Ragamuffin Gospel

A Tale of Two Grandmothers

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At The Church at Avenue South this morning, the guest pastor, Hunter Melton, talked about how four women played an integral part in the spreading of the resurrection news on that first Easter Sunday.

It may not seem like a big deal now, but in a 1st century world were women were seen as second class citizens and had little to no rights, this was revolutionary for the gospel writers to include them.

I’m certain that most of you can point back to at least one woman who helped to shape who you are today. I know that I can point to at least (but not limited to) two women– both my grandmothers, Iris and Ruby.

Iris was a lady who loved her Bible and loved her hymns. She was almost always talking about her love for Jesus or singing one of the old hymns that you don’t hear much of these days. She definitely had a huge impact on my faith.

Ruby didn’t vocalize her faith as much but she sure did live it out. She was always ready to help out and lend a hand. She made incredible sacrifices for her friends and family, and we are all better for it.

I miss both of them. If you have one or both of your grandmothers, take every opportunity to let them know how much you love them and how much they mean to you. Don’t just call– go and see them and spend time with them and listen to their stories (even if they get repeated a few times).

If you are a mother or grandmother, never take for granted the incredible influence you have on the next generations. If you are faithful to be present in the lives of your children and grandchildren, one day they will rise up and call you blessed.

Stop the Insanity!

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“Stop trying to protect, to rescue, to judge, to manage the lives around you . . remember that the lives of others are not your business. They are their business. They are God’s business . . . even your own life is not your business. It also is God’s business. Leave it to God. It is an astonishing thought. It can become a life-transforming thought . . . unclench the fists of your spirit and take it easy . . . What deadens us most to God’s presence within us, I think, is the inner dialogue that we are continuously engaged in with ourselves, the endless chatter of human thought. I suspect that there is nothing more crucial to true spiritual comfort . . . than being able from time to time to stop that chatter . . . ” (Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets).

I suspect that this little gem of a quote will hit home with many of you as it did with me.

I quite agree that being able to still the inner dialogue and the endless chatter of human thought to recognize God’s presence and find true peace. Sometimes, that’s easier said than done.

 

Praying vs. Panicking

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“Don’t be anxious about things; instead, pray. Pray about everything. He longs to hear your requests, so talk to God about your needs and be thankful for what has come. And know that the peace of God (a peace that is beyond any and all of our human understanding) will stand watch over your hearts and minds in Jesus, the Anointed One” (Philippians 4:6-7, The Voice).

I don’t know about you, but I have my moments of anxiety as well as anyone else. For me, anxiety tends to take me to a future of what ifs and what might happens, where I envision all sorts of scenarios.

I’ve noticed that my anxious thoughts take me to a future with no God in it. I find it’s just me having to solve all my own problems, and none of my scenarios play out very well. Most of what I dread and fear in the future never comes remotely close to happening, yet that never seems to stop the obsessing when anxiety strikes.

The secret is to take every moment of anxiety and turn it into an occasion for prayer. After all, prayer is really about reminding you and me who’s really in charge. When we give thanks for God’s mercies in the past, we find that we can hold fast to the same God in the future to be as faithful.

And that peace? It really does defy all human understanding. Once you’ve decided that you’re not the ruler of your own life and destiny, you let go trying to control every possible outcome and find that God is more than able to take your place. That’s very freeing.

I was reminded yesterday of the truth that when storms and troubles come, you don’t tell God how big your storm is, you tell your storm how big your God is.

 

 

Further Kairos Takeaways

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“Jesus continued from there toward Jerusalem and came to another village. Martha, a resident of that village, welcomed Jesus into her home. Her sister, Mary, went and sat at Jesus’ feet, listening to Him teach. Meanwhile Martha was anxious about all the hospitality arrangements.

Martha (interrupting Jesus): Lord, why don’t You care that my sister is leaving me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to get over here and help me.

