A political message: love overcomes fear

It's fair to say that “the hopes and fears of all the years” rest on the outcome of next Tuesday's election.

• Some people are afraid of socialism.
  
• Some are afraid that our economy is headed south. (I'm there.)
  
• Some are afraid of another terrorist attack.
  
• Some are afraid that our fortress mentality will guarantee more attacks.
  
• Some are afraid Barak Obama will be elected.
  
• Some are afraid that John McCain will be elected and Sarah Palin will become President before his term is out.
  
• Many are simply afraid of the unknown. It is the season of fear - “be afraid; be very afraid.”
  

We all have a shadow - that subconscious place where our fears reside. Politicians have known how to appeal to our shadows for years.

Perhaps you are saying, “but what about the rest of that line - ‘the hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight’”?

Exactly right. The author of 1 John says, 

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. 1 John 4:18

The early Christians had every reason to fear – and to hate – their enemies. Yet they took the way of the Cross as their way of life. They laid down their lives for their faith. 

The early Christians lived by the rule of love. They took Jesus' way of service and servanthood as their way of life. The “fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger,” etc.

I would encourage us all to expose our fearful side to the light of God's love. Remember who we are and whose we are. We can respond to God's world, not with our gut, but with our heart, and yes, even with our minds.

Trust GOD from the bottom of your heart; don't try to figure out everything on your own.  Listen for GOD'S voice in everything you do, everywhere you go, he's the one who will keep you on track. Proverbs 3:5-6, The Message

Dare to hope again

The biblical story of Abraham and Sarah is a long story. When you start talking about one episode, you end up trying to set the framework for that story, only to go back to a previous story and back to the beginning of God’s call to Abraham. 

That said, I was very taken this week by a particular chapter in the saga. Sarah’s slave girl, Hagar, had a son, Ishmael. Abraham was the father.

Ishmael was Abraham’s only son. When Sarah had her son, Isaac, she wanted Abraham to exile Hagar and Ishmael so that Ishmael wouldn’t share Abraham’s inheritance. “The matter was very distressing to Abraham,” but God promised him that Hagar and Ishmael would be taken care of. So he sent them off with a skin of water.

When the water in the skin was gone, [Hagar] cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, “Do not let me look on the death of the child.” And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.” Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink.

The well was there all along, but in her despair Hagar did not see it.
We care very much about Westbury UMC, and over the years we have occilated between hope and discouragement — even despair. Finally we focused on being faithful to our ministry, and enjoying our music and our friendships. We turned inward. You can only do so much. You’re just one person, after all.
But God’s Word says, “not so fast!” That well of water may be right under our feet. It might be all around us. God’s water of hope is all around us.
Recently Westbury broke 400 in combined worship for the first time in a couple of years (excluding Easter Sundays). We continue to hear positive comments about our music ministries. I think it’s fair to say that the implementation of the video element of our worship services, while still a work in progress, is a positive thing. We have new energy in the 8:30 praise team.
So pray for hope, and, as the Agape anthem says, trust in the Lord:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not upon your own understanding; trust him with all your heart. In every way acknowledge God. Fear the Lord and turn from evil. Honor the Lord with all you have. Be not wise in your eyes; do not reject the discipline of God, for he loves you. With all your heart, love him; honor him all your days. Trust him who loves you. God loves you. from Proverbs 3

Thankfulness (again!)

Thankfulness is always a good thing, even when times are hard. Sometimes, thought, it's a bitter pill.

• Loved ones deal with cancer; we deal with the possibility of losing them.
  
• We miss loved ones that have been gone for years.
  
• We deal with serious medical issues.
  
• We deal with strained or broken relationships.
  
• Some of us deal with the fact that others are angry with us, don't trust us, or plain don't like us!
  
• We deal with three or more of the above!
  

