#EncouragingHope

One of my pet peeves is the mid-western tendency to use negative adjectives in conjunction with positive adjectives in order to amplify the positive adjective. If I’ve lost you, don’t worry – if you are from the mid-west you will recognize these word pairs: Awfully beautiful, terribly sweet. It works here in the Midwest. Awfully beautiful is much more beautiful than nicely beautiful and wonderfully sweet is just a bit less sweet than terribly sweet, which pushes sweet over the boundaries of acceptable sweetness. Do you think the disciples had some pet peeves?

C.S Lewis once said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” How can we use faith as our looking glass to see everything else? Welcome to worship.

Are there things going on in your world which seem to be happening when you are prepared to help? Perhaps you have extra money to support a ministry close to your heart. Perhaps you have extra time to volunteer somewhere. Perhaps you have been made aware of a child in need of an instrument and you have such an instrument gathering dust in your closet. Perhaps all your years of training are leading you to a ministry that needs those skills. That’s God’s perfect timing at work. Don’t be late.

Jesus was transfigured on the mountain, illuminatedand shining with Elijah and Moses. It was an incredible experience for the disciples, yet we often focus on Jesus' transfiguration and miss the transformation of the disciples. How are we transformed today by God's presence in our world? Rev. Carol Shanks brings the lesson this week.

There are many times we are side-tracked from God’s purpose in our lives. The reality is consumerism thrives on side-tracking us. We have to participate in consumerism to survive, the secret is to not let consumerism rule our lives. We do that with faith, prayer and support of one another.

Food insecurity is not a new problem. Even Paul addresses this issue with the church in Corinth. How did Paul address this question? *the reference to Jersey is to my dog, who joined me during the podcast

I have seen many babies. I worked in a hospital nursery for over five years. I can honestly say that I have never seen an ugly baby. I’ve seen startled babies, as nursery staff attempt to get that perfect picture minutes before a sleepy baby goes home, but ugly? – No. Not the tiny premature babies or the large record-breaking babies. Different – yes. Healthy – yes. Vulnerable – yes. Seriously ill – yes. Ugly – no. Each baby was unique, and the babies that stayed longer due to illness grew more beautiful each day. How is it that we all seem to have an understanding about what defines an ugly baby?

This excerpt from Genesis is the story of the beginning for us. It is the beginning of our world, the beginning of the creation story. It is also the beginning of a metaphor that runs through scripture. We read that God called the light good. We assume that makes the darkness bad. We see this metaphor many times in scripture. The advent scripture tells us of how we walked out of the darkness. We are told to turn our faces towards the light of God. Light and darkness are often compared to good and evil. It was an obvious conclusion for biblical times. Bad things often happened under the veil of darkness. They didn’t have the scientific knowledge that we have today.

Clouds do not rain everywhere all the time. Clouds rain on specific areas and the job of nourishing the earth get done. We cannot endure the pain of “all lives matter.” It is a wonderful goal to work towards, a goal you get to in steps such as “black lives matter”, “domestic violence victims matter”, “children lives matter” and “immigrant lives matter.” Fighting for any one of these issues will change our lives, mark us, perhaps even wound us. Love hurts, yet love also heals. God calls us to love one another.

Chances are you will not experience a supernatural angel that will tell you what God is planning for your life. Chances are more likely that you will experience times when it feels like have been abandoned. There may be times when you feel God is absent from your life. When those times happen, take time to listen to tree branches rustling in the wind, the sound of a child’s laughter or watch the beauty of an evening sunset and know that God is present.