Exposure and Life

   The other morning I had a few minutes before a meeting, and, even though it was still dark, I thought I would take a couple of shots of the predawn sky. This was 20 minutes or so before the scheduled sunrise, but a lot of the time, that is where you get the most color and a softer hue.

   So I took a shot, trying to capture the moment when the sky was beginning to lighten, and got this:

   When I got home to look at it, I realized that the darkness had completely taken over the photo, and it needed to have had more exposure in order to make it look like sunrise.

   So, I put it in the photo application in the computer, increased the exposure and clarity and got this:

   Exposure has a lot to do with the size of the aperture opening (how much light I let in) and the shutter speed (the length of time I let the camera look at the shot). By increasing the exposure, I do both and I get a picture worth using.

   Exposure is a lot like that in my life as well. The more I open my eyes, my aperture, to the world around me, the more I can see. Of course, I can see the good, the bad and the ugly, and that is where the shutter speed comes in.

   The length of time I spend looking at something, the more effect it can have on my life. That look can be a curse or a blessing, depending on how long I look.

   So I realize that exposure is very important, to my photos as well as to my life.

   And my prayer is like that of the Psalmist, that I would let my eyes dwell on no worthless thing, but, with God's help, keep them on Him.

Reading, Believing, and Living

   Why are verses in The Psalms so appealing to most people? Indeed, why do I like to read them as the first part of my meditation in the early morning?

   Is it because they are so positive a lot of the time? The words flow in a rhythm of worship and praise, and it feels good just to read and take them in. They bring comfort and relieve suffering and grief.

   But is this all they do? Can there be more that I sometimes tend to gloss over, even in the most uplifting of this part of God's Word?

   The Psalm reading for today comes from Psalms 16 and contains these words:

"Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge"

"You are my Lord"

"I have no good apart from you"

"The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup"

"I bless the Lord who gives me counsel"

"I have set the Lord always before me"

"Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices"

"You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore"

   Even as I see the truth in these words for that early writer, I wonder if my life shows them to others. Do I live out what I read or just  mentally give a nod to them?

   It is so easy for me to read and assent, then go out and live the rest of my day without thinking of them or knowing that they are true for me, and as I get to the end of my day, realize that they have made no difference in my life at all, at least not in the way that I live in front of others.

   So, God, help me not only to read these words but remember them throughout this day and live them out. Help me to have a smile on my face and an attitude that shows that I really believe them. Help me not only to be Your hands and feet in my community, but to have Your mind and heart as well.

Veritas...Truth

   Here is the convoluted path that I took to the subject of today. Sometimes there is no telling when you start out of where you will end, and so here is my journey so far.

   Beginning before 6 this morning, I read the two sections of Scripture for today, and I also read the Moravian readings for today. In that latter text was included a verse from the hymn by Henry van Dyke, Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee, written in 1907 and published in 1911, whose music score was taken from Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

   I thought about this music as I walked in the early dawn's light. The morning was clear, quiet and beautiful and the words of that hymn verse that I had read earlier came back to mind:

All Thy works with joy surround Thee, earth and heaven reflect Thy rays,
Stars and angels sing around Thee, center of unbroken praise.
Field and forest, vale and mountain, flowery meadow, flashing sea,
Singing bird and flowing fountain call us to rejoice in Thee.

   It was indeed a glorious morning, and a joyful walk.

   When I got back to the condo, I looked up the hymn and the story behind it. These words of van Dyke were included in the article:

"These vers­es are sim­ple ex­press­ions of com­mon Christ­ian feel­ings and de­sires in this pre­sent time—hymns of to­day that may be sung to­ge­ther by peo­ple who know the thought of the age, and are not afraid that any truth of sci­ence will de­stroy re­li­gion, or any re­vo­lu­tion on earth over­throw the king­dom of hea­ven. There­fore this is a hymn of trust and joy and hope."

   The mention of truth struck me. What discoveries or theories of science might have been on his mind when he wrote that? Then the thought, what did the textbooks of 1907 have in them? What science, what history, what theories of either? Which of these would still hold water today?

   As discoveries have been made and new facts uncovered over the 100+ years since that hymn was first published, what "truths" have come out? Will even these new ones stand the test of time as new facts are discovered?

   Van Dyke talked of Christians that are not afraid that any "truth" will destroy their faith in the ultimate truth of what God has done. What is accepted by society as truth may pass away as science keeps digging, but their's is a truth that will not change.