Jesus: Oh Martha, Martha, you are so anxious and concerned about a million details, but really, only one thing matters. Mary has chosen that one thing, and I won’t take it away from her” (Luke 10:38-42).

Tonight’s guest speaker, Jason Cook, spoke from Luke 10:38-42 about choosing the better way. In this culture where we idolize busyness and being on the go non-stop, we look to Martha as having chosen rightly.

Yet Jesus sees Mary doing nothing but sitting at His feet and listening as having chosen the better way. Instead of doing a million things for Jesus, she’s chosen to be with Jesus.

It’s very easy to get so caught up in serving Jesus that we forget to spend time with Him. Christianity can become so much about activities and rituals that  we forget what it’s really all about.

Jesus is saying two words that have almost become anathema in this day and age– SLOW DOWN. Stop and listen. Rest in My presence and learn from Me.

Sometimes, we need to stop talking at God, running down our laundry lists of requests and petitions, be still and listen.

There’s a time for asking, but there’s also a time for adoration. There’s the command to keep asking, keep seeking, and keep knocking, but there’s also the command to be still.

Maybe today we can choose the better way, if only for a few moments, to hear the voice of Jesus over all the other voices clamoring for our attention.

 

Another Week Up Ahead

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“Lord, You sure do tell it like it is — You said in this world, we will have trouble, hard weeks, heartbreak.
You said straight up that we’d have to carry a cross, and You said ‘we must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.’ (Acts14:22)
But You said this in the midst of the madness:
‘But take heart!’
We take heart —
that You have our heart,
that You have our hand,
that You are our peace,
& that You have overcome the world & the dark and whatever overwhelms us.
We take heart — we take Your heart
and we pour a brave and willing love like Yours
over all the open wounds of the world…
that the world may even now
take hope.

In the name of Jesus, the only One who loved us to death
and back to the real & forever life….
Amen.
#RealHonestPrayers#SharingPrayerTogether

(Ann Voskamp).

If I’m honest, I have to confess that I’m not highly excited about the prospect of another week looming ahead. I’m not jumping for joy at the thought of waking up at 5 am for 5 days straight.

But I know that good things are ahead as well as the unpleasant and the annoying. I know that despite whatever my fears and anxieties tell me, that Jesus will be there and if I fear God, there isn’t anything or anyone else that I need fear.

I don’t mean me going around shaking in terror that God’s going to strike me down with a lightening bolt. I mean me having a healthy, reverential respect for God that helps me remember who’s in charge of the universe (God) and who’s not (me).

Plus, there will be coffee, which is always a nice perk for having to be grown up and do grown up things. See, it’s not all bad, right?

Thought for June 22, 2018

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“If He does not support us, not one of us is safe from some gross sin. On the other hand, no possible degree of holiness or heroism which has ever been recorded of the greatest saints is beyond what He is determined to produce in every one of us in the end. The job will not be completed in this life: but He means to get us as far as possible before death” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity).

That’s enough to keep us both humbled and honored.

Before you start to boast, remember that you have the capacity in you apart from grace to be as bad as any Hitler or Stalin.

Before you start to despair, remember that God is working in you such holiness (or even greater) than was ever found in any Mother Teresa or Florence Nightingale.

I have to remind myself every single day that apart from Jesus, I can do nothing. That anything good in me is God. Yet with God I can do all things.

 

 

Life

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I think Fred Rogers had it right.

I think I can speak for some of you when I say that sometimes I think I have my life all worked out and working in perfect order, and then I look back and think, “Well, that was a really nice 45 seconds.”

In some ways, mastering life is like trying to learn a game where the rules and parameters are constantly changing. Just when you think you’ve got a certain part down, it all changes and you have to start all over figuring it out again.

I used to think that there was such a thing as a good or bad Christian, depending on external circumstances. I do think that real faith shows itself in manifesting the fruit of the Spirit by means of obedience to Christ, but I also know that even the best of believers are still deeply flawed (and will be until Jesus calls them home or makes His triumphant return).

