Full

I read an excellent poem printed in Devozine:

God fills
our cup full
and running over,
not so
we can boast 
or measure,
but so
we can spill over
into the lives
of others.

The imagery struck me...have you ever filled a bucket full to overflowing? The water rushes over the sides...not in precise measured amounts. You cannot control where it goes. It splashes wherever it wants. If we allow God to fill our cup to overflowing, think of the lives we will touch, lives beyond our control. How many others can we reach and refresh with God's life giving love?

Labels

We live in world full of labels...with one to five words, people will presume to tell you everything there is to know about any subject or person.

Most labels are harmful and divisive and do not come from a place of love...especially when they are a knee jerk responses or are used to explain something as complex as a person or a denomination...I mean, after all, you know the:
Church of Christ will tell you...
Evangelicals feel that...
Catholics are...
United Methodists simply will not...
Baptists believe that...

Another way of thinking of it, how many people are there in your world that you will absolutely believe their opinion without question? Without thought? What they tell you, you take it as gospel just because they say so? Believe it as gospel. And yet, we listen to sound bites from news programs, from talk show hosts, from radio programs and claim it as truth. Without question, without research...really? Do you know these people? Do you know their motivations? Do you completely understand their belief system? Does come anywhere close to aligning with yours?

Even better, are your thoughts and opinions so absolute that you will share with someone and expect them to step right in line with you? Is there no room for error in your thinking? Are there no past experiences that color what you believe? I know my thoughts are not. My Youth will tell you that I often preface a teaching with..."This is what I believe. I expect you to take the time, at some point in your life, to decide what YOU believe."

Shouldn't we try to open our hearts and minds and be willing just to listen? Will you take what you're told and hold it to the prism of what you KNOW to be truth? And even if you feel it's flawed, will you discuss it with others? Study it for it's validity or what it can teach you?

God did not create us using cookie cutters, else wise we would all be just alike and would all agree on every topic. Even the people He created from the dirt, with His own breath were not told exactly how to think or behave. They were complex beings, capable of a range of emotions. And He gave them only one command...don't eat of this tree. And when they did, even then He didn't stop loving them. He certainly changed their environment but He still continued to love. He allowed them and every other person who has come after to learn, grow, stumble, fall, make mistakes, feel remorse, turn back, plead for forgiveness, receive His grace, learn some more.

How can we be so shallow as to think that anything God has had a hand in creating can be described in just a few words?

Prodigals

Recently our Pastor spoke during worship about the Parable of the Prodigal Son. His main focus being on the extravagant love our Father God has for us. But I wasn't hearing it.You see, anytime I hear a message about this parable, I can only see how badly the younger son messed up and wonder about the OLDER son? I'd like to blame it on the fact that I'm the elder sibling in my family. And so, on the way out the door that Sunday, I asked him..."What about the older son"?

He chose that very subject for his message this past Sunday. Bringing light to the fact that Jesus used these stories (Luke 15) to speak to His audience... and the very first lines tell us that there were sinners and tax collectors (younger son) coming to hear Him, while the scribes and Pharisees (older son) were grumbling.
Needless to say, the message opened my eyes (yet again) to the fact that it's not "all about me".

I've spent the last couple of days talking to myself about how and why I had made this parable about me.I realize now that I was seeing my sister as the younger and myself as the older.I did always have more responsibilities than she, but being older, I should have been an example. It did seem she was forgiven for things I would never dreamed of doing, but it wasn't her fault that I was such an introvert. But still, the story wasn't about me or her or us or our parents.

Sure, she may have been reckless and extravagant but I was resentful and quick to point out who isn't pulling their weight. She may have been a free spirit but in many ways I acted as if I was entitled because I was so "good". I realize I was no better than she, and she was no worse than me. I was no more deserving of any honor. Most importantly, I realize how all the years I've wasted thinking this way have wounded my Father God.

My relationship with Him has nothing to do with my being nice or being good. It isn't determined by anything I have ever done, or will ever do. It is determined solely on a wonderfully generous God who runs to meet me whenever I turn to Him, freely giving His extravagant love.