   There seems to be all sorts of relative truths out there and temporary ones as well, but I will trust in the God that has placed that ultimate one out there, the one that will still be there when it is all over.

   And my prayer is that God will help me to discover all that and live by it. If I can't know it all, I can still trust in the One that does.

   Amen

Thank You

   Set the scene:  It is 5:15 in the morning, dark outside and quiet inside..

   The question: Do I get up, and if so what do I do?

   The background: I was inspired yesterday when looking at some photos that my neighbor had posted on Facebook, and I wanted to see if I could do some of the same. She's good and hard to follow, but I had to try, I thought.

   I usually give some thought each night before dropping off to what time I want to get up. Last night was no exception and I thought about 5:30 or so would be right. If the weather looked good, I might go down to the lighthouse area and try some night and early morning shots. After I determine a good wake up time, I pray (selfishly maybe) that if this is what God wants me to do, He will wake me up. Now I don't know theologically about that type of prayer, but, for me, it gives a boost to rolling out.

   I did not want to just run out the door and begin shooting, I wanted to at least tip my hat to God and pray for a minute or two and look up one of the readings (probably to see if I was really supposed to venture out). Here is a verse from Psalm 5 this morning:

"O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice;
in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch."

   In the morning God hears my voice and he calls on me to sacrifice and watch. I'm not exactly sure about the sacrifice part, but I do like the hearing and watching.

   That sounds like a "yes" to me, so I check the weather and find out that currently it is partly cloudy and not raining. Could be a good morning to shoot.

   Here I am at the pier/village area before 6AM. What will I find? I am watching..

   The first image is that light coming through the trees.

Then there is the beach area with a brightening sky in the background.

   Then it is back up the steps and looking east again.

   Then I start to pack up and head for home, but first..

   Then a thought, "I may not be as good as my neighbor at this stuff, but I am sure glad to be alive this morning. A Chamber of Commerce type of beginning to my day, and gratitude is my prayer. Thank You God for all You have done."

The Impact of a Shared Piece of Bread

   Here are a few of the book titles I have read over the past few months:

   Of Windmills and War (a true story of the feeding of Dutch people at the end of WWII)

   The Secret Rescue (an untold story of American nurses and medics behind Nazi lines in WWII)

   A Town Like Alice (a story of a British girl trapped in Malaya in WWII)

   The German Suitcase (a story of the Holocaust)

   The Thin Red Line (WWII)

   Guests of the Ayatollah (Iranian hostage crises in 1979)

   There seems to be some sort of pattern here. They are all historical in nature, most about the WWII period, and most all are about events or people that the general public has never heard of or about.

   Why do I find these types of stories so interesting?

   I think it is because of the lives of so many that are woven into any main story line. There is a tremendous amount of actors under the rock of any event, and we do not even see them until an event is brought out in the light of day.

   Take, for example, the book I just finished reading yesterday, The Secret Rescue. The narrative contains the names of many people, some famous from history, such as Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, but also those others in the story that had a part, but whose names are only known to their family and friends.

   And there are others that took part in that whole episode who are not even named in the book. Let me illustrate.

   The historical event takes place in Albania, a backwater country even today, near the end of WWII. A planeload of American medical personnel has to make a crash landing in a remote part of that remote country. They spend two months wandering about a mountainous landscape, trying to evade the Nazi enemy and get back to Allied lines in Italy. A little known event, in an out-of-the-way place, tucked inside the greater story of that Second World War in the 1940s.

   What intrigues me about this story are the many lives that are touched and whose own individual story lines intersect in this one time and place. From the personnel on the plane, to the people looking for them, to the secret Allied agents on the ground in that country, to the partisan fighters, to the villagers in remote areas; all play a part, and without each one the story does not unfold as it did.

   Who might be the most important in the tale? Was it the ones on the plane, the pilots that got the plane down in that area, the freedom fighters and the military who got them out, or the unknown villagers who shared some of their meager food supply to keep the Americans alive in those winter months in those Albanian mountains? Without each, the story does not happen.

   I think about this as I walk this morning. My life intersects with others on a daily basis, and what is my response to them? Will I be like those poor inhabitants of that poor country in that episode of history, the ones who risked their lives and meager food stock to help, or will I be one of those unnamed peasants who locked their doors and refused?

   This book was not written from any religious perspective, in fact it seems deliberately left out of the narrative, but God was active in those events, just as He is today. He had a purpose in all of those lives back then, and He has today.

