creation

My Creed (A Work in Progress)

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Note: I don’t intend this to be in any way universal or a replacement for any of the historical creeds that have served the Church so well down through the centuries. I do think it’s a good thing to formulate your own beliefs and to be able to summarize all that you believe. It’s vitally important to KNOW what you believe and to be able to explain it to someone else. So here goes:

I believe God created the heavens and the earth and called it good.

I believe God created male and female and called it very good.

I believe the woman was deceived and the man soon followed after and sin entered the world.

I believe in that moment, death entered the world.

I believe that God became one of us and came to dwell among us.

I believe He died in my place for my sins so that I might live with Him.

I believe He rose again to defeat death once and for all.

I believe He offers rest to the weary, hope to the despairing, and life to all who call on His name.

I believe that whoever calls on His name will be saved from death to eternal life.

I believe He is returning soon for His own.

I believe in the end, Love wins.

Easter Season Liturgy Part IV

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“Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

I saw the sunset today. It was beautiful, but not extraordinarily so. Then I thought of something.

Every sunset is a kind of picture of Easter and death, burial, and resurrection. Even the blood-red color of the sky seemed significant.

Two days from now, we celebrate Easter, or if you prefer, Resurrection Sunday. Whatever you call it, the reason is the same. Jesus, the same who was crucified and buried, walked out of that tomb, holding the keys to death and hell, and forever changing history as we know it.

I participated in a Good Friday service featuring seven stations of the cross with artwork and Scripture, along with prayer prompts. I blogged about it last year and you can read it here if you want:

https://oneragamuffin.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/the-seven-stations-of-the-cross/

Again, I was struck by the incredible price Jesus paid for me. As the Bible says, very rarely will anyone be willing to die for a friend, much less a stranger. Yet while I was yet a sinner and an enemy to God, Jesus died for me. If I really think about it, I am overwhelmed.

Here’s a closing thought from one of my favorites, C. S. Lewis:

“God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing – or should we say ‘seeing’? there are no tenses in God – the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath’s sake, hitched up. If I may dare the biological image, God is a ‘host’ who deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and ‘take advantage of’ Him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.”

 

 

A Non-Advent Prayer That I Love

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I know this prayer has very little to do with Christmas or Advent or even cold weather, but I just LOVE it.

“Dear Lord, you are the first of the just. You lived the righteous life. It is because of you that your heavenly Father keeps this world in existence and shows his mercy to us sinners.

Who am I, Lord, to expect your love, protection, and mercy?

Who am I to deserve a place in your heart, in your house, in your kingdom?

Who am I, Lord, to hope in your forgiveness, your friendship, your embrace?

And still this is what I am waiting for, expecting, even counting on!

Not because of my own merits, but solely because of your immense mercy. You lived for us the life that is pleasing to God. O Lord, you are the just one, the blessed one, the beloved one, the righteous one, the gracious one.

I pray that your Father, the Father of all people, the One who created me and sustains me day in and day out, may recognize in me your marks and receive me because of you. Help me to follow you, to unite my life with yours and to become a mirror of your love. Amen.”

-Henri J.M. Nouwen
A Cry for Mercy: Prayers from the Genesee

Psalm 139:1-18: How He Loves

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“O Eternal One, You have explored my heart and know exactly who I am;
You even know the small details like when I take a seat and when I stand up again.
Even when I am far away, You know what I’m thinking.
You observe my wanderings and my sleeping, my waking and my dreaming,
and You know everything I do in more detail than even I know.
You know what I’m going to say long before I say it.
It is true, Eternal One, that You know everything and everyone.
You have surrounded me on every side, behind me and before me,
and You have placed Your hand gently on my shoulder.
It is the most amazing feeling to know how deeply You know me, inside and out;
the realization of it is so great that I cannot comprehend it.

Can I go anywhere apart from Your Spirit?
Is there anywhere I can go to escape Your watchful presence?

If I go up into heaven, You are there.
If I make my bed in the realm of the dead, You are there.
If I ride on the wings of morning,
if I make my home in the most isolated part of the ocean,
Even then You will be there to guide me;
Your right hand will embrace me, for You are always there.
Even if I am afraid and think to myself, “There is no doubt that the darkness will swallow me,
the light around me will soon be turned to night,”
You can see in the dark, for it is not dark to Your eyes.
For You the night is just as bright as the day.
Darkness and light are the same to Your eyes.

For You shaped me, inside and out.
You knitted me together in my mother’s womb long before I took my first breath.
I will offer You my grateful heart, for I am Your unique creation, filled with wonder and awe.
You have approached even the smallest details with excellence;
Your works are wonderful;
I carry this knowledge deep within my soul.