Power to Love

Agape love is the power to love the unlovable. It is the power to love people we do not like. Jesus commands us to love our enemies in order to be like God. We are not told to love in order to win our enemies or to get results, but that we may be children of God, who sends the rain on the just and the unjust, who looks after both the good and the evil. The predominant characteristic of this agape love is that, no matter what a person is like, God seeks nothing but his or her highest good.

N. Gordon Cosby

Maternal Love

Excellent sermon by Caitlin Kennell Kim:

Oh, My God: Maternal Love and the Cross

On March 7, 2008 at approximately three o’clock in the afternoon Theodore Xavier Kim had his first shots … four of them. Now, it should be noted that I love my son’s pediatrician. I’m using the word LOVE here. But when she stuck four very big needles into my very little baby as he screamed and cried so hard that his perfect little inny bellybutton became an outie, I had several thoughts:


#1: The part of my mind hard-wired like that of any self-respecting tigress screamed: “This little 90 pound … witch … is hurting my son. It is incumbent upon me as his mother to hurl her like a javelin into the waiting room, grab my poor half-naked shrieking baby, and run screaming through traffic, half ambulance siren and half Amazon battle cry.”


#2: The part of my brain that still had some sort of grasp on rational thinking offered the following: “Yes, but throwing the doctor would be wrong and Theo getting polio or hepatitis or any of that other awful stuff would be very bad.”
 
You’ll be pleased to know that the second part of my brain retained control, but only in the sort of way you have control over a spooked horse in a cheap bridle. Nevertheless, I clenched my jaw as my eyes welled up with tears. On the cab ride home, I kissed his little fingers over and over again as he slept and I prayed a silent prayer to Mary. “Oh my God,” I prayed, with both complete reverence and horror. “Oh my God.”


In my church, a painting shows Mary standing mournfully in the shadow of the cross and I am absolutely convinced that all such images are produced by men. In my head, as we come home from the doctor’s office and the heat of my first real brush with the power of the maternal instinct is still humming in my veins, I imagine her pulling that cross right out of the ground (in the same way you’re always hearing on the news about some adrenaline filled mother pulling a car from atop her child) and then, with her half siren-half Amazon cry, pulling the nails from her son’s body with her bare hands. At the very least, I imagine the two other Mary’s holding her back, grasping desperately at her limbs as she tries to make her way toward him.


“Grown don’t mean nothing to a mother,” Toni Morrison writes in her novel Beloved. “A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What’s that suppose to mean? In my heart it don’t mean a thing.”


Now I obviously cannot compare our relatively mundane misadventure at the pediatrician’s office to Mary’s experience at the foot of the cross but the feeling I got that day … however fleeting … broke open the way I see Mary and the way I understand the cross and, for the first time, made me question whether I could really envision God as Mother. After all, I reasoned, how could such a horrible thing happen to a boy with two mothers, one of whom is the Creator of the Universe? How could they bear it when the people assembled argued back and forth about the semantics of the inscription that hung above his head and callously picked over his few belongings like vultures? It is utterly beyond me.

In my head … I imagine [Mary] pulling that cross right out of the ground and then, with her half siren-half Amazon cry, pulling the nails from her son’s body with her bare hands. At the very least, I imagine the two other Mary’s holding her back, grasping desperately at her limbs as she tries to make her way toward him.

But then I step back. I take a giant step back as if I’m standing in front of a huge painting at a museum and need some distance to take in the whole scene. I remember that the boy wounded and crumpled on the cross is more than a boy. I remember that he is both the fragile child of Mary and the Eternal One. Standing at a distance from the picture painted in John’s Gospel, I can see that he is in fact his mother’s Mother. He returns her look of anguished desperation, torn open as much by her pain as she is by his. On the cross he enters into the fullness of what it means to be human so she and we will never have to be alone, so that there is no terrain in this life that he has not traveled before us. Like our mothers who have crept stealthily into our rooms to watch us as we’ve slept, who have felt our pain sharp and deep, who have rejoiced in our small victories, who have claimed us even in defeat, Jesus is God promising to love us fiercely, vigilantly, intimately, and ultimately. He is God saying that all of the tears and holes our brokenness has rent in our relationship with God can be mended if we are willing to bring them to him, sit still, and let him work.