   When I think of how a life today could have been impacted by a person with a scrap of food shared with another some 70 years in the past, it boggles my mind. Just because one shared, one nurse lived to care for another who lived, and each person affected by that act of kindness could take their place in the overall plan of God's story. Multiply that by the number of people who were saved because of that one episode, and you have millions of lives affected by one person and one piece of bread. Amazing.

   Would that I would be open to others today, for reasons that I cannot even know.

 

Passing Shadows

   I am sitting in my den/office/spare bedroom right now looking at the blank screen of a malfunctioning TV. I can still get a picture, but the color is messed up somewhat, and I have been looking for a solution. It has taken far too much of my time to get a service man to look at it and determine either the cause, or the remedy, or both.

   Now I got all of that done on Thursday, the 11th day after the problem began. The rep told me that it could not be fixed, and that, since I had an extended warranty, they would replace my tv with a new one. All of that is OK, and probably good news, but now other things take my attention.

   Do I junk the old one, while it still works enough to use? What size new one do I get? If I leave the old one here in this room, what do I do with a new one?

   Then there are other concerns: I have been doing all my watching from the Internet, so do I spring for cable to get all the shows I want to see, especially since it is football season again? Do I go to the Sky Angel network, a Christian alternative to regular cable, so as to miss all the bad stuff on tv? Do I just plug along as I have been doing?

   Then I think in the midst of all these questions, would not my thinking time be better spent in some other way. I pondered all these tv questions for a couple of hours this morning, even on my walk and through breakfast, so that I did not even sit down to think about God until now.

   I recognized all of the above as I sat down to read, pray and write. My prayer was for God to help me see through all the distractions, to help me get to right decisions, even on mundane stuff like tv, and to get my life focused on Him as it should be.

   Then the verses from Psalm 144 just a few minutes ago:

"O Lord, what is man that you regard him,
or the son of man that you think of him?

Man is like a breath;
his days are like a passing shadow."

   In the long term scheme of things, what is important, what is lasting, what is worthwhile?

   The answer to any of the above is probably not tv.

   So, I pray again, for the ability to see right priorities, and not to waste my passing shadow on things that are not eternally worthwhile.

   Can I work this whole thing out? God willing.

   Thy Will Be Done

West, South, East and North, All of It...

   There were these verses this morning from Psalm 131:

"O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul"

   And I wondered about them, and what they might say to me, as I went out to walk. Even now, as I begin to write, I am not quite sure about that, but maybe i will be more enlightened before I finish, or maybe I will just have to come back to them over and over during this day.

   So, I walked, and I looked. What did my sleepy eyes behold?

   A full moon in the west, clear and bright in the early sky.

   A billowing cloud formation in the south, a light shade of gray for the most part, but a bright pink on the top where the sun was striking it from below the horizon.

   A brilliant orange, yellow and pink sunrise in the east, just before the sun came up.

   A sky filled with several shades of bright blue.

   And, right at the end of my walk, as I paused before going in, I glanced to the north and there was a partial rainbow, just a short arc of colors stretching from one cloud to another.

   Two thoughts came to mind:

   1. I should have brought my camera this morning, and...

   2. Does all of this mean something that I should know, or feel, or see? Is God trying to tell me something through all these visual images? Am I supposed to put it all together and write about it?

   Then as I reread the verses above, they seemed to say "when you see these beautiful scenes in the sky, they may not be there for anything else but to cause you to be glad to be alive and to be able to enjoy them. Think about that for awhile. You have looked to the west, south, east and north. Be sure to take in the whole picture."

   So, I relive these images in my mind, and I know that I am blessed, and I am grateful to God for such a beautiful morning and for these thoughts and mental pictures to carry with me into this new day.

   But, tomorrow I may take my camera anyway.

There Is a "No Spin Zone"

   This time of the year there are a lot of things that are new, especially for students and teachers.

   There are new school supplies
   There are new kids in my class
   There are new textbooks
   There are new teachers
   There are new sports and teams

   I guess I was reminded of all this as I read emails from my kids that their kids are all in the process of beginning the school year. I have grand kids in college, high school, middle school and elementary, and, even if they are still in the same school as last year, there will be lots of "new" stuff for them. What will they find? What will they learn? What will they believe?

   In fact, those are questions for all of us, regardless of age or position. What do we find as we live our lives on a daily basis? What do we learn from all the sources that are available to us? What do we believe about what we hear and read and see?