Faith is not about how good you are at praying, at Bible reading, at fasting, or in any of the spiritual disciplines. Faith means that every day you show up and trust that God will do something in you and through you. You wait expectantly for God to show up in your life.

Sometimes faith means that no batter how badly you’ve messed up for the past day or week or month, you still get up the next morning knowing that it’s a brand new 24 hours with a clean slate and new mercies.

So how’s my life? How’s my faith? I’m not very good at it, but that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I keep waking up, showing up, and believing God for His promises for me and for the world. God will take care of the rest.

 

1 Corinthians 13 Love

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If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, ‘Jump,’ and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.

If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always ‘me first,’
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

 We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love” (1 Corinthians 13, The Message).

This isn’t warm and fuzzy, Nicholas Sparks romantic love. This is agape unconditional love that’s impossible by strictly human standards.

It’s the love that Christ loved us with when He laid down His life for us when we were yet sinners.

It’s the “not I, but Christ in me” love that fills us up to overflowing and spills out to those around us.

It’s still the only love that can change the world.

I want that kind of love. I want to be that kind of love.

Let Go

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“Humbly let go. Let go of trying to do, let go of trying to control, let go of my own way, let go of my own fears. Let God blow His wind, His trials, oxygen for joy’s fire. Leave the hand open and be. Be at peace. Bend the knee and be small and let God give what God chooses to give because He only gives love and whisper a surprised thanks. This is the fuel for joy’s flame. Fullness of joy is discovered only in the emptying of will. And I can empty. I can empty because counting His graces has awakened me to how He cherishes me, holds me, passionately values me. I can empty because I am full of His love. I can trust” (Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are).

Five years ago, I read a book that changed my life. It changed the way I look at my circumstances, allowing me to seek joy and to always be on the lookout for those 1,000 small daily gifts for which to give thanks. There’s always, always something to be thankful for.

I still have moments of grumpiness and days where entitlement and bitterness seem to win out. I go through seasons of complaining and comparison, unrest and envy. I can Debbie Downer with the best of them.

But the best days are still the ones where I give thanks and live out of gratitude and awe. That’s where I see God at work in me and around me. That’s when others see Jesus in me.

Regardless of how well or how poorly I lived out my thanksgiving, tomorrow’s always a chance to do better or start over or simply surrender and let God have His way. I think door number three sounds best.

 

 

The Three Doctors: An Update on Classic Doctor Who

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The quest to watch all of the surviving episodes of Classic Doctor Who continues. So far, I’ve made it almost all the way through the first three doctors, played by William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, and Jon Pertwee. In fact, I’m to the episodes where all three appear together for the first time.

William Hartnell’s part was limited due to poor heath, and I can’t help wondering what it would have been like had he been able to fully interact with the other two incarnations. I can imagine him getting in a few lines like “See here, dear boy!” But alas, his arteriosclerosis was affecting his ability to remember his lines. That’s a shame. Otherwise, so far, it’s great. And I love finally being able to see the first two doctors in color.

I have to admit that my favorite companion to this point might just be Jo Grant (played by the lovely Katy Manning), despite some dated hair and really dated wardrobe. She’s the spunkiest of the lot, and can keep up with the Doctor better than any of the others could (and she’s not constantly in need of rescue like some of the earlier female companions).

Yes, the special effects are still ultra low-budget. Sometimes, they’re groan-worthy. Some of the villains are over the top. I tire rather easily of the Master and his constant obsession to be ruler of the universe. Doesn’t he have any hobbies outside of meglomania? Yes, the monsters are still actors in rubber suits.

But I love all of it. It makes me wish I’d grown up in England in the 60’s and 70’s and seen all these episodes as they originally aired, including many that have been lost or destroyed.

I’m thankful for Britbox for providing me access to my own trip back in time. And who knows? Maybe one day some of those “lost” episodes will turn up somewhere.