It’s this Jesus, ragged Son and mending Mother, who looks at Mary and says, “Woman, here is your son.” It’s this Jesus, who promises us through the cross that there is no place that God will not go with us, who looks at John and says, “Here is your mother.” As Blessed Julian of Norwich reminds us, “He did not say, ‘You will never have a rough passage, you will never be over-strained, you will never feel uncomfortable, but he did say You will never be overcome.’”
This year, as I pray the Stations of the Cross with my Church family, the 12th station, the one that asks us to meditate on these words Jesus speaks to his mother, I will see the powerful gaze of two fierce mothers whose hearts are breaking but whose love is furious and holy and for us … all of us … and if it is not there in the image I will paint it there with my heart. I will know that the intensity and ferocity with which I love Theo is like one drop of water in the ocean compared to God’s love for each of us and every night before bed when I trace the Sign of the Cross on my son’s forehead I will pray with reverence and stupefied awe “Oh my God. Oh my God.”
Amen.
 
(This is a sermon based on John 19:17-27 written for a preaching class the author took at Union Seminary in New York City. It received the 2008 John Kneeland Award for best exegetically-based sermon in manuscript form.)

Beautiful...

What an excellent idea!

 

Just do it....

Beloved

There is a very loud, consistent and powerful message, coming to us from our world, that leads us to believe that we must prove our belovedness...by how we look, what we have, what we can accomplish, etc. It is unfortunate that we are so very slow to grasp the liberating truth of our origins. 

Life is a gift. We are each unique, we are known by name and are loved by the very One who fashioned us. Why is it we allow the "voice" of our world to drown out the "still, small Voice" of the One who loves us best?

We...

We met in September and married in December;

34 years ago;

He is 10 years older and 1 foot taller than I;

We both had an Aunt Gladys (our favorites);

We both had an Aunt Edith;

One of his uncles first and middle name are same as my father's first and last name;

He was born in TN, I was born in NC, we met and married in SC;

He was moved in to manage the place I worked, 3 weeks before I was to leave and start school;

It may not have been love at first sight but it was certainly friendship at first date;

We can still sit and talk for hours at a time;

We have two children who are not perfect but we think they're pretty great;

Our grandson looks just like my husband at the same age;

We finish each others sentences and thoughts;

We quote movie lines and show tunes (not necessarily in that order);

We love books and have purchased enough to decorate our home;

We can be on different sides of an issue and be the better for it;

We can both read the same book without a war;

We have shared the birth of our children and various farm animals and think all are miraculous;

We are blessed to have found one another.

Disaster...

I had intended to post about the Titanic yesterday (to go along with the post earlier last week) but daughter lives in Oklahoma and I spent most of Saturday night on the phone with her. She was in a shelter and watched the tornado that devastated Woodward pass about 1/4 mile away. She and all hers are fine with no damage to their living space. But it still makes a Mother hit her knees to know that a child is so close to danger. Daughter has a servants heart and once she knew that they were going to get through unharmed, she immediately went in to "helper" mode. She wanted to be out and about at 3am, helping. But cooler heads prevailed and she rested for a few hours and was then able to offer all of her energies to those in need. Our prayers are with everyone affected by these deadly storms.

As a coincidence (and I don't believe in those), I ran across a post about Father Thomas Byles. He was sailing on Titanic to New York in order to officiate his brother's wedding. "When the Titanic went to the bottom, Father Byles stood on the deck with Catholics, Protestants and Jews kneeling around him. He was saying the rosary and praying for the repose of the souls of those about to perish." John 15:13 tells us, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay day his life for his friends." Seems the priest had assisted women and children into the lifeboats and twice refused to board himself..."saying his duty was to stay on the ship while one soul wanted his ministrations."

While facing imminent death, on a cold dark night 100 years ago, Father Byles remained a priest to the end. Offering the light of Christ to all who needed it.

Love and Romance

Part of an essay by Father Dwight Longenecker:

While many emotions perceived as ‘love’ can be explained with these crude theories, a problem remains, and the problem is this: everyone everywhere who believes in love believes that whatever love is, and wherever it comes from, what it  most expressly is not, is naked self interest. All the great poets and preachers, all who have sighed and swooned and died and crooned about love believe that love is not self interested, but self sacrificial. The most sublime lines on love have not been written about what the lover can get, but about what the love can give, and the greatest line on love of all is, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man should lay down his life for his friends.”