   Our kids will be learning from their teachers, their texts, and what they do in class. Will they be getting the truth or someone's opinion, or spin? Sometimes even the textbooks and required reading have an agenda that will influence a student in one direction or another. The advances of science have been such that those who used science texts back just a few years ago and studied "truth" now find that they actually did not. What is taught as truth is often not, maybe not deliberately, but just through ignorance.

   How about us as adults? How do we get the truth? From TV, from newspapers, from the Internet, from others around us? How do we discern the truth without the spin or deliberate manipulation? Our sources are many and varied, and readily available, but how do we determine the bottom line of truth?

   A verse from Psalm 119 for today:

   "The sum of your word is truth"

   A simplistic answer maybe, but true.

   Be wary of all the others, especially if they contradict God.

Becoming My Father

   Almost all the years of his working life, my dad got up early to begin his day. In the produce business it was a necessity to be on the job before he sun came up in order to get those fresh fruits and vegetables into the pipeline, into the stores and restaurants which were his customers.

   I can well remember his telling me, as he got me up to help him on some days, that the morning was the best part of the day. Of course, all I wanted to do at those times was to roll over, pull the covers up and go back to sleep. That was my idea of a good way to begin the day.

   Why is it that as I grow older each year, I become my father?

   I thought about this as I walked out in the darkness of this new day. The air was a little cooler, a fresh breeze was about, the sky was light in the west from the moon going down and in the east where the sky was beginning to lighten as the sun came up, and all was pretty quiet.

   It was indeed a great start to this day.

   Now as I sit here thinking about those times, I wonder if there is a parallel somewhere that equates the becoming more like my dad, with the becoming more like the Heavenly Father. It is probably a poor comparison, but is there any growth in that direction?

   I can almost see my dad smiling right now as I live out the good feeling of this morning. There could be an "I told you so" there somewhere.

   Does my Heavenly Father smile also as I ponder these thoughts? Is there an "I told you so" moment there too?

   And I breathe a sigh of relief, as I realize a hope in this fresh time. There will be room to grow, there will be opportunities to serve, and there could be smiles all around.

   Let the day begin...

Evidence: Mushrooms and Hearts

   Isn't Google a Great Thing?

   This morning as I walked out, the first thing that caught my eye was the sight of mushrooms where there had not been yesterday.

   That got me to thinking, a dangerous activity this early, where do they come from? Why are they where they are? I know that they usually come after some wet weather, but why in that spot on the golf course?

   So, I came back home and looked it up, or rather I Googled it by asking the question, "why do mushrooms grow where they do?" There I found the answer I sought.

   Mushrooms are fungi, growing all of the time under he surface, and the part that I see is the flower, so to speak, of the plant that has "bloomed" because of the rain. It was there all the time, but it took some water to bring it out into the open. It is an evidence of something unseen, but real.

   Of course this has a spiritual application as well. What lies hidden in my heart is brought forth by some act, or something that acts upon it. Example:

   I sat in church yesterday morning, as is my habit, not knowing what would happen there, as I imagine a lot of others in that service did. The pastor was not preaching that day, and I just wondered if it would be meaningful to me. There was the first problem, "me".

   Our worship leader was in charge. Not only did he lead the music, but the message was his also. He spoke on worship in the church and gave several illustrations of how we as a people could participate in worship. Then at the end, he led us in that time of personal worship, in silence, in prayer and in music.

   He invited us to participate in all of those ways, or in any that we were led to.

   Then the mushrooms started to appear. People responded in visible ways. As I sat in the back, I saw folks moving to the stage to put prayers on a prayer wall, I saw others moving to the communion stations to worship in that act, I saw others at the altars in front, and still others sitting quietly, heads bowed, worshipping with the music or the quietness of the moment.

   It seems there was a lot of unseen things of the heart being brought out in that time. I felt it too, as I quit observing and participated. It was truly a worship time.

   Some Google posts on the mushroom question presented the idea that there is sometimes a vast underground system of fungi that we cannot see unless the proper conditions for flowering come. I saw that in the natural world this morning, but I experienced it firsthand in the spiritual realm in that sanctuary on that Sunday morning.

   From the reactions, I believe God caused that for a lot of others, too.

   Gratitude is my prayer.

Plans for Today and.........For All of Us

   Why is it all of a sudden that my thoughts are filled with medical issues? Not the ones in our family, but those in books that I read, passages in my daily reading and, this morning, even a blog that I stumbled on while looking up something on Google.

   Let me present a small bit of detail on the above.

