Fill the Earth

I have been studying Genesis and writing sermons to keep the mind strong. In my studies I have noticed that God was pretty serious about humankind spreading out across His creation. As I was working at Walmart one day I began to see why, I think.

While working out in the boonies of the Endless Mountians in Pennsylvania, I see a cross section of Bradford County's population. Great diversity lives all around me. I have seen ladies wrapped in Indian Sari's beright colored and regal. I have heard several different languages and taken in a variety of skin colors.

I believe God was so insistent on humans filling the earth because the Lord built into each of us the ability to adapt to our surroundings AND pass these adaptations on to our offspring. It reminds me of the song I learned in United Methodist Sunday School. "Jesus loves the little children. All the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world."

2 Seeds

Shot from cold metal our seed bounces into clods of earth.

Sharp steel breaks the clods and plants the seeds deep.

“What an experience!” The seed begins to worry.

Rain drops explode around, on and almost through the seed.

“When will this end!” The seed screams.

“I know, Farmer must hate us.” Another seed complains. 

“Otherwise we wouldn’t be mistreated like this.” 

Thunder smashes into the earth. Lightning ascends from ground to clouds. Wind pushes water lower until some seeds start to float. 

One seed is silent through all this. A finger of green pushes out of her skin.

“What’s up with you?”

“I don’t know. This storm had me shaking too.” Minerals released from the soil ride the rainwater into the hearts of the seeds. “Hey you have a tail now too.”

The sun shoves the clouds from the sky and keeps them at bay for days and days. A new energy crowds the soil. This sweet heat is not universally loved. 

“When will this end!” The seed whines. “All this light! I can’t even sleep. And the heat, I can’t stand it. I’m starting to doubt that Farmer has anything to do with us. Why would he put us through such heavy, prickly heat?”

The silent seed’s skin was peeling back, her innards expanding. Worrying seed studied his neighbor. “Are you OK, Silent? You don’t look so good.”

“I don’t know. This energy coursing through me seems enough to tear me apart. It hurts, I won’t kid you, especially when I fight it or wish it to stop. . .. You know your skin is starting to peel a bit Worrying.” He hasn’t noticed. As he reclines into the sun, the pain subsides.

One morning the sunshine is broken by a purring steel tractor tugging a wagon full of crap. Blades fling the sloppy, smelly cargo all over the seeds. Some of them give up. This load of dung is too much. 

Worrying Seed moans, “When will this end?” Yet even as he whimpers these words, he turns to Silent Seed. Large scary arms descend from what is left of her, while one shoot scrambles out of her toward the surface. Worrying Seed is finished and struggles to be free of its place. Something holds him fast.

“What are those things coming out of you?” Worrying Seed yells.

“I’m growing roots. I think its because I’m going to become huge.”

“So what about that, that thing snaking out of your head?”

“Part of me is drawn up and away. It’s where my life is headed, I guess. You are putting out some roots as well, Worrying.”

Day after day this cycle of water, sun and fertilizer frames the seeds’ weeks. The pair appears less and less like their planted selves. Worrying seed still frets, but less and less out loud. Eventually they both are gone, standing unrecognizable. 

And Farmer welcomes them into the world above.

Love and hate can't cohabitate.

"Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen." 1 John 4:20 

Why not? I have people in my life who get me and I'm on their wavelength. I have warm feelings for them and they for me. Others don't understand me nor I them. Neither of us desire to change that relationship. In fact, we harbor the chill of misunderstanding and hate between us. What does this lack of relationship have to do with the fire of our passion for God?
Hate keeps me focusing on me. Every perceived spiteful act of that other person drills me deeper into myself. Soon many of my relationships become tainted by selfishness. When folks don't respond as I desire, a frostbite of selfishness cuts in between. The frost of hate leads the way through my life for the dead cold of bitterness. Slicing emotional winds of hate tear apart God's passion in me, reducing our love to coals and smoking ruins.

We Are Missing Out on Physical Healing

A vast majority of our church's prayers are for someone's physical healing. From winter sniffles that won't go away to stage 4 cancer, our Sunday morning prayer times overflow with heart felt requests for God to heal. Now many of these requests are not for people present at church, our church is small. Many times the folks needing the healing are not even present, but are being prayed for by friends. We celebrate all sorts of cures as from God through medicine or immune system, and God could have been involved in all of these. 

As I look at the Bible's accounts of healing in preparation for a sermon on James 5:13-20, the successful healing don't look like what we do.  Let me lay out what we do.

1) Someone in our group hears from a friend who is sick.
2) They may or may not offer to pray for that person's healing.
3) They come to church and we offer a time to publicly praise God or ask for prayer.
4) The someone in our group asks for prayer for the sick person, who may or may not be present.
5) We offer prayer for this situation for one or two weeks.

Here is the flow I see from the Bible.

