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I’ve been watching the wind blow through the trees in our back yard. I am always reminded of Jesus’ revealing words in his conversation with Nicodemus in John 3:8 - The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
The Spirit of God really is as close as the next breeze. The Spirit keeps the connection between God and you alive and well. The Spirit enables and enlivens the connection we have with one another. The Spirit bridges the distance we feel from one another. The Spirit yearns for each one of us to participate in its holy work. Therefore: 1. Do pray for one another, for the congregation, for the elders and deacons as they carry on their ministry in these challenging times. 2. Do make a more direct connection with one another. Look through the church directory, or look around your own neighborhoods. I am reading more and more about how difficult and painful these days are for the elderly who are unable to leave their homes, for parents working with their energetic and anxious children, for single moms (and dads too) trying to balance needs of their children and the demands of their jobs at the grocery stores, post offices, public safety positions, or in a medical field. Take a minute – make a call, send an email, send a letter of card of encouragement. We need one another, if not in person, now more than ever – in spirit. Reaching out will make a difference. For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, and I rejoice to see your morale and the firmness of your faith in Christ. Colossians 2:5. Pastor Michael Good morning everyone,
A wet and windy day stretches out before us. Not fun, but let us think of the people in our southern states; for them Easter was marked by devastating tornados and lives lost. How will they get back on their feet, support one another, while maintaining their social distance? Oh my goodness! God be with them and our many prayers. What a blessing we enjoyed yesterday! Lovely sunny weather. People who responded liked the Easter worship service. I enjoyed connecting to my family via texts, emails…. All is good. I am grateful. But today is wet Monday, the day after the major Christian celebration of the year. Has anything changed? Did does the resurrection of Jesus make a difference in your life, in the world? Question: what did the women who first witnessed the resurrected Jesus and the disciples who heard and believed them do afterwards? Mostly likely answer: they went back home. They went back into hiding. That’s where Jesus found them when he appeared to them. Behind closed doors…two disciples leaving Jerusalem on the road to Emmaus…they returned to the lives they led before God raised Jesus from the tomb. Life went on as before…but they had changed. And that made all the difference. As Paul writes in I Corinthians 15: 51: Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed. Be changed….not a one time change, but the on-going work of God in changing us…remaking us into a new creation. What difference does the resurrection make in your life? Stay warm, dry, and safe! Pastor Michael Hello members and friends of FPCE,
Surrender? Now there is a word that we don’t like much. Surrender. It means to give up, to give in, to admit we are not strong enough. Surrender is to admit our weakness. Or think of it this way: surrender is to relinquish control of one’s life to something or someone greater than we are. To surrender is to be honest and humble. Surrender is what Holy Week demands of us. During this morning’s devotion, I listened to the story of Judas attempting to slip away (unnoticed?) from the table of the Last Supper. Slipping away to betray Jesus. But he could not slink away, Jesus knew him too well. Two phrases from the reading stood out for me: It was dark. The shadow of the cross is looming large over Jesus’ life. Jesus will surrender to that darkness. Do quickly what you are going to do. Those are the words Jesus spoke to his betrayer before he left the room. Jesus is surrendering. He is turning over control of his life to the God he called Father. His final words of surrender will come later in the evening as he prays in the Garden of Gethsemane. Surrender. It is a word we don’t like much. That is exactly what God asks Jesus to do on his last night of freedom on earth. Surrender to the arrest, the cross, and the tomb. If Jesus did not surrender, God would not win the victory over death and evil. What is God asking you to surrender this holy week? May God’s grace, love, and peace be with you this Holy Week. Pastor Michael Good afternoon everyone,
Wow – what an exquisite gift this day has become! When life is “normal” and I am able to be out and about and on-the-go, I might take time to acknowledge the beauty of another God-given day; a very short time; one quick word of thanks - and then I’ve got things to do, places to be. The words of praise fade quickly away. These stay-at-home days are not normal. Today I feel the constraints the property line. But there it is, right there on our back porch. The blue, blue sky, bright sun, blooming daffodils (boy did Heather ever plant a lot of daffodils this year!) blossoming willows, and fresh green grass become the playground for cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, sparrows, squirrels, rabbits, and even an occasional deer. Why not just sit and be amazed? The heavens keep telling the wonders of God, and the skies declare what he has done… They don’t speak a word, and there is never the sound of a voice. Yet their message reaches all the earth, and it travels around the world. (from Psalm 19, CEV) Instead of bemoaning all the things I cannot do, or places I cannot go – why not just sit in my rocking chair and enjoy? Why not compose my own psalm of thanksgiving to the God who has given me this day; another freebie, no charge at all. Another amazing gift. When my psalm is written, I will take some time to pray for those whose lungs are drowning in the virus and those who are stretched to the limit as they care for our sick ones. Receive the blessing of this day, brothers and sisters – and be glad. Pastor Michael Good afternoon,