As I took shape in secret,
carefully crafted in the heart of the earth before I was born from its womb.
You see all things;
You saw me growing, changing in my mother’s womb;
Every detail of my life was already written in Your book;
You established the length of my life before I ever tasted the sweetness of it.
Your thoughts and plans are treasures to me, O God! I cherish each and every one of them!
How grand in scope! How many in number!
If I could count each one of them, they would be more than all the grains of sand on earth. Their number is inconceivable!
Even when I wake up, I am still near to You” (Psalm 139:1-18, THE VOICE).

Joy in the Midst of Sadness

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I celebrated with the rest of the family as my niece turned 2. Finally, I can stop counting in months. I was seriously running out of fingers and toes to count on.

I loved seeing the pure unadulterated joy on her face when she saw her presents and the complete love and trust she has for her mommy and daddy and two big brothers. It did my heart good.

But I also remembered Adrian Peterson’s 2-year old son who was allegedly beaten to death by his mother’s boyfriend. My heart hurts and I have questions I can’t answer.

Who does that to a 2-year old? For what possible reason?

I know we live in a broken world filled with broken people. Creation groans for deliverance and for everything to be made right. Too many defenseless and helpless children suffer, too many people go to bed hungry, too many marriages fall apart, and too many die way too young.

Then I remember how this story ends. I cheated and read the last page. It’s about God wiping away every tear from our eyes. It’s about a new Jerusalem, a new heaven and a new earth where lambs lie safely next to lions, where others is no need for sun, moon, or stars because God is there.

I love what the guest pastor said. God didn’t want an only child, so He chose us to be conformed to the image of His Son Jesus and become heirs with Jesus to all the promises of God.

I love this version of Romans 8:29-30: “God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.”

That’s what keeps me going in the midst of so much suffering and sadness. That’s why I can find joy in everything. Because ultimately Love does win.

Dar Williams and the Song in Your Heart

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According to Foursquare (an app on my iPhone), I hadn’t been to any concerts or movies at the Franklin Theatre since April. Until tonight.

I was in row D, seat 3 to hear one of my favorite singer-songwriters, Dar Williams, put on a great show. Even her opening act, Angel Snow, was fantastic. It was a good night.

Dar performed my two favorite songs of hers, “The One Who Knows” and “The Beauty of the Rain,” as well as several other gems. Her music always takes me to a peaceful place and her songs are most definitely an integral part of the ever-changing and ever-growing soundtrack to my life.

Jesus has been reminding me of the song in my own heart that I had begun to forget. Joy and thanksgiving, or eucharisteo, is my song and I’m thankful for friends and family who periodically remind me when I’ve forgotten the words or lost the melody.

I am one note in a living symphony of God’s love for the world He made. I may be only one small part, but without me, the symphony loses something. The same with you. The world around you needs to hear your own unique song and your small but vital part in God’s overture.

Let your life be the biggest hymn of praise that you sing. A hymn of thanksgiving, of hope restored, of dreams reborn, and of grace. Especially grace.

I will help to remind you of your song when you forget the words and root for you when your part in the Grand Symphony arrives. That’s what Church is for– to remind each other of the goodness of God and to love each other and God well. That’s a song the world around us has been dying to hear.

To All the Wallflowers in the World

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I finally broke down and rented The Perks of Being a Wallflower from Redbox. In case you were wondering, that was the infamous movie that I had a ticket for the night I got hit by that car in downtown Franklin. Yeah, that was the movie I missed. Well, I finally saw it, almost two months later.

One line really struck me. “We accept the love we think we deserve.”

I had always wondered why I saw nice, pretty girls who always seemed to date guys who struck me as obnoxious, loud jerks. I wondered why they did that when there were nice guys (like me) available.

You could argue that most of the nice guys (again like me) never got up the nerve to ask out the nice, pretty girls. But I do think that people who don’t think much of themselves will settle for relationships that aren’t the best for them.

In case you’re wondering if this is going to be yet another blog on dating, it’s not.

I wonder how many of us really know our own worth. We tend to repeatedly replay every minor criticism and downplay every compliment out of a false modesty that really isn’t modest at all. If you and I are honest, we don’t think much of ourselves most of the time and we project that on to how we perceive others to not like us or acknowledge us.

Maybe you think nobody ever sees you or feels your pain or even cares that you’re hurting. Maybe you wonder why you bother getting up in the morning only to spend the entire day being overlooked and ignored by everyone around you.

Let me remind you that God thought you worth loving. Well, let me rephrase that. God chose to love you because he wanted to and in loving you, he made you lovable and worth loving. Maybe that only makes sense if you’re tired and still awake after midnight, but there it is.

God formed you with his own hands, breathed his own breath into you, and called you very good. You are made in the image of God and there is no one else exactly like you. You are God’s poem, his masterpiece, his workmanship.

So whenever you are tempted in any way to settle for less than God’s very best, remember that you are worth loving because God said so. And anybody who says or acts otherwise doesn’t deserve you.

 

Not-so-new Thoughts on Newtown, CT

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“No parent should ever have to bury a child.”