1) Someone is sick.
2) They find out about God's representative, Jesus, the apostles, the elders and come to them for healing.
3) This representative prays for and/or sets up the faith conditions for healing.
     "Go wash in the pool of Siloam . . ."
     "Dunk 7 times in the Jordan river . . ."
     prayer and anointing with oil
4) God imparts healing in response to faith

Both Jesus and James bring up the idea of sin forgiveness along with healing. In Matthew 9 Jesus responds to the faith of the paralyzed man's friends, who tear apart a roof to get the man to Jesus, by forgiving his sins before healing him. In James 5 forgiveness of the ailing person is brought up along with their healing. In both cases the person to be healed is surrounded by close friends who know about their sins as well as their condition. A person's sin and guilt may be what is holding them back from physical healing.

1) Our flow is impersonal.
     We may know of the person who is mentioned. Someone has likely talked with this person recently, but our prayers for this person are very generic. "Strengthen them." "Give the doctors wisdom" "Heal if you wish, God" There is not the personal laying on of hands and anointing with oil. There are not those present who can tell us about this person's spiritual state or relationship with God.

2) Our flow is expert based, rather than faith based.
Folks want the pastor to pray for healing publicly. Why, if they have been praying for their friend? I suspect the down deep reason folks want the pastor to pray publicly is that they for some reason feel that Pastor or someone in the congregation has likely got a better line to God, is more tuned into God's healing track and is likely to bring God's healing.

3) Our flow doesn't require any response from the person who is receiving healing.
We pray, God heals, we rejoice. The person may or may not understand if or how God was involved. It is up to their friend who started it all to bring God into the healing. 

A more biblical flow in our day might look like this.
Person gets sick.
     1) If the person has a church home. 
          a) They approach the pastor and other spiritual folks about prayer for healing.
          b) They talk and pray through to find God's desire to heal and any sin that needs to be handled.
          c) The involved elders and pastor lay hands on the person and anoint with oil for healing.
     2) If the person does not have a church home.
          a) The friend and person approach their pastor and other spiritual folks about healing.
          b) The elders teach the sick person about Biblical healing in the Christian Era.
          c) The elders explore the sick person's desire or the friend's desire to trust Jesus for healing..
          d) Once faith is confirmed, the elders anoint the sick person and pray for healing.
God responds with his healing.

Reviewing My Understanding of the World Post SCOTUS

In the climate that has formed around the joining of man with man or woman with woman in marriage, it seems important to me that I review for my friends and followers my world view. In this statement, I will not stop to engage in imaginary debate. I know that many points may be debated. I don't claim that everyone should hold my worldview or even care that what I am about to write is the lense through which I interpret life. I only offer these words, so you can understand how I view the issue of the right of homosexuals to marry. 

First, I need to state the ideas I can't prove. I accept that the ancient book we call the Bible is true. Second, I accept that a personal creative being outside nature exists. Genesis 1:1 is most easily translated "In the beginning God created . . ." God existed before any other thing we can know or experience. By His desire and power he created everything. I have opinions on how, but that will unnecessarily side track us. God who made everything chose to invest extra meaning in His final creature, humans. In Genesis 1:26-28, Gods plans out loud to make humans male and female and in His Image. 

I observe that this man and woman are placed in a different situation. A moral choice was placed before them. In the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God placed a moral test in the center of the garden. I find two parts in this moral choice. Part one: God as the Creator has the right to declare anything in or out of bounds. It is immoral to cross God's boundary, because He said so. It is moral to live inside God's boundary, because he said so.

Part two: it is dangerous to cross God's moral boundaries. God told the male, "If you eat from this tree, you will die." The first couple had little way to comprehend what death meant. The only way I can see that they might come close is through opposites. "We enjoy life. Life is beauty, comfort, and all we could want physically. Perhaps death is the opposite of all this goodness, joy and beauty we see." But what that world could look like was neigh on impossible to imagine. 

In Matthew 19, Jesus states that marriage was made by God for one man and one woman for life. Romans 1 talks about homosexual behavior as a result of rejecting God and walking away from him by humans. I don't know why God has made this ruling. I would understand this like the tree in the garden. Though I can't explain God's motives, I choose to trust them. Crossing God's moral fences is dangerous. This ruling encourages dangerous behavior. 

If any would ask me my opinion of homosexual marriage or union, I would reply, "I see it as morally dangerous." I can't do any different from my worldview that God is Creator and righteous or perfectly moral. 

I can't answer the question of loving feelings toward another person. For me feelings are tricky. They rise and ebb and trip me up as often as not. In matters of the heart, I can't trust my feelings near as much as I can trust God. 

That's the worldview in which I live. 