   I have been engrossed in reading When Crickets Cry, by Charles Martin, and this book focuses on the world of doctors, heart transplants and the trauma and feelings of those involved. I finished it before I went to sleep last night, and now need to go back to a couple of parts of it and see if I can determine the answer to a question that the last page left for me. Regardless of the subject matter, it was a great read, and I would recommend it.

   As I got into the Bible readings this morning, the Gospel reading was in John 5, the narrative about Jesus healing the man at the Pool of Siloam. There was that medical tie again.

   I thought I would look up some info on that Pool and the meaning of the incident in Jesus' ministry, and in doing so I stumbled on a blog site that used the name of that spot, Pool of Siloam, as its title. I started off to try to find out the reason this person chose that title and ended up reading all the entries back to its beginning.

http://siloampool.blogspot.com/

   It is a recent blog, going back into 2012 and with the last posting in July of 2013. It is the journey of a couple being blessed with a little boy, born with spina bifida.

   This incredible couple are living through all of the uncertainty of the medical issues with a faith that inspires. I'm sure that all of their days are not "up days", but they have, as evidenced in the postings, come to grips with this aspect of life and seem to be resting in the fact that God is in it all. I read every post and was inspired with their dedication and their outlook.

   I don't think they used this verse in their writings, but it could have been their's as they went through all of this, and are they still are on this journey, Jeremiah 29:11:

" For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope."

   I had already been reminded of this same verse earlier in my meditations this morning and felt it was speaking to me also, even at this stage of life. Are there still plans that are for me?

   Knowing that I am still on this side of the heaven, I feel there are reasons for my life also. My prayer today is for the willingness to listen to God for what He wants me to do, and to realize that His plans for me are good.

   Plans for today, plans for tomorrow, plans to bless others, and plans to use me.

   These are what I look for.

   Let's Go

My World Is Ever So Small

   We have had a plethora of rain lately. Over the past few days, storm clouds have gathered in the afternoon, and rain has been our weather.

   As I stood on the back porch and watched the clouds gather, I thought about how others would cope with this new storm. It seemed to me that those clouds I saw encompassed the whole world, that the entire planet was turning darker, and that others were seeing the same scene I did. It is easy to project everyone else into the scenario of my own life and existence and make the assumption that it is the same for all others.

   But I know that it is not so. Even as I took a look at the weather radar, with those black clouds billowing outside, I could determine that those folks just a few miles south of where I stood were in the clear. They were not seeing the same things that I was, and their experience was completely different.

   How much the same plays out in my life. I am in my own little world, and there I stay, insulated from the world of people around me by what i can see and feel. My thought processes and vision need to be expanded.

   It can be so easy for me to just hunker down in the storm cellar of my life and forget others, but, even as I take another look at the photograph above, I see that there is more just to the west, a different sky with light, and there are people living out there.

   The whole thing is not about me. The world is so much bigger than that.

   God, please help me to see and hear and care.

Do You Ever Wonder?

   I am currently reading a book by Charles Martin, When Crickets Cry. The device that the author uses to tell his story is to begin the book in the present time, then flash back to a distant past, then back to the present, then a nearer past, so that, I presume, in the end the past and the present will come together to reveal how everything has come about. The main character is hiding a fact of his past life, and the author is dropping bread crumbs in those incidents of his life to get the reader to wonder and speculate as to what has happened to bring all of this about, and to predict how it will end.

   Just as the author uses this writing technique to keep the reader wondering about the past and the future of the hero, so too do I wonder about times in the Bible where a fact is stated and then the narrative moves on. Like the incident in John 4 where Jesus meets the woman at the well. Toward the end of the story a verse states:

"So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days."

   As I read it this morning, I began to wonder what happened in that town in those two days. What did Jesus do that caused many to believe. Was there healing, were there other miracles, what parables did he use to teach? What if someone had used a video recorder for 48 hours? What would be on the tape or card?

   It is so very easy to just read a statement in any book, even the Bible, and just pass on by without stopping to think about it. History is filled with incidents that have happened, and there is no way to really know the causes or all the things that led up to that one time. We just speculate and wonder. That is our nature.

   Are there people living today whose lives are a testimony of what happened in that Samaritan town so many years ago? Those were real people with real lives, real concerns, hurts, fears and joys. What did they pass down to their children and grand children? If God threw a pebble into a pond on those two days, what have the ripples produced?

   I wonder.....

   Just as those Samaritans could not know the future events, so it is with me. I can't see past the current moment. I don't know about the pebbles and the ripples, I just see what is set before me, and can't even know all that preceded that, what other pebbles and ripples have come together to set up that one brief time. I can wonder, but in the end it is what I do, what rocks I drop into that water, that affect those that come after me.

