Friends in Christ,
I still have yesterday’s gospel from St. Mark clanging around in my head, especially the fingernails-on-the-chalkboard comment two of the disciples (James and John--the “Sons of Thunder” and the sons of Zebedee) make to Jesus: Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you. Sheesh, boys, talk about a thunderclap! Jesus has just told you that he’s going to suffer, die, and offer himself to the world on a cross—3 times, no less!--and here you are beseeching him to……do whatever you ask him to do for you?! Seriously? What’s up with that? Well, what’s up with that is these thunder-boys sure sound a lot like you and I often sound…
This whole “what do we want from God/Jesus” business has been on my mind a lot lately, so it was very timely that I recently read a devotion from one of my favorite writers and preachers, M. Craig Barnes, who now is the president of Princeton Theological Seminary. The following devotion comes from a wonderful, grace-centered devotional booklet entitled, An Extravagant Mercy. Thanks to Amazon, I tracked down a used copy from a library in Colorado! I wouldn’t do justice to this devotional by cutting it into chunks, so here it is in its entirety. Enjoy. And be challenged: to love God with all your heart, soul and mind. Regardless of what we may want from God, that, says Barnes, is what God wants from us.
Never-Ending Mercy; God’s Love, Our Response
You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you. (Isaiah 43:4).
What God wants, more than anything, is for us to love him. That is the beginning and end of Scripture. We may have questions about his will for our future, our health, and our hard choices in life. Yet the Bible makes it perfectly clear that above all else the will of God is to be in love with us.
Often that isn’t good enough. More than his love, what we really want is for God to help us out. Frequently, our relationship with God is characterized not by being in love, but by cutting good deals. We expect that if we are faithful in the Christian life, surely God will be faithful in taking care of the things we cannot take care of: he’ll make sure our kids turn out OK, he’ll cure the diseases that elude our medicine, and soon he will get around to fixing the world. Well, maybe.
If we could begin to focus our faith less on what God will do for us and more on God’s great desire to love us, our lives would be revolutionized. First, people who are deeply in love tend to be less obsessive about things they cannot control. Second, we would discover that joy comes not from getting life fixed, but from knowing God. Third, we would be so transformed by receiving God’s love that we could be of use to our lovely and frightened world.
-M. Craig Barnes
Pretty short devotion, isn’t it? But there’s a whole lot there for us to chew on, especially as we approach a national holiday that not only invites us to overindulge in food and football, but also invites us to take some time to deeply reflect on why on earth the creative force that flung the universe into being still gives a hoot about us. Then, before we put the leftovers away in the fridge and collapse into the couch in a tryptophan-induced coma, we are invited to answer the biggest question of all: What are you most thankful for, child of God?
Thank you, God, for your great desire to love us. May our lives be revolutionized by that love, and may we be we used by that love to be gifts of goodness, grace and healing to our lonely and frightened world.
November blessings, people of God!
Pastor Phil
(As posted in November 2018 Newsletter)
I still have yesterday’s gospel from St. Mark clanging around in my head, especially the fingernails-on-the-chalkboard comment two of the disciples (James and John--the “Sons of Thunder” and the sons of Zebedee) make to Jesus: Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you. Sheesh, boys, talk about a thunderclap! Jesus has just told you that he’s going to suffer, die, and offer himself to the world on a cross—3 times, no less!--and here you are beseeching him to……do whatever you ask him to do for you?! Seriously? What’s up with that? Well, what’s up with that is these thunder-boys sure sound a lot like you and I often sound…
This whole “what do we want from God/Jesus” business has been on my mind a lot lately, so it was very timely that I recently read a devotion from one of my favorite writers and preachers, M. Craig Barnes, who now is the president of Princeton Theological Seminary. The following devotion comes from a wonderful, grace-centered devotional booklet entitled, An Extravagant Mercy. Thanks to Amazon, I tracked down a used copy from a library in Colorado! I wouldn’t do justice to this devotional by cutting it into chunks, so here it is in its entirety. Enjoy. And be challenged: to love God with all your heart, soul and mind. Regardless of what we may want from God, that, says Barnes, is what God wants from us.
Never-Ending Mercy; God’s Love, Our Response
You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you. (Isaiah 43:4).
What God wants, more than anything, is for us to love him. That is the beginning and end of Scripture. We may have questions about his will for our future, our health, and our hard choices in life. Yet the Bible makes it perfectly clear that above all else the will of God is to be in love with us.
Often that isn’t good enough. More than his love, what we really want is for God to help us out. Frequently, our relationship with God is characterized not by being in love, but by cutting good deals. We expect that if we are faithful in the Christian life, surely God will be faithful in taking care of the things we cannot take care of: he’ll make sure our kids turn out OK, he’ll cure the diseases that elude our medicine, and soon he will get around to fixing the world. Well, maybe.
If we could begin to focus our faith less on what God will do for us and more on God’s great desire to love us, our lives would be revolutionized. First, people who are deeply in love tend to be less obsessive about things they cannot control. Second, we would discover that joy comes not from getting life fixed, but from knowing God. Third, we would be so transformed by receiving God’s love that we could be of use to our lovely and frightened world.
-M. Craig Barnes
Pretty short devotion, isn’t it? But there’s a whole lot there for us to chew on, especially as we approach a national holiday that not only invites us to overindulge in food and football, but also invites us to take some time to deeply reflect on why on earth the creative force that flung the universe into being still gives a hoot about us. Then, before we put the leftovers away in the fridge and collapse into the couch in a tryptophan-induced coma, we are invited to answer the biggest question of all: What are you most thankful for, child of God?
Thank you, God, for your great desire to love us. May our lives be revolutionized by that love, and may we be we used by that love to be gifts of goodness, grace and healing to our lonely and frightened world.
November blessings, people of God!
Pastor Phil
(As posted in November 2018 Newsletter)