Weddings

I performed my first wedding at my current church. Heat wilted and glistened and danced with joy on the faces of the bride and groom. Their child was part of the wedding, as a baby bump filling out Mom's dress. In a booming voice edged with emotion, Dad gave away his daughter with the words, "Her Mother and I." We sang "Jesus Loves Me" as the bride and groom poured sand together into their unity jar, creating swirls of white and pink representing two lives becoming one.

Under the shade of our church yard trees the wedding party greeted a cooling breeze and smiled for the camera. The whole experience felt like a breath of fresh air in a society supposedly walking away from conventional marriage.

The next weekend, I set up sound outdoors for my nephew's wedding. He and his bride married on the edge of a field I used to carefully 4 wheel through, so I wouldn't knock down too much hay. The ridge they married on is the big toe of Towner Hill, one of the highest old mountains surrounding my minuscule hometown of Rome, PA. We waited as a passing thundershower cleaned the assembled chairs and crafted bower one more time. The bride and groom turned their backs on Rome Valley and presented their vows to Almighty God and gathered family. As Pastor Theo intoned God's hatred of divorce, a passing thunderbolt underlined the sentiment.

Normally I spout all sorts of opinions about any number of topics built around marriage in the 21st century. Marriage and purity has grown almost as complicated as in Roman times. Purity is wonderful and so is redemption and so is watching young lovers meet before God and pledge their lives to each other.

Marriage?

Recently I read an op-ed piece on CNN.com titled "Marriage Apocalypse."Here is the link if you wish to experience it for yourself. http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/07/opinions/costello-marriage-millennials/index.html One of the millennials felt that if she had $20,000, she would rather go to Europe than invest it in a wedding. Well, duh. A $20K Europe trip would be over the top. This got me to thinking. Why  the marriage ceremony? In the comments to this article, folks make the point that the legal benefits of marriage can be obtained through other means (Power of Attorney, living wills, etc . . .).  Living together allows for cleaner legal separations if the relationship sours. Why marriage?

As a Christian, I feel the Bible offers us insight into relationships such as marriage. From Genesis 1 and 2, marriage seems to be invested with deeper meaning. In Genesis 1:26-28 God plans to make humans in His likeness. To do this He needs to make two, a male and a female. When a male and female come together  this somehow represents or displays a God likeness to the rest of the world. Wow!

In Genesis 2, God has created Adam and encouraged him to name all the animals alive at that time. Through this process, Adam realizes that all the other animals have their mates, but He lives alone. God puts him to sleep and does surgery to form the woman. She is given to Adam by God and the two are to become one flesh. This is as deep unity of body, emotions and outlook.

So why is marriage such a mess today? Certainly folks screaming at each other, abusing each other and ignoring one another doesn't show anything about God. A happy couple living together would display God more convincingly. Marriage seems to put too much pressure on the whole thing and cause failures.  And then the pain of divorce and the stigma of failure and the hurt and battle over children. Why can't we just move along from all that?

I agree that a married couple who go after each other nearly constantly is destructive on many levels. I agree that an unmarried living together couple that cares deeply for each other displays God's attributes more convincingly. A piece of paper and expensive ceremony can't make a man and a woman love each other. In fact, Jesus states that in the next existence marriage won't even be on the table. (Mark 12:25) So why get all hung up on marriage?

Because a healthy marriage shows us the power of commitment. When a man and a woman stand before God and witnesses and declare their commitment to each other through sickness and health, richer and poorer till death us do part, they are stating how Jesus is committed to His followers. Marriage is a huge decision, a lifetime one. How many lifetime decisions do you and I make? To marry and to have children, that's about it. Marriage should have the support of both families involved. Marriage should only be entered in purity, so that the union is about more than "good sex." Marriage partners should know the other well. Even then surprises will come from the dear other.

My Dad made such a commitment 52 years ago. For the last 10, my mother has had her brain eaten away by Alzheimer's disease. Dad gets frustrated with her repeating questions. Dad misses the woman he married. Dad aches because she is now so careless, when she previously cared so much. He could just stick her in a home and walk away. Why watch this day after day? Because she is his wife for life. That commitment is golden. Our whole extended family has taken it in. Frankly, his love for my mom is a treasure whose worth is most fully revealed in this last decade.

Christmas Curious

Purists find details to debate over the placement of the Christmas celebration and how it compares with the myths of other cultures. I find it interesting that one has to look up these long forgotten cultures to compare them to the still vibrant Christian culture of the 21st century. I don't find it threatening that truth about God and His plan leaked into other cultures. In fact, God would let out His truth in as many ways as possible so we won't miss it.

And what is the truth?

Sin, rebellion, "my way or the highway" had become so pervasive that almost all of human society has been built on it. The problem of rejecting our Creator had reached the point where God had to come down and fix things.

But why come down the way he did? Why not unzip the sky, wave his finger and eliminate all the effects of sin and rebellion?