I am personally dealing with the stress of preparing for a major trip for 33 people - with its financial, safety, personal and spiritual dimensions. Oh, did I mention, musical dimensions?
Still, thankfulness is a remedy for me - when I can get there. The psalmist writes in Psalm 116:

I love GOD because he listened to me, listened as I begged for mercy. He listened so intently as I laid out my case before him. Death stared me in the face, hell was hard on my heels. Up against it, I didn't know which way to turn; then I called out to GOD for help: “Please, GOD!” I cried out. “Save my life!” GOD is gracious-it is he who makes things right, our most compassionate God. GOD takes the side of the helpless; when I was at the end of my rope, he saved me.
I said to myself, “Relax and rest. GOD has showered you with blessings. Soul, you've been rescued from death; Eye, you've been rescued from tears; And you, Foot, were kept from stumbling.”

The title of the Psalm is “Thanksgiving for recovery from illness.”
In the morning, after a difficult sleep, thank God for the sleep that you did get (had one of those two nights ago). Thank God for the friends you do have.
And, my favorite: when you sit up in bed in the morning and your feet touch the floor, say, “Oh, my God! Thank you for another day of life!”
The thankful heart is a heart that is close to the Mind of the Creator.

Spiritual Mentors

Have I told you about Gid Yoder?
In my quest to not be like my father, I found myself watching other adult men and saying, “I want to be like him when I grow up.” Or, in some cases, “I don’t want to be like him when I grow up.”
This practice continued well into my fifties.
Gid taught Bible in the Academy (high school) division at Hesston College. He was about 5 feet 6 inches tall and probably weighed over 250. He was bald, wore thick glasses and had a high, squeeky voice. Among us college students, Gid was a joke.
God has had a way of putting unlikely people in my path to bless me. I’ve been blessed with plenty of “beautiful people,” but the biggest blessings have come from the unlikely ones.
I know what you’re thinking — “you mean unlikely like Moses or David or Samuel or Rahab?” Yep, just like them. Which gives me hope about my prospects, since I don’t identify myself as one of the beautiful people.
In the summer of 1960, before my sophomore year, I got a long-distance (gasp) phone call from Gid. He asked if I wanted to be the choir director at his little Mennonite church in Burrton, about 40 miles from Hesston. Of course I did.
I served that church for four years, and I watched Gid. He was a great pastor and a great preacher, combining the prophetic and the pastoral, blending good Bible teaching with his own wisdom. A pastor who followed Gid in another church said, “Gid plowed a deep furrow.” He had a gift for taking dysfunctional churches and growing them into healthy churches. Burrton had been one of those churches; it was thriving and happy by the time I got there.
I rode with Gid to Burrton twice a week for those four years and we had many good conversations. It was while I was serving with Gid that I felt the tug towards ministry. When I told Gid about it, he said, “you’ll have to work on your people skills, Randy.” True enough.
Gid did our wedding in 1965. He asked me what I wanted him to preach on. I told him to talk about the Biblical basis for marriage. You could tell he worked hard on his assignment. His sermon was full of scripture and he talked about each passage.
It wasn’t his best sermon, but I was impressed by the love and care he showed in this undertaking.
Gid never achieved financial security. He died of a heart attack while working to repair a house he and Stella had just bought. It was a hot Kansas night when it happened, and he hadn’t lost any weight.
Gid went to work at his churches for part-time wages; by the time he left, the churches hired full-time pastors.
Gid was not a success, financially or professionally. But Gid gave me, and I’m sure countless others, priceless gifts of wisdom, hope and laughter.
I have been blessed with many male role models over my life. Gid was the first. I thank God for him, and for all the others.

Demotivators

“Just because you’re necessary doesn’t mean you’re important.”

“Give up: At some point, hanging in there just makes you look like an even bigger loser.”

Jennifer, a mid-level manager, working 75 hours a week to finish a project, and worried that her division might be shut down, found some posters with these sentiments and made copies for her co-workers. “People really seemed to appreciate it, I have to say,” she recalls.

