died for us, so we too should love our neighbor. No matter who they are.

Let us love our neighbor. No matter the color of their skin. No matter if they are immigrant and speak a different language. No matter if they are disabled. No matter if they are religiously different, if they are LGBTQ, if they are of a different political party or social class. Love that neighbor.

Love will turn everything around. It will make us vital Christians, a vital congregation. It’s as simple as that.     Go, and do likewise Jesus commanded us.   So let us love and thrive. Amen.

0 Comments

Young Girl Captive

7/5/2022

0 Comments

2 Kings 5:1-14; Luke 10: 1-11; 16-19
J

    Happy early Independence Day! On this 4th of July weekend, we celebrate how a scrappy, unorganized, underfed, undertrained army took on the world’s finest fighting force, best equipped navy in the world, and succeeded in spite of all cost.

        War is nothing new in history; battles are nothing new in the bible. Battles for land – to capture or defend territory or resources; or battles for the kingdom of God, spreading the good news of the gospel as we see in our gospel lesson with Jesus sending out the disciples on a mission on behalf of the kingdom of God. Soldiers of the cross, as the old hymn puts it.

In our Old Testament lesson, we have a story of humor, healing, redemption, of God’s compassion intervening between archenemies, Israel and Aram (or modern day Syria). The Arameans, trace their lineage back the Noah’s son Shem. Abraham and Sarah, come from Aram. Isaac was sent back to Aram to find his wife, Rebekah, and then their son Jacob spent many years in Aram, working for his wives Leah and Rachel and building his wealth, so that the phrase “A wandering Aramean was my father” is a common declaration of faith, in the Old Testament, highlighting the nomadic roots of the people of Israel, as they travelled ultimately to Egypt and then back again to the promised land.

Aram, however, became an enemy of Israel, and battles between the two nations raged for centuries. Naaman, the 5-star army commander of Aram. He conquered. He set villages on fire. His soldiers pillaged, ransacked and killed. They stole anything of value, including taking survivors into slavery. There was no stopping Naaman and his war machine.

There was only one thing in Naaman’s way. Leprosy – the dreaded skin disease. While the text could just mean a skin condition or rash, actual leprosy was feared. There was no cure for leprosy, and death was often slow, painful and frightfully disfiguring. People with leprosy were ostracized by the community. And as we see, in our readings today, leprosy struck the rich as well as the poor.

Naaman, the mighty warrior was used to giving orders, taking prisoners. Now he found himself a captive – a prisoner to a deadly disease determined that could take his life. Naaman, was saved in the most unlikely of ways – through a young girl captive, taken in a raid into Israel.

This young girl, taken from her family – probably saw them killed before her eyes -- separated from her homeland, from her culture -- forced into servitude; willing shares with her captors. “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”

This girl's actions ran totally counter to our expectations. Instead of taking satisfaction for her captor’s suffering, she was filled with compassion – like Jesus was when faced with people in need. Although a captive, this young girl, has not been conquered by hatred or fear.   She shares the healing power of her faith and its resources with a man who did her great harm.

Naaman takes this information to official channels. He elicits the help of his king. So, King Ben-Hadad sends to the King Johoram of Israel ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments -- the equivalent of $700,000 dollars – along with a letter which reads, “When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy.” The King of Israel is terrorized; he sees this as a guise for more military intervention from Aram.

The prophet Elisha caught wind of the request. So, Elisha sent a message to the king saying, "Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel." Relieved, King Johoram obeys.

We can only imagine the following scene. Here comes the mighty warrior, one of the most important men in Aram, bringing his whole entourage with horses and chariot right up to the modest door of the prophet from Israel. How does Elisha react? Does he appear and accept the deference of the mighty man from Aram? Incredibly, Elisha doesn’t even bother to meet Naaman.

Elisha sends his servant to Naaman saying, "Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean." Naaman is offended. As an important man, he was not used to being treated so dismissively. Naaman says, "I thought that for me he would surely come out and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God and would wave his hand over the spot and cure the leprosy!" Naaman was expecting a show, befitting his rank. What was this, washing in the disgusting, muddy Jordan river! Why Damascus has more impressive, cleaner rivers to bath in! How insulting was that! So Naaman is about to leave in a huff with no intention of washing in the filthy waters in Israel. But another nameless servant arrives on the scene. One of Naaman's servants speaks up, "Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more when all he said to you was, 'Wash and be clean?'”? Naaman reluctantly obeys and lo and behold, he is made well.

        It is ironic that Naaman, the great commander, must take orders from servants to become well. First the young, captive girl. Then Elisha’s messenger. Then his servant who coaxed him to follow Elisha’s advice. Naaman finds healing in a land he conquered, in a river he distains, from people he considers beneath him. Obedience to a foreign God – conveyed by no-name servants, a prophet with a bad-attitude, standing in muddy waters healed Naaman. The God of Israel has mercy on a ruthless conqueror. What kind of God is this?

We face Independence Day in deeply uncertain and troubling times.   It is imperative more than ever to stand up to evil. We as Christians are called from our place of brokenness to remember, like a little girl, where our source of hope and strength lie. Like her, like Elisha we are called to help our enemies, whomever they may be.

We are called to share the goodness we know and point the way.   Because there is a healing river, there is a God of love who has taught us in Christ and gives us the grace to not return evil for evil, to point others to blessing and wholeness, even as we suffer. There is a God, whom Jesus revealed, who gives us grace to not be captive to fear while we live in uncertain times.   There is a God, who this young captive, girl gave witness to, that even if we are stripped of our family, our land, forced into some kind of exile, there is a God who stays with us and gives us the power to be a voice for healing and wholeness.

As we celebrate freedom, let us especially celebrate freedom from hate. Let us choose to be made clean -- clean from fear, from animosity, from violence. Let us choose to give voice to what we know like the young captive girl did. To the freedom we have in Christ. Let us be confident that even in our own woundedness, God will use us to point the way to wholeness for others. What a blessing, we can be. Amen.

0 Comments

Praying Like Jesus

The Better Part

"Go and Do Likewise"

Young Girl Captive

Author

Archives

Categories