Or ride in on a conquering horse and take over the world as the only Benevolent Dictator. His self worth would not be dependent on his rule and his justice would not be impaired by bribe or ignorance.

Instead he made Himself one of us. Not even an adult one of us, but a baby who traveled through the birth canal and breathed his first in a dirty stable. He was cheered by angels. He was feted by advisers to Kings. He was chased by Herod and obeyed a carpenter as his father. It seems the whole account was designed for us to wonder to find out why.

Luke and Matthew don't seem to agree unless you sit down and calculate stars and King Herod's lifespan and when sheep would likely be in the hills of Bethlehem. To the skeptic, there is much ammunition to shoot the whole thing down. To the seeker there is a bunch to bring into focus.

Many won't waste the time. Some will believe without looking. That number is dwindling. Others will reject it all without a glance
. Those numbers remain steady. Still others will try to line facts up and walk away convinced its all just myth that has somehow succeeded in being believed. Still others will keep at it. Determined to make sense of it all. "God is looking for those who worship Him in spirit and in truth." Eventually the search for truth will be rewarded by the Truth Himself.

A Merry Christmas to all and a curious Christmas if you are still seeking truth, like me.

First World Problems Stifle Thanksgiving

Before Black Friday merchandisers offered Thanksgiving Day sales. The networks provided movies and cartoons that retold the story of the first Thanksgiving with natives and settlers cooperating and feasting together. Our extended family took turns hosting the annual get together. From the stone fireplace of Aunt Shirley and Uncle Louie's house, to the open staircase of Grandpa and Grandma's house, to the 50's formica and tile of Aunt Mary and Uncle Junior's house, to the circular downstairs of our own house we rotated.

Uncle Junior always rooted for and bragged on the Cowboys as "America's team." The rest of us tried to set him straight. The kids played Twister or Operation in another room. The parents and older kids worked at the feast and caught up with each other. Turkey feathers, Indian corn and cornucopias decorated the windows along with words like "Give Thanks." We took time before diving into the meal to pray and thank God for another year and His help.

Nowadays it's challenging to commercialize a slowdown to Thank God for what we have. We are not supposed to have enough. In fact, even if we think we do, its our duty to shop to keep the economy spinning.

Our lack of Thanksgiving may run deeper than commercialization. My granddad died under mysterious circumstances and the half insurance payment soon ran out. My grandmother had to sell eggs and clothes she had made from scratch to keep food on the table. Grandma cleaned the Church and took help from her family for awhile before work opened up. She knew firsthand the need to stop and give thanks for God's help and the kindness of others to get her through.

 Our basic level of comfort in the United States is crazy high. Consistent electricity, heating, cooling, indoor plumbing, an automobile, television, computer, beds, furniture, refrigeration, machines to wash and dry our clothes, several sets of clothes and more is considered basic. Free public education with transportation provided to the school and at least a midday meal is expected. If life falls under this standard, there might be a reason to thank someone who moves us back into the mainstream, but to take a whole long weekend to stare at our belly buttons and thank God for all these basics? Let's just move on to Christmas!

What if our prosperity is not primarily the result of our own hard work or brains or risk taking? What if our prosperity actually comes from God, not as manifest destiny, but because of His kindness? If we ignore the time nationally set aside to return thanks, are we not sending a cruel and spoiled message to God? Might he not choose to let us go it alone for awhile so we feel what our great hard work, brains and risk taking can actually accomplish? What if He has already stepped back and said, "OK lets see what you can do without me."?

Why leaves turn gold

My neighbor is crazy rich. His yard is graced with a 45 foot tall tree of gold leaf. They weren't always golden. He must have won the lottery and decided to show it off to the rest of us by replacing the regular green leaves with these wonderful gold ones. The joke is on him. The leaves are not staying on his fancy tree. The breezes of fall are plucking them to the ground. Tonight I'm sneaking over and loading up a wheel barrow full.

Why should leaves turn such fantastic colors just before they die and fall off? I'm not referring to the science with the different "phyls" in the leaves. I learned that or tried to in high school. I mean why should I look at dying leaves and find their colors fantastic?  When I look at an overripe banana, I am not equally amazed at its color. (Though Grandma Keeler said a banana wasn't ripe unless it had some black spots.) So why do dying leaves draw my gaze with wonder?

Some evolutionists may have generated some sort of explanation for the perception of beauty as a benefit to homo sapiens that has spilled over to my perception of leaves. Perhaps in earlier days people found the sight of reds, purples, golds and rusts instead of lively greens disgusting and our time has it wrong. I doubt both these explanations.

I believe there is a Superior Being who is crazy about color, patterns and light. Before the "bleak mid-winter" sets in, this Being designed these joyous explosions of color to give us hope. Just so we wouldn't miss the message, our eyes and brains were designed to respond to dying leaves as beauty.