   So, I wonder about things, but I need to do more than just sit and speculate. As God gives vision, action is required.

   Those folks who lived in that town 2,000 years ago, did something after that two day time, and what they said and did affected their lives and the lives of those others who came after them.

   What will be the ripples of my life?

   Will others be blessed?

   Will God be pleased?

   I wonder.....

Frittern

   Time is a gift. I guess that is an old man talking, realizing that I have spent much more of any time that I am allotted than I have left to spend. When I was younger, time seemed to extend out from wherever I was toward infinity, but now it seems like there is a definite end coming one day.

   I thought of an image that I captured some months back:

   The hands on this clock in the garden of a friend have stopped. Though actual time runs on, for this one it is frozen. One day my earthly time will be like the timepiece, only a decoration in a garden, if that much.

   I had a quick reminder of all of this on a short walk this early morning. Knowing I had a meeting in less than an hour, I sensed that I still needed to walk. I had already read some, and I wanted to be able to write, but I walked anyway. I stopped to talk to a man in the other building, and while we chatted, I felt a pull to get back home and write, that I really did not have the time to stand there and gab.

   But then I thought "maybe this was the purpose of my getting out, to have a few moments with this person. Maybe he was needing to talk to someone". Now, we did not talk on a deep level, but I did still take the time to acknowledge him, and maybe that was all he needed.

   As I continued on back to the condo, a line from a Broadway musical came to mind. From the Music Man:

And all week long your River City
Youth'll be frittern away, 
I say your young men'll be frittern!
Frittern away their noontime, suppertime, choretime too!

   I can spend my time "frittern" away on things that do not matter, or I can listen to prodding of the spirit and get out and go, taking the time along the way to see other people and to hear them also.

   As the clock in the garden reads, my 10:25 time can come at any moment.

   Please God, help me not to fritter.

A Quick Morning Glance

   As I was driving in to a breakfast meeting early this morning, I glanced up, as I passed the church and noticed this sight:

   The cross just stood out in the early morning sky, before the sunrise, and so I stopped and went back to get a picture.

   The picture seemed to say it all for me. The cross is a symbol of God's sacrifice for mankind, and personally for me. It gives me reason for life and hope for the future.

   How many times have I passed this way on my way to somewhere and never noticed? Since, on this Island, this road is the only one going north and south, I must have gone by hundreds of times since we moved back here in 2005, but most times the church is just part of the scenery, if I even notice it at all.

   How many times in life do I see a cross and just say, "there is a cross", or not even say anything? It is just there, pretty, but that is all.

   There is rich meaning in that symbol, for me and for many others. There is hope for all in that cross. There is life.

   I don't want it to be just a pretty sight, but another reminder that Jesus Loves Me.

What Matters?

   When we come right down to it, what really matters?

   God matters

   People matter

   I matter (not in an egotistical way, but I matter to God, and the things that I do are a matter, to Him, to others, and they should be to me.)

   Last week I got off on music in the church in a blog. The very next day, I had to confess that a lot of my rant was out of line as God showed me that this was not the big deal that I thought it was, that other things were much more important. Then yesterday, and this morning, I realized the further evidence that I needed to get back on base.

   Yesterday was youth Sunday in church, and featured testimonies by 4 young people, testimonies of what God is has done and is doing in their lives. Now I did not even know personally, these 4, but they had been impacted by God, and they shared their joys, struggles and victories. As I listened I thought:

   This is what I would like to hear from my own kids and grandkids.

   This is what church and youth ministry is all about.

   I'll bet their music preferences are not similar to mine either.

   So I am reminded, by God again, that my personal preferences are not that important. He is, and those youth are, and I am privileged to be in on it.

   This morning I saw three members of the bird flock. An osprey on the lookout for his morning repast, a heron enjoying his on the bank, and a cardinal, seeming to be well satisfied on a branch near the path. What do they have to do with all of this?

   I remember those verses about God taking care of his birds of the air and flowers of the field, and I see the evidence, right before me, of how much God cares.

   I pray that God will help me to stay awake to Him first, and to those others out there that He puts on my path..

   Just as He continues to do with these white herons I photographed the other morning.

