Clinging To The Rock

SHARING YOUR SELF FOR CHRIST’S SAKE 

  Scripture Reference:1 Thessalonians 2:8

” We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the Gospel of God but our lives as well because you had become so close to us “. (1)

This heart warming salutation of Paul acknowledging the arrival of Thessalonians desiring to learn of the way and the teachings of Jesus Christ, is exemplary for all who desire to promote the Mission of Jesus Christ.
The following brief excerpt of Pauline’s history reveals much about humankind’s creation and the ‘tie that binds the heart in Christian love”.
The spiritual differences between the Thessalonians, Paul and his Gospel team, appear stringent and distinctive.
Not that the Thessalonians are devoid of any religious thought or practices but they are worshippers of idols. An idol is ‘ representative of a god used as an object of worship’. Meanwhile, Paul and his missioners represent worshippers of the living God. Thus, two distinct ideologies share a common goal: to establish communication with Someone or something outside themselves in this world.

Humans are, then, creatures with dual citizenship!
Before we become residents of Earth, we are residents in Our Heavenly Father’s Home. Here, in our primal Home, God created and equipped us to become residents of this world. Consequently, in the deep recesses of every being there remains an unquenchable thirst for the true and living God.

Hear the poet William Wordsworth’s expression of this belief :
“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere it’s setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy”. (lines 58–70). (2)

Paul identifies two critical facts for the successful dispensation of this Heaven-appointed Mission to help others to own faith in the living God.

The Scripture under present discussion celebrates Paul’s success  in inspiring Thessalonians to become living witnesses for God, through Jesus Christ,His chosen son. That success demonstrates Paul’s sincere commitment to keep his communication lines between Heaven and Earth ready for immediate action, when God was ready to commission him to action!
irrefutably, this is the avenue God chooses to reveal to us  in turn our commission to be His co-creators in this life. On the day of your creation, God equipped you for the special task you are to address in this needy world ! Paul’s private communication link between the two realms of citizenship, Heaven and Earth was always on stand-by and so must ours be. 

God longs for this to become the identifying feature of everyone created ‘ in His Image’. Subsequently, God reveals one’s appointed place as His co-creator and equips them for the particular station in this world’s citizenry. God prepares His children for living as citizens of the world by instilling in them the same Spirit Jesus exemplified in the flesh. It was the same Holy Spirit in Paul and his cohorts as they toiled among the Thessalonians. There is a second ingredient in Paul’s success story of enlisting the Thessalonians in Christ’s ongoing Mission in the world. It was the emanating evidence of the presence and the undeniable power of the indwelling Christ in the lives of the missioners.   

” We loved you so much that we delighted to share with you not only the Gospel of God but our lives as well because you had become so close to us “

In this critical time of diminished faith when church steeples that silently announced with pride, the sacrifice and determination of our forebears to weave into their community’s fabric, the stories of life-giving trust in the eternal, are falling in disrepair, and the doors that have swung wide in welcome, for generations, are now being shuttered and barred!

It is never enough merely to tell the story. We must ‘ BE THE STORY!’ Be everything that encourages another in sunshine and shadow to keep looking up! Such must be preserved at any cost.

” Not only in the words you say,
  Not only, in the deeds confessed,
But in the most unconscious way, is Christ expressed!

Is it a beatific smile?
A holy light upon your brow?
Oh, no! I felt His Presence when you laughed just now.

For me ’twas not the truth you taught, to you so plain, to me so dim. But when you came to me, you brought a sense of Him.

So, from your heart, He beckons me; from your eyes, His love is shed
’til I lose sight of you and, see, Christ instead! (3)

A Prayer To Follow This Meditation

O God, You revealed Yourself to the world in Your Son Jesus. Grant that today’s world will reveal our conscientious effort to build the Kingdom of God Jesus demonstrated.