Without doubt this self sacrificial love is debased into self interest, but this is not love. It is lust. We have simply misunderstood a distinction in terms. If there is such a thing as love, then it is defined as being interested more in the welfare of the beloved than oneself, and if such a virtue exists, then the mystery of love becomes even greater.

...If such a precious idea is true, or even if one believes it to be true, then we can see why all the worlds’ heroes bear a sword. This most precious gift of love is the greatest treasure, and is worth the most dangerous quest. If earthly love connects us with eternal love, then it connects us with eternal life, and that most precious gift is something that is not only worth a long journey, it is also worth a fight. It is worth a fight because anything so precious must be surrounded by many thieves. Anything so good must be surrounded by much evil, for evil (be definition) wants to destroy what is good, and that is why the hero bears a sword–because love must be fought for, and to win the love of the fair maiden the dragon must first be slain.

You can read the whole piece here, and it's worth your time...

St. Francis in the streets...

Brother Al Mascia has much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, and so does his flock.

After losing the brick-and-mortar headquarters for his Detroit-based charitable operations earlier this month, the brown-robed Franciscan friar has kept serving the homeless, the elderly and others in Detroit.
Mascia anticipated the closing of the building more than a year ago and raised $4,000 to buy two specially designed tricycles with vendor carts in front and storage trailers in the back so he wouldn’t miss a beat in serving his clientele.

“St. Francis went beyond the walls of the medieval city to serve the exiled,” said Mascia, referring to St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Catholic religious order to which Mascia belongs. “Now, I have no walls between me and the people I serve.”...

But the development didn't stop Mascia. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, in sun, sleet and snow, he pedals into the outdoor waiting area of the Rosa Parks Transit Center on the tricycle — a practice he started last year.

Read more here...

Showing the face of...

Jesus to the people.

The boy...

Today is my only son's birthday. No words can express how much I love him, but recently I tried...I hope he doesn't mind, but here's part of a letter I sent to him...


Dear Son,

Nothing, nothing, in life is certain. Well, except death and taxes. You have no guarantee that you will be successful according to societies terms, you have no guarantee that the one you love will be with you for your whole life, you have no guarantee that you will never be hurt. What you do have is one life. It is your responsibility to live it fully.

If I could give you all the money you need to live comfortably, with no effort on your part, if I could smooth out all of life's problems so that you never had to worry, if I could hold your heart in my hands so that it would never be broken, if I could carry you so that your walk through life would be smooth and never rough, if I could shield you with my body so that no one could ever hurt your feelings, I would NOT do so.

It has been my fervent prayer, from the day you were born, that you would have a blessed life. But blessed does not mean easy. For what does one learn from living an easy life? How does one feel any sense of accomplishment, if you never have to work for what you have?
How does one learn to put their faith in God and trust His lead if you never worry? How do you savor the sweetness of love, if you heart has never been broken? How does your body stay strong and healthy if your path is always smooth? How does one learn strength of character if your ideas are never ridiculed or your beliefs never questioned?

Your choices won't always turn out the way you want, but live your life with no regret. Treat others as you want to be treated, even if they do not do the same. When you make a
decision, go after it with all your intelligence, all your sweat, all your heart. Always give God the praise He deserves for the blessings He has given you and never forget, "To whom much is given, much is expected." Fill your life with happiness and joy, whatever your station, for you are alive in this moment of time, it is not an accident.

There is no relationship in the world like that of a man and  a woman who share life together. May you always be best of friends, the most loyal of companions, the most passionate of lovers and be a source of solace and strength one to the other. Together you CAN  face the world! Never forget, women do want a knight in shining armor...be that for her.

May you have work that makes you happy, a task to perform that fulfills your desire. You have grown to be a man of character and strength and I am proud to call you son.


Happy Birthday, Nin Ore

Roses

Some people grumble because roses have thorns. I am thankful that thorns have roses.
                                                                                                  Alphonse  Karr

God Loves...

I believe this one speaks for itself...

After 72 years together...

They died holding hands...  