A Reminder from a Spider

   There is a prayer at the end of the Moravian Daily Reading, this one for today:

"O Holy Spirit, you are our light during the day and at night. We thank you for this day. Help us to make the most of it. Help us to let our light shine so that others may see you in us in work or at play. Amen"

   I don't think too much on the unseen world that is out there. I give lip service to the idea, deep down I know that there is more to life than what I can see, but I don't dwell on it. There is a lot that happens that I can't see either with my eyes, or with my mind or even with my heart.

   The Bible talks about spirits, about angels, about demons What am I to make of all that other realm?

   The 3rd person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit fits in here. I did not consciously think about this during my walk this morning. Nor did I consider those other parts of the unseen world, I just walked with my eyes open and looked at what I could see.

   It was not until I got back to the condo and ran my hand across my head, that I realized that I had walked through a spider web that had been spun over the path that I had walked on. I did not see it at the time but there it was, clinging to my hair. How many other things had I not seen, even on this short time outside?

   Just as I do not see the things of the Spirit as they are taking place around me, and not even a physical thing such as the spider web, so it is that my eyes and mind and heart are not even open to things that I do see and just don't recognize.

   As I have prayed many times, God, let me see with my eyes and heart, those things and people that will come into my life, even today, and let me see where I fit into those situations and lives.

   There are reasons as to why those people and things will be in my life today, not just coincidences, and I need to have the heart and will to respond in the way that honors God.

   Help me not to just write all this and then promptly forget it, help it to stick.

   Maybe I should not try so hard to get all that spider's work out of my life, but let it be a reminder of that world that is unseen but real, and to see God's hand in it all.

New Song

   The song that is running through my mind this morning is:

"I Am So Glad That Jesus Loves Me"

   Even as I rush out the door to get in an early morning golf date, that should be enough to keep me thinking for the rest of the day.

   Maybe someone else also.

Look on the Other Side of that Cloud

   I woke up this morning with a feeling of "I goofed", and as I read the Gospel reading for today, whose words in John 1 seemed to be for me:

 "Philip said to him, “Come and see.”

   God seemed to say, "yesterday you did not look at the whole picture. You spoke out of conviction, but there was more. You need to look farther."

  As I walked and thought and looked at the world around me, one thing caught my eye.

   I looked to the east and saw the dark clouds on the horizon, but behind them the sun was rising and the sky was a beautiful shade of blue. As I got my eyes off the low clouds and looked higher, it looked like a more positive beginning to this new day.

   Thoughts of other times and other skies came to my mind. Times when Mayre and I were flying somewhere. The skies above us, as we waited to take off, might have been dark and cloudy, but when we broke above those low lying clouds, the sky was bright, and those same clouds shone with a great light, just because we were looking at them from the other side.

   So, as I considered what I had written yesterday. I knew my personal preferences had come through again. The message from our pastor had been about the glory of God. One of his main points was that this whole life was not about me it was about Him, and there I was writing about "me".

   I was invited by the Scripture verse to "come and see". There was much more to be gotten out of that service than my perceived idea that it could have been better.

   People were there..

   People heard The Word preached with power..

   The were opportunities for lives to be forever changed..

   I don't want my negative reaction to some music take away the more important positives. After all it is my preferences that rose to the top, and as the pastor said "it is not about me".

 "Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”

   I need to be a Phillip and not a Nathanael.

I Like to Sing, Why Can't I?

   Our Bible study leader this morning taught from a few verses in Revelation 16, where the verses speak of the wrath of God poured out on the earth:

"Then I heard a loud voice from the temple, saying to the seven angels, “Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God.”

   But this is not a blog about wrath, even though it is an attribute of God's character, along with mercy, grace, love and justice, this is about music, and we got to it in that session like this.
 
   There is evidently a controversy going on in the Presbyterian Church USA, concerning a new hymn that is not to be included in the new hymnal, because of the mention of this wrath. The hymn written by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend contains the verse:

In Christ alone! who took on flesh
Fulness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness
Scorned by the ones he came to save:
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied -
For every sin on Him was laid;
Here in the death of Christ I live.

   If anyone wants to listen to it sung by Keith Getty's wife, Kristen, here it is:

http://www.gettymusic.com/hymns-inchristalone.aspx

   But I don't want to get into that debate, suffice to say that I love the hymn and think the words are accurate to Scripture, as I thought about hymns and music in general inside the church's worship, a different group of thoughts ran through my mind, brought on by a quote in a newspaper article:

Hawn said what one person thinks is a great hymn might be seen as less than desirable by another. He said a good hymn must be well written, well chosen for the occasion and well sung.