Father, the world has become more interested in developing technological skills than promoting the transforming power of Brotherly Love. Hear us pray for Your forgiveness, and grant us anew the power of Your Holy Spirit:
To seek You more powerlessly
To speak Your Truth more forcefully,
To BE THE Indwelling CHRIST  
to all you meet.
In His Name, we make our prayer. Amen
              

                               TEXT NOTES

1. The Scripture quotes in the text are from the NIV translation.
2. ” Ode: Intimations of Immortality” by
   William Wordsworth
   from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
   3 Author unknown

ABSOLUTE SURRENDER 

“As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers Simon, called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me, Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.”

At once, they left their nets and followed him.
Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James, son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father, Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.”
Matthew 4: 18-22  ( NIV)

Day in and day out, it had been a familiar routine for the four men Jesus now recruited to become His disciples. There was Peter and his brother Andrew and James and his brother John, who were all fishermen. Success in their trade demanded astute attention to detail. Early mornings and late evenings with a rollercoaster of unpredictable successes and failures in between. Still, the mysterious and neverending lure of the sea can never be ignored by those who, like the poet John Masefield, have contracted “Sea Fever”. For at least two of them, James and his brother John, there would be the additional concern for their father, who was no longer a young man and was most likely teaching his sons everything they knew about their trade. Did they never think of the day they would see their father joining the company of the old sea veterans, watching through misty eyes as their boat headed for the fishing ground without him? A feeling of helplessness would pervade such thought and always suggest it be a consideration for another day.
The occasion of our text, however, presents a different perspective.
We have been considering matters that challenge us constantly to seek answers from our local experts. But what happens next in this narrative takes us beyond all the physical analyses of our five senses to our inwardness. We must inquire personally about what is happening to us inwardly.
The immediacy of the response of the four fishermen to Jesus’s invitation to follow Him is unusual for worldings. Typically, we would seek examples of like experiences from the past before undertaking such an out-of-the-blue suggestion.

Could the occasion when Jesus attempted to recruit these four fishermen to become His disciples, God was already active. Perhaps even before their birth, God was preparing them for this very event yet to come to fruition! Throughout their life, they seemed to be preparing for this particular hour. Culture, religion, and their present history seemed likely catalysts for considering a career change! Undoubtedly, they knew the Jewish Scriptures of the Old Testament concerning their peoples’ living hope for a coming Messiah. Throughout history, the commonly accepted belief is that ‘God’s dwelling in the human spirit is the spring of Eternal Hope; as the early 18th-century English poet Alexander Pope expressed “, Hope springs eternal in the human breast. Man never is, but always to be blest”. Therefore, wherever God is, there is Hope. And changes necessary for the fulfilment of His purposes will come to be.

 From the beginning of creation, God destined us all to be His co-creators. With God’s promised help, we commit to removing the grim realities that prevent the world from being the perfect reflection of Heaven’s glorious kingdom that God intends.

The likelihood of the world reaching a status completely resembling Heaven will result when the human race willingly permits an absolute surrender of their being to the innate reality of God’s creation plan. The prevalence of ego consciousness in the world instils a sense of self-esteem and self-importance in us, which must become a personal conquest, as exemplified in Jesus Christ our Lord in His Absolute Surrender to God. Then shall a new day dawn with songs of thanksgiving that the prayers uttered by generations of Christian disciples are being visibly answered:

“Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as in Heaven.

Hymn: Freely, Freely

                       https://youtu.be/SFV0OVeKdlw?si=ZEX8Pzu5EZcHDT9M

A Prayer To Follow This Meditation

Conquering God,
The sound of Your command, “Be Still”, delivered to the fierce wind and raging seas, brought belief in miracles to overwhelmed disciples of Jesus caught in the storm’s fury.

Father, Please renew a triumphant belief in the miracle of Your conquering power in each of us. Inspire us to know that He who is with us is far more powerful than anyone or anything in this world. It is not until You conquer the self in each of us that the world sees God in human beings, thereby fulfilling its only Hope of its future glory.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

                                    Additional Notes

1. The photo is of the area in Brigus, Newfoundland, popularly known as “Middle Ridge”.
|2. The Biblical quotations in the text are from the NIV

On Bring A Channel For God

TEXT:
“While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”
Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” And immediately, the leprosy left him”. Luke 5:12-16

Additional Scripture Reading: Philippians 1: 20 -30

We must prepare to use every means to ensure that the Gospel remains ‘The Living Word.’ ‘The Word’ became flesh’ and dwelt among us’ must forever be the distinguishing quality of this glorious Gospel.
Therefore, we are to
-Approach it with a poet’s heart.
– Understand it with a philosopher’s Spirit.
-And imagine it with the unimpeded faith of a child. 

