Category: understand

Maundy Thursday

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The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”         Matthew 20:28

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It is so difficult to believe that someone would give his life for me. I don’t feel worthy of such a sacrifice. Think about it. You are standing on a street corner and a car comes up over the curb. The person next to you pushes you out of the way and is killed instead of you. Knowing this I would have to live my life differently.

That is why, knowing Christ’s sacrifice, I need to look carefully at how I am living my life.

Prayer:  Jesus, thank you for sacrificing your life for me. I am unworthy of your love. Bring my life closer to your example. Amen

 

 

 

Do I follow through?

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Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand. Mark Twain

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“Love your neighbor as yourself, turn the other cheek, follow me.” These are passages from the bible that I do understand. There are many more. The trouble is that they call me to be a better person. Who they ask me to be seems impossible. How can I learn to be the Christian you want me to be.?

Prayer: Lord help me! I do understand these words you have given me but I don’t seem to be able to follow through. Help! Amen

Faith of convenience

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A faith of convenience is a hollow faith.  ~M*A*S*H, Father Mulcahy, “A Holy Mess,” 1982

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Christianity did not begin as a belief of convenience. In fact, it was very inconvenient as the early Christians were persecuted and killed. Now that it is an “accepted religion” we take it for granted. It is convenient to go to church on Sundays. It is also convenient that we can choose to not go. It is interesting to know that Christianity is growing the most in places where Christians are persecuted. Maybe we are too comfortable.

Prayer: Patient God, move us out of our comfort zone and help us to not take you for granted. Amen

 

Read

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By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me.  The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green.  The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.  Thomas Merton

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Thomas Merton felt himself changed by reading scripture. We might think well that was centuries ago and it won’t happen to me.

Not so, Thomas was a man of the 20th century and lived a somewhat risqué life before he found God. The Bible did change his life and his way of thinking. It could happen to us. Reading the Bible daily and with real attention could make us see things differently as Thomas did. Try it!

Homework: Read the Bible this week with all your attention for at least 10 minutes.

Prayer: Generous God, you gave us the Bible as a guide in our lives. May we actually pick it up and not just read but absorb it. Amen

 

 

Don’t CHOOSE to sin

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When lip service to some mysterious deity permits bestiality on Wednesday and absolution on Sunday, cash me out.                                                  Frank Sinatra

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 It has always puzzled me that some people think it is fine to do wrong because they can be absolved of it. This is wrong thinking. The things we confess to God and ask for forgiveness should be slip ups. Choosing to commit sinful acts because we can be forgiven is not how God expects us to behave. His forgiveness does not give us permission to choose to sin.

Prayer: God of grace, remind us we must choose the right path. We cannot choose wrong because of his forgiveness. It is a gift of grace when we stumble not a get out of jail free card. Help us to remember this. AMEN

Forgiveness frees

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The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness.              William Blake

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 Sometimes it is so much easier to hold on to our anger than to forgive. We may be using the anger to give us energy. It seems that the whole world is about finding someone to blame. We feel empowered by our anger. We feed on it. The truth is that anger drains us, uses up our energy and makes us ill. This is not what Christ said. He told us to forgive our enemies. The church tells us before we come to communion to turn loose of our grievances with others.  We must forgive. Forgiveness heals.

Prayer: Forgive us as sins as we forgive the sins of others.

 

See into heaven

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Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.
Henry Ward Beecher

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 When our tears come they usually flow from grief or pain. They flow for ourselves and sometimes for someone else. Tears pull us from our routine day-today existence. Whatever caused them has stopped us in our tracks. We step back from the ordinary and frequently reach out to God for help. So they do cause us to see into heaven and know that God is there. Don’t be afraid or ashamed to let your tears flow.

Prayer: Thank you, God for being our help and strength. Remind us that Jesus wept. Amen

 

Prayer changes us

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Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.
Soren Kierkegaard

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One of my favorite prayers talks about God’s unchangelessness. God never changes I count on it. But if we spend time with God in prayer we are different. Don’t forget to spend time with God. He is worth the effort.

Homework: Take time to pray for five minutes each day this week.

Prayer: Faithful God, you wait on us to come to you. You are there with us but we don’t talk with you. Help us to take the time to be with you. Amen

 

Don’t create God

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You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image, when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”  Anne Lamott

We have to be careful about how we imagine God. We can’t expect God to think exactly what we think. After all, God is God. Jesus spent a lot of time telling us about God and the Kingdom of God. We need to spend more time reading the Bible.

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Prayer: Patient God, you know that we keep trying to create you in our own image. Remind us that it is the other way around. Amen

 

 

 

 

Cross to crown

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No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.
William Penn

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Remember the old hymn that says “if you cannot bear the cross then you cannot wear the crown.” The Christian life is not easy. Sometimes it seems that way to us since we are at the end of an age when to be a Christian was the easy path. Everyone else (who mattered was Christian. Anyone who wanted to get with the in crowd went to church. You were accepted if you were Christian. Not so any more. The number of Christians is declining and we don’t have to go to church to be socially acceptable. It may even be becoming a detriment. What will you do then?

Prayer: Lord Jesus we have been complacent for too long. Help us to see that being Christian requires sacrifice. The cross is for us not the crown. Amen