“Take away any of those and it’s not a good hymn,” he said. The song might have beautiful music and lyrics but “If a congregation can’t sing it, it’s not a good hymn.”

Hawn said the health of a congregation can be seen in its music.

“I’m not talking about if they sing beautifully ... but when one walks into a congregation for worship and people participate and sing, you tend to come to the conclusion there is some vitality here,” he said. “It’s about people feeling like they really have a voice.”

   So many of the songs that are used in our current day church are new, and, while they may have a lot of Scripture, and be theologically correct, I don't know them and can't sing them. For me, part of worship is singing in unison with the congregation, but to do that, I need to know the song. Just listening to the praise team sing it, no matter how they do it, seems to make it more of a performance and less of a congregational part of worship.

   I like to "make a joyful noise", and I confess that I do not sing well, but I also like to hear the voices of people singing around me. I don't like to stand, not participating in the music, watching others around me doing the same, and just listening to the stage. It may be a generational thing, but I don't just want to be led in worship, I want to actually do it.

   Music has so much power. There is power in listening to a song or hymn, but, for me, there is more in being able to sing it in conjunction with others and feel the commonality of purpose in worship and praise.

   I know there is so much of personal preference contained in any discussion of music, and I definitely have mine. Just so you know.

Generational Responsibility

   It is easy, when you are in the prime of life and everything seems to be going well, to think of what you have accomplished. After all, you worked hard for those degrees, you put the time and effort into a job, you deserved the raises and the praise for a job well done, and you still had time to raise a family and keep them fed and clothed.

   I know, and I have been there. I have looked at my family, seen them happy, enjoying life and doing well in all they do. When I was caught up in all of that, I thought I was performing the role of the good Christian father, doing and saying all the right things. One of our goals as parents was to raise our kids so that they might be independent and able to take their places in the world and prosper, and not just monetarily, but in service to others and to God.

   I read these verses in Psalm 78 this morning:

"He established a testimony in Jacob
and appointed a law in Israel,
which he commanded our fathers
to teach to their children,
6 that the next generation might know them,
the children yet unborn,
and arise and tell them to their children,
7 so that they should set their hope in God
and not forget the works of God,
but keep his commandments;"

   I'm sure that those Israelite parents wanted to raise their kids and give them the best that they could, but God says that they did not do enough, because they did not live in such a way that their children knew where the blessings came from, that God was behind it all, blessing their family whether it was deserving or not. Oft times, we as parents give lip service to those Scriptural precepts, but live out the lie that we have done it by ourselves.

   The generations that follow us need to know what God says and what is important, but they also need to see us living it. Then they will know it is really important.

   I would pray that God would give us parents, and grand parents, too, the ability and the want-to, to live the life of gratitude and obedience, that we should, in God's eyes.

Called Back to Remember Why..

   Several thoughts ran through my mind this morning as I walked along the path. I thought of some things that related to our last trip, of sights, of places, of people, of thoughts. I thought about things that I may have missed by hurrying through the places, items that I could have learned and people that I could have interacted with, if I had given the proper time.

   I thought about things that I could write about when I sat back down, things that fit in to how I felt my life needed to be lived in light of what God had put in my path. I realized that all these things were not happenstance, but road signs that I needed to heed, to live as I should.

   All of this was good, but then I understood that a lot of times I had been putting these experiences and thoughts ahead of what God might have been trying to say to me. My priorities were somewhat mixed up.

   When I started this blog, some time back, it was an attempt to see what God was saying to me through the Scriptures that I read each morning. I believe that He can, and wants to, speak in this way to each of us if we will take the time to listen.

   I also feel that He speaks to us through our experiences, and the combination of the two, experiences and reading His Word, form the backdrop for learning the hows and whys of living.

   But I found myself taking my experiences and trying to shoe horn them into the Scriptures that I read. Some days I used the happenings by themselves, without any thought of verses that might have shed some light on them.

   Three times in Psalm 80 this morning the psalmist says:

" Restore us, O Lord God of hosts!
Let your face shine, that we may be saved!

   Or the translation in The Message:

"God, come back!
    Smile your blessing smile:
    That will be our salvation.

   This seemed to be God's Word to me today. Put things in their proper order. Put Me first, and then see how your experiences tie into that, not the other way around.

   I believe that God has been there to show me lots of things through the people and events that He has put into my life, but I also believe that there could have been more if I had used the correct order.

   The difference between good and better, and the possibility that the right combination of the two could be the best.

   It is not all about me, though sometimes I want to make it that way.

   God help me to put You first and get it right.