The New Testament is not a linear expression of historical data. The entire Bible is a unique expression of the vicissitudes of human development in relationships with the Divine.
Here, there is a moan of pain.
There is a song burst of victory.
This page is wet with the tears of a suppliant!
Here, the hills are alive with the sounds of worshippers singing.

This meditation calls for your participation. Bring with you the gift of your imagination. And then, please God, as a result, you will become another channel through which the Living Word will again come into the world, now waiting in longing and hope.

“Hello, my name is Jesse!
Luke doesn’t tell you that. I only wish he had!
You see, a person’s name is the most important thing about him. It is the one thing that is especially his own!
The last tragedy to befall anyone is for them to lose their name!
Tragic it is to lose your health.
Tragic to lose your family and your friends.
But when a man isn’t worth remembering by name, that is the worst tragedy of all.

I lost my name the day that it became evident that I had contracted leprosy. See these hands? They did not always look like this! Once, they held our newborn baby. My skin was as clear as hers! And with my finger, I felt her first tooth!
My dim, old eyes were not always this way! Once, I looked upon the face of the most beautiful woman in this world. I watched the embers of the day glow; I watched the white dawn chase the grey from the morning sky! Then people heartily greeted me: Good morning, Jesse; may the Lord, Jehovah, go with you today, Jesse”.Then leprosy! And they all appeared to be searching for something lost in the cobblestones under their feet, and a deathly silence stole the sound of my name on their tongues. To this very day, I am introduced to you as “a man covered with leprosy”. But I want to cry out,” Look again! I am more than what you see with your physical eyes! Like us all, there is an inwardness to each of us that is far more important and potentially more complete than what our outward bodies reveal.

Please, don’t overlook that I have an inwardness which this leprosy, nor will anything else in all creation ever destroy. During the dark nights of despair, when sleep refused me respite, I felt an indomitable hope that everything would one day be better.

This inwardness is the home of that HOPE that one day I would meet someone who would see beyond my leprosy. So that I could show the world there is more than what we presently experience. There has to be someone out there who loves us, who cares about who We are and What we may yet become.

That day, I met a man called Jesus. And His Spirit met with my Spirit. I knew He saw farther than my physical impairments to deeper longings and aspirations. I tell you, at that moment, I recognized the footfall of God inside me. Without further thought, I uttered: “Lord, if you are willing, You can make me clean”. He responded with love and compassion. ” I am willing, be clean”.

 For each of us, the consideration is not whether He is willing to free our shackled spirits but whether we are eager for that to occur. 

A Prayer To Follow This Meditation

Merciful God,
You long for us, like the Father, whose son, yielding to the tempting promises of a far country, assigned his beloved father to an unending watch for his return to nobler things.
You have much greater expectations for each of us than those realities in the world that persuade us to be satisfied and at ease amid greed, corruption and division.
Father, Your Son taught us to pray, “May Your Kingdom come; Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven”. Give us the Grace and the Courage to say again, ” I will arise and come to my Father. Use me as a channel of Your Peace and the conveyor of Your Love and Mercy to all I meet. Then live with this assurance that Our Father’s response will be, ” You are my beloved child, in whom I am well pleased, welcome, thou, into my Kingdom! We pray in the Name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.

Hymn: Make Me The Channel Of Thy Peace.

https://youtu.be/fYz14jEoaeU

Acknowledgements

The photo is of Porterville United Church Of Canada, on the Lewisport Pastoral Charge, Newfoundland. I am personally indebted to my friend Dennis Porter for this beautiful photo.