The poster was one of many Demotivator products sold by Despair, Inc., a company in Austin, TX. Despite the economic turndown, or perhaps because of it, Despair, Inc.’s sales climbed to $4.5 billion last year. *

* * *

In today’s economy, the harder you work, the less you make and the more likely you are to be laid off, or so it seems. It’s easy to lose hope. It’s easy to despair. It’s easy to feel like a loser, like someone who is unimportant.

But God says that you are important.

In The Upper Room Disciplines, Paul Chilcote writes, “I spent Holy Week 1999 in Lithuania. For half a century the church bells and songs fell silent as the church went underground. But then the Spirit descended with healing in its wings … The elderly, especially women, and young children figured prominantly in its rebirth … I remember one elderly grandmother lovingly ask each child, ‘And what is it that you wish to share with the people of God? You see: here, everyone is important.’”

The devotional was based on this scripture:

I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit. Acts 2:17-18.

Young and old, men and women, slaves and free — all are important in the Kingdom of God.

What can we do to motivate, rather than “demotivate” the young and old, men and women, enslaved and free?

Additinally, what can we Christian do to speak the truth in love to the injustice of our present system — the super-rich get filthy rich while the middle and lower income folks work harder, make less, and get fired? Perhaps it’s time for Someone to “put down the mighty from their seat and exalt the humble.”

And what about Jennifer? Her office was shut down after her project was completed.

* from “Empowering by Disempowerment,” by Ron Walker, New York Times Magazine, April 27, 2008.

Prayer changes things

I was moved by a story by Kevin Kling on All Things Considered. He was talking about how his prayers had changed from childhood through young adulthood to the present.
His childhood prayers went something like this: “I prayed to God to ask Jesus to ask Santa for that Squirrel Monkey that was $9.99, in the back of the Spiderman comic.”
His young adult prayers were prayers of desperation. Like the time he and a friend were hunting wild boar at night and the friend tried to shoot a cow at close range, missed all six shots, drank a bottle of something strong, and passed out. Kevin prayed to get out alive, and he’d never do anything that stupid again.
Later in life, Kevin had a serious motorcycle accident and went through months of painful rehab. One day he was walking with his girlfriend outside the hospital and she asked him to take a bite of an apple. He demurred; his had lost his sense of taste. But she persisted, “come on, try it.” For some reason that was the day taste returned and as the tears burned his cheeks, Kevin blurted out, “thank you, thank you, thank you for this life.” His prayers had changed again.
Blessings started to emerge from the curses, and Kevin's habit of giving thanks changed his outlook on life. Now, he says, “I pray to God to ask Jesus to tell Santa that if there’s one thing I want, it’s to say ‘thank you, thank you, thank — or, a Squirrel Monkey.”
Prayer changes things. Our prayers change as we experience life.

The thankful heart is close to the Heart of God.
Listen to Kevin tell his own story. It’s worth the 5:34 minutes!

Your unconscious mind (or the Holy Spirit, working within you)

Our thoughts generally become self-fulfilling prophecies. You say to yourself, “I think I’m coming down with a cold,” and your unconscious mind takes this thought as marching orders. Voilá — you’ve got a doozy of a cold! The unconscious mind is a powerful tool for good or for ill, depending on what we tell it.
So consider these words: “I have done those things which I ought not to have done, and I have not done those things which I ought to have done, and there is no health in me.”
Do those words become self-fulfilling prophecies, or is “confession good for the soul?” When we confess our sin, does our unconscious mind take that confession and make it even more true? When our unconscious mind hears “there is no health in me,” does it carry out this marching order? I hope not!
I still believe in confession. But I don’t live in a state of constant confession.
Honesty compels me to reject such statements as “I’m no good at …” If I were honest with myself, I would have to admit that I’m not no good at something; in fact, I’ve gotten better over the years at whatever that something is.
So I stop the negative thought and substitute a more honest thought: “I’m getting better at …”
Voilá! My unconscious mind — the Spirit of God within me — makes that prediction come true.