Times are when I sit down to write a few thoughts and not a lot comes springing to mind. So I turn to people who inspire me, hoping their words help you as well. Here are words from a spiritual director named, Joyce Rupp. Another example of Heather sending something to me that will now help you: Fear in itself is humanity’s friend, a natural response meant to protect our well-being. But when fear insists on center stage and gobbles up peacefulness, it can change into an enemy. Pema Chodron writes in Comfortable with Uncertainty that instead of “resisting our fears” we need to “get to know them well” and ask ourselves, “What happens when I feel I can’t handle what’s going on? …Where do I look for strength and in what do I place my trust?” That last question is a determining factor as to the choice of maintaining foundational peace or succumbing to high anxiety when fear arises due to an uncertain, glum future. Tara Brach (Radical Compassion) describes what I consider to be a valuable meditation in regard to where we place our trust: “Let the fears you’re carrying, the big ones, come to mind. And now imagine that you are holding them gently and respectfully in both hands…and placing them into the arms of the Divine Mother. It’s not that you’re getting rid of them. It’s more like letting something much larger help you hold them. See if you can visualize and feel this. You might try actually cupping your hands and lifting them up.” I also return daily to several lines in Psalm 91, inviting the words to sink into my heart: “My refuge and my strength, In You alone will I trust. For You deliver me from the webs of fear, from all that separates and divides.” (Psalms for Praying) God bless you everyone – and look for the Palm Sunday service, Shaun is doing his final editing… the service will be available to you by tomorrow morning. Look for email or go to FPCE website (www.fpcedgewood.org) or the First Presbyterian Church page on facebook or Instagram. Pastor Michael Good morning brothers and sisters.
Yesterday, Heather and I had a chance to talk with Desmond (who is buried in his teen boy cave, a place few of us would want to visit.) He is either bored or very bored or very, very bored. During yesterday’s walk, Heather and I met our neighborhood walkers, standing 8 feet away from one another briefly chatted. The most often asked question – “Are you hanging in there?” The oft-spoken answer: (sigh) “I guess so.” Your experience too I imagine. An uncle of mine who served in WWII introduced me to the ironic command from his superiors, “Hurry up and wait.” We all have heard it, I’m sure. The prophet Isaiah, speaking to his people as they endured a decades long exile in Babylon, has a more positive view of waiting (Is. 40:28-31): Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. 29 He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. 30 Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; 31 but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. Seriously good people, I hope you are well. Please call or text me (412-298-3140) or someone at the church if there is any way any one of us can be helpful. That includes shopping trips for food or medications. OK?Peace be with you, Pastor Michael Good afternoon sisters, brothers, and friends,
“This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it…” Rejoice and be glad? Yes - in good times and in bad. No doubt about it, we have been warned - bad days lie ahead. How do you plan to live through them? The strong words of trust in Psalm 42 were composed when times were bad. We don’t know what trial confronted the people - an enemy army, an a deeply divided community, a disease, a plague, a pandemic? We do not know who or what the enemy was, what we do know is that out of the dark pain, the psalmist sings: As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God? My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?”… Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God. The past two mornings, I have laid in bed half in fear and half in prayer…”How bad is it going to be?” The answer is obvious say the medical and CDC communities. It is going to be bad. For hundreds of thousands it is bad already. Watch the news, watch the scenes inside the emergency rooms in New York city, look at the makeshift morgues, listen to the doctors and nurses talk about the death and disease they see every day. They are overwhelmed. Listen to their anguish. Look at their tears. Listen to their pain. Is that our future? So far, our communities have been spared the abject terror of this virus. Yet it is at times like this we remember the answer Jesus gave to the lawyer who asked the haunting question, “Who is my neighbor?” People who are not from around here; people who look, talk, and live differently from us; the people who are suffering and dying – they are our neighbors. If one member suffers, all suffer together… What is God saying to us during these dark days? What are we being called to do? I hear the call to meet them, be with them, in their suffering. We are called to show our com-passion to them. (The word compassion literally means ‘to suffer with’.) Compassion is what the good Samaritan showed to the stranger lying on the side of the road. Compassion is what Jesus showed when he suffered for you, for me and for the world on the week we call holy. Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God. Pastor Michael |
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