The Mystery And The Majesty Of Righteousness

Scripture Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:20-31

Text “Commit your way to the Lord,
Trust also in Him,
And He shall bring it to pass.
He shall bring forth your Righteousness like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun”.
(Psalm 37: 5-6)

Scriptures of both the Old Testament and the New reveal an intimacy between the human quality of belief and the divine qualities of Righteousness. That, in itself, is part of a mystery. Belief is such a wavering emotion and subject to change. Righteousness is such a fixed and certain reality that the twain, belief, and Righteousness should never meet. Belief is temporal; Righteousness is eternal.

Still, belief is like the seedling that grows into a large plant that one day provides a home for the birds, as discussed in the Parable that Jesus told. (Matthew 13: 31-32).
That parable teaches that even the smallest amount of faith (belief) can significantly impact the world.
Furthermore, belief is the pulse-beat of Judaism and, subsequently, by association, Christianity.
 Of Old Testament fame, Abraham earned Righteousness by believing God’s promises, and he became known as the father of many nations, thus underscoring the indispensable quality of belief.
( see Romans 4: 16 -25 ) 

But where did that ability to believe God’s promises come from? 

 Some people trace their belief in God to some arresting phenomenon in nature, like the magnificence of dawn or the crimson glow of the setting sun. At the same time, others attribute such belief to overwhelming psychophysical events such as the birth of a child or the death of a loved one.

But what if the initiative to believe is in the Creator’s hands? And therefore, belief is the recalling of prenatal experiences engraved upon the Spirit of each subject. And what if each of us were at Home with our Heavenly Father in that dwelling not made by human hands but eternal in Heaven”?
And what if the act of creating the human race is God’s intention for us to become His co-creators, whereby worldly deficits
are satisfied by people empowered and endowed by God with the required talents and wisdom to satisfy?
Is that not a reasonable explanation for Abraham’s inspiring faith?
Yet, there is more!
Interwoven throughout the Divine’s will to establish His kingdom on earth, God prepares the members of the human race to be His prodigy by the everlasting promise, “Certainly, I will be with you!”
Herein is the eternal pledge to maintain an expected relation with God and thereby fulfil the mission for which each one is born. Abraham’s undaunted insistence that God was intimately involved in his life reveals this life’s most precious reality. Here, the mystery between belief and Righteousness is displayed in the first verse of the Bible, ” In the beginning God.”

Righteousness is the flooding of the human Spirit with the fullness of God, initiated by His grace and includes the capacity to strengthen one’s belief.
As enlightening and grateful as we are for the moving account of Abraham’s faithful experience, We have an even more excellent demonstration of faith and Righteousness. The Eternal’s promise to be always with His chosen Kingdom Builders, is, since Abraham’s day, translated into flesh and has dwelt on earth among us.

“It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.”   (1 Corinthians 1:30 NIV)

So it is today, amidst the cynic’s eager testimony, that religious institutions have outlived their usefulness and that we have failed in our mission. Then it is time for an encounter with your Righteousness.

Let Him show you again the reason You were sent here to earth. “And God sees you and the void waiting to be filled, and yet He concludes It is still a good match! ” And lo, I am with you always!

       A Prayer To Follow This Meditation

Father, a holy hush falls over us as we search our vocabularies for words to talk to You about the mystery and the majesty of Your Righteousness. That’s because it is a subject more demonstrative of Heaven than of Earth. And to realize that You desire to share that unspeakable gift with us finite beings leaves us awestruck but silent.

At the time of our arrival at our new beginnings here on earth, we were like the tiny mustard seed which Jesus talked about. With Your loving and gentle touch, the smallest of seeds grows into a tree and a home for the songbirds, thus adding to the earth’s symphony of praise.

Righteousness is the mystery of You, our Heavenly Father, sharing Your fullness with us so that one day, we, too, may add to this world’s most beautiful symphony with the harmony of our lives. How precious to us is Your gracious word: “Beloved, now are we the children of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as He is.” (1 John 3:2)
“. Praise God through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Hymn: Joy To The World

https://youtu.be/mRr8ei8u_XM?si=JA0F9SmkW5uequNS