Family said the story of Gordon, 94, and Norma Yeager, 90, is a real-life love story.
On the day she graduated from high school, Norma Stock said yes to Gordon Yeager’s marriage proposal. The couple got married on May 26, 1939 in State Center.
“They’re very old-fashioned. They believed in marriage til death do you part,” said son Dennis Yeager.
Dennis Yeager was the youngest of four children born to the couple. His sister Donna was first born.
“Staying together for 72 years is good, I’d say that’s exceptional,” said daughter Donna Sheets.
The way the kids tell it, dad was the life of the party while mom kept everything together.
“Anybody come over — she was the hostess with the mostess. She just seriously — the more she did — the more she smiled,” said Dennis Yeager. “Dad would be the center of attention, like, ‘Weee look at me,’ and mom was like ‘get him away from me!’ You know we even got a picture like that.”
Norma didn’t really want the distance, and family said she hardly left Gordon’s side for 72 years.
“They just loved being together. Everybody argues once in awhile, but they still, he said ‘I have to stick around. I can’t go until she does because I have to stay here for her and she would say the same thing,’” said Dennis Yeager.
Dennis Yeager said the couple left home last Wednesday to go into town, but they didn’t make it.
At the intersection of Highway 30 and Jessup Avenue just west of Marshalltown, state troopers said Gordon pulled in front of an oncoming car. The Iowa State Patrol crash report said the other driver attempted to avoid the crash but was unable to stop in time.
“I rushed from Des Moines where I was working and saw them in the hospital,” said Dennis Yeager.
In the intensive care unit of Marshalltown’s hospital, nurses knew not to separate Gordon and Norma.
“They brought them in the same room in intensive care and put them together — and they were holding hands in ICU. They were not really responsive,” said Dennis Yeager.
Gordon died at 3:38 p.m. holding hands with his wife as the family they built surrounded them.
“It was really strange, they were holding hands, and dad stopped breathing but I couldn’t figure out what was going on because the heart monitor was still going,” said Dennis Yeager. “But we were like, he isn’t breathing. How does he still have a heart beat? The nurse checked and said that’s because they were holding hands and it’s going through them. Her heart was beating through him and picking it up.”
“They were still getting her heartbeat through him,” said Donna Sheets.
At 4:38 p.m., exactly one hour after Gordon died, Norma passed too.
“Neither one of them would’ve wanted to be without each other. I couldn’t figure out how it was going to work,” said Donna Sheets. “We were very blessed, honestly, that they went this way.”
“They just loved being together,” said Dennis Yeager.

Compassion...

As I've mentioned before, our family sponsors a young girl in Haiti through Compassion International. She's been our child for 8 years now...and what a blessing it has been. Each time we receive a new picture and see how she's grown...to see the smile on her face...it melts the heart.

I cannot say enough good things about Compassion International...the way the company is run, the communication between sponsors and children, between Compassion and the children and between Compassion and the sponsoring family. When Haiti was devastated by the earthquake in 2010, Compassion offered us daily updates until our child had been found. She and her family were safe and well and we rejoiced at the news.

Even if you don't feel you can afford to sponsor a child throughout the year, perhaps you could send in a donation for Christmas? The video linked below shows some of them opening their gifts...our little girl (actually she's 12 now!) is not among them, but I can hear the joy in her letters! I kow it's a little early to speak of Christmas presents but it needs to be in by the end of October so the staff can have time to purchase the gifts, etc.


2011 Christmas Gift Fund Appeal from Compassion International on Vimeo.

For more details click on the Compassion link above...you'll be glad you did! "For as you have done it for the least of these, you have done it for me..."

Say something nice...

A megaphone in the middle of NY City...the only directions being..."Say something nice"...I'm impressed!

Show or Tell?

What an excellent concept! Even so, if I were writing this, I would say "Show young people love..." It's a hard concept to explain. Love must be felt. I would hope they would have felt it before they come to me, but it is not a given. As wonderful as it would be to live in a world where there is no abuse, it DOES exist. How do we tell them about love if the only attention they have ever received is a hand lifted in anger? How do we tell of the love that God created between a man and a woman if they've been sexually abused? How do we tell them about love if they've grown up with people who have only taught them shame and fear?

We cannot explain it, love must be shown. And the showing may very well be a long process. What reason do they have to trust us if we do not work to earn this trust? In most cases, the abuse comes by way of the very people who should have loved them from their first breath. Why should they believe we would be any different? Although one incident of abuse can have a traumatic impact, it usually doesn't stop with one...it happens time and again. And we must love them, time and again until God's grace shows them our love and His.