That’s the line from the movie The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers that King Theoden uses when he talks about the death of his only son, the one that was to be king after him.

I’ve thought a lot about that line today, especially after hearing and reading so much about the senseless killings of at least 20 children and 6 adults in Newtown, Connecticut. I have no way to comprehend the level of sadness and grief that so many people are feeling right now, and I’m not going to pretend that I understand what they’re going through.

I know that no discussion about limiting handguns or locking school doors will ever bring these children back. This is so much more than political issues; we’re talking about human lives lost. Each one had a family who loved him or her and each one is deeply missed.

I’m reminded of another massacre. This one happened after the birth of Jesus, when Herod sent soldiers to the town of Bethlehem to kill all the male children under the age of two. Matthew says (quoting Jeremiah), “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more” (Matt. 2:18).

Again, I can’t begin to imagine what that must have been like.

Most of all, I am reminded that God himself watched as people took his only son and falsely accused him, beat him, mocked him, mutilated him, then killed him in the most excruciatingly painful manner possible. Even though Jesus’s death was ordained from the foundation of the world, it doesn’t change the fact that the Father’s heart was broken that day.

I think the Father weeps with all those who weep tonight. He sees his creation and his people broken and in disarray. He sees evil acts perpetrated by sick minds and his heart is broken.

I don’t pretend to have any answers. I don’t pretend to know why this happened or what the purpose was behind it. I do know that even in this, God works all things together for good to those who love him and are called according to his purposes.

I know that God is good and that he is in control. Still. And in that I put my hopes and I lay my head down to rest tonight.

I pray for peace right now in the hearts of all who are grieving and who cannot be comforted, for their children are no more. I pray for peace for the children who lost parents and teachers tonight, as well as the family of the mentally ill man who killed all these children before killing himself (who are probably in shock and grief as well right now). May you be present in these broken homes and lives right now. And may you set all things right one day very soon.

Come, Lord Jesus, come.

I Made This!

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I made a pumpkin hazelnut cheesecake today.

Normally, I am not a culinary-type. I enjoy good food, but I am normally not a fan of creating new good foods. I’d rather eat someone else’s cooking for the most part.

But I got wild and daring. I found a recipe for pumpkin hazelnut cheesecake online and said to myself (not out loud), “What the heck? Why not?” Even when the recipe called for hazelnut flour, which I was unaware even existed until I saw it in bold letters on the printout.

So I followed the recipe to the letter, step by step, hoping I wouldn’t blow up the kitchen or inadvertently create a new life form out of the ingredients.

It is a good feeling knowing that you have created something. Whether it’s a song or a poem or a book or a photo, it’s an amazing rush knowing that you have put something new out into the universe.

I think that when God made us, he didn’t marvel at his own creative skills. He didn’t prance about the garden of Eden yelling how awesome a job he did. He simply said, “This is very good.”

Get that? He said that YOU are very good. Not because you pull $1 million a year or because you’re in the 100 most beautiful people list. Simply because God made you and liked what he saw.

OK, I’m not sure how I got from cheesecake to theology, but roll with it. Remember that whatever anybody else says about you or how they assess your worth, God has already rated you “very good,” and that is ultimately the only opinion that really matters.

So, enjoy your Thanksgiving dinner. Eat lots of turkey (or tofurkey or chicken or tofu or whatever makes you happy). Get that second helping of dessert. Heck, try ’em all. Holiday calories don’t count (or at least I read that on the internet, so it’s got to be true).

And remember you are precious and unique and chosen by God himself.

Earthquakes, Fires, Tornadoes . . . . Oh My!

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This may be common knowledge to be filed under the file drawer labeled “DUH!”, but I felt it needed to be said (or more accurately, written down).

The same God who went before the Israelites as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night still reigns. The same God who took human flesh and stilled the waves of a storm in the person of Jesus still has authority over all storms.

This God is Lord over earthquakes and tornadoes and hurricanes and wildfires and any other catastrophic natural occurrences you can imagine. He still has the power to speak over storms and bid them be still.

That goes for the storms in your own life.

I don’t know why he allows storms to come. In the end, he is able to work good out of tragedies such as Hurricane Katrina or any of the devastating tornadoes or earthquakes that strike anywhere in the world.

I think that part of the reason for storms is that creation suffers under the effects of the fall. The Bible speaks of creation groaning and awaiting a time when Jesus will come and set things right again.

Creation and nature are out of balance and out of whack since Adam and Eve sinned (and don’t even get me started on who’s to blame on that one– they both messed up).

Sometimes, God causes storms. In the Old Testament, God stirs up wind and fire and other natural elements to do his bidding. Storms show that God is not only a God of love and mercy, but of power and justice.

The point is that God is still God in the midst of the storm as he is on a clear and sunny day. He has just as much power and He is just as able to rescue those who call on his name.

I love the quote that says that sometimes God calms the storm, but sometimes he allows the storm to rage and instead calms his child. I think that’s so very true.