Thoughts from aSacredRebel following the SacredRebel
This is a blessing that Rich Melheim used each night with his children. I think this is something we all should use to help our kids see our faith and to help them grow in their!
I’m so happy to be your pappy
It don’t bother to be your Father
Flips my lid that you’re my kid
I’m elated that we’re related
Drives me wild that you’re my child
And daddy will always love you, no matter what
Mommy will always love you, no matter what
Jesus will always love you, no… matter… what!
I am thinking and pondering this day how my life has been richly blessed and how incredibly inept as a father I am.
I think about all of the things I do wrong, and yet my children still love me.
I think of all the ways I fail my daughters and my wife, yet they still care for me.
I think of all the times I have dropped the ball, and they are still there for me.
I have failed them in so many ways, yet they still love me and tell me how much I mean to them.
I wonder how I can be so richly blessed with three beautiful daughters and the most wonderful woman in the world…
I thank God every day for the wonderful blessings I have in my girls and try to give them a 10th of what they have given to me.
Happy Daddy Day to all of you. I pray that you are blessed to be a blessing.
I have been looking over these texts for today and thinking about what could be said and all I keep coming back to is the article I read from David Lose from the column he writes each week at workingpreacher.org.
I do not think what needs to be said about these texts can be said any better than what he writes. So today for the posting on the texts I have to bow out to David Lose. I hope you find what he writes to be as inspiring as I did as it made me think about the text in a whole new way!
Today we have the parable of the sower from Mark 4:1-20 and Jesus explanation of this to the disciples.
At one point Jesus says that he teaches in parables so that those outside the circle “may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.” This is an interesting reason, wouldn’t Jesus want those outside to understand what He was saying so that they may all turn and be forgiven? I mean John 3:16 says that God so loved the WORLD that he gave his only begotten son so that whosoever believe in him can have eternal life. and 3:17 Indeed God did not send his sin into the world to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through him… so wouldn’t Jesus want them to understand?
That got me thinking about the last statement in the explanation of the parable, “ But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.” Are you the good soil? And if you are have you ever seen your actions bear fruit thirty, sixty or a hundred fold. If you have that is great but I’m sure there are many of us who have done wonderful work in the kingdom, but have not perceived the work we have done. Or have not understood everything we have done and what impact it has had on the kingdom.
We sometimes see what is in from t of us, but that is really not what we need to be seeing. We do not perceive what we need to actually be seeing or understanding. It is not because we are dense (well not always) it is because we are looking with our eyes and not the eyes of Jesus. We are not seeing things as God sees them, but as we want them to be.
So the parables are meant to keep the outsiders from understanding, or perceiving, but how much do we actually perceive or understand the kingdom? We do not make the soil what it is, we live in a way that we can be used, not always understanding how or why just being who God called us to be…
These are magnificent trees…
Here is a little history from Wikipedia.org:
Once Lebanon was shaded by thick cedar forests, so it is no coincidence that the tree is the symbol of the country. After centuries of persistent deforestation, the extent of these forest has been markedly reduced. The trees survive in mountainous areas, where they are the dominant tree species. This is the case of the slopes of Mount Makmel that tower over the Kadisha Valley where the Cedars of God are found at an altitude of more than 2,000 metres (6,600 ft). Four of them have reached a height of 35 metres (115 ft). and their trunks are 12–14 metres (39–46 ft) around.[1]
Concern for the Biblical Cedars of God goes back to 1876 when the 102-hectare (250-acre) grove was surrounded by a high stone wall, which was paid for by Queen Victoria. The wall protects saplings from goats.[1]
They can grow to be huge trees that reach all the way up to heaven! Trunks 39 feet around! These are wonderful demonstrations of what God’s kingdom will be like, magnificent, wonderful and big! Something that commands our attention! Even in their old age they still produce fruit and sap. They are always doing what they need to be doing.
Are you rooted in the Lord and growing ever deeper in His love? Stay in Him and you will produce fruit through out all of your life and point people to God, just like the cedars!
We get so hung up on the fruit and the tree and the serpent being the devil and a bunch of stuff that we learned in Sunday School that simply isn’t in the Bible.
I wonder sometimes why the apple got the short straw on being the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Was this because the apple was known to the youth and it was easy to talk about the fruit being an apple. Even today on the Christian radio station I listen to I heard a song that talked about the apple being the fruit Eve and Adam ate. The Bible does not say what the fruit was, it was simply on the tree in the middle of the Garden…
And how many trees were there? Yes this is a ridiculous question. No one knows how many trees there were in the Garden of Eden. However I really mean how many special trees were there in the Garden of Eden? And as I type this I think I emphatically know the answer, but I am wrong. We do not know how many special trees there are either. It is not stated in the Bible how many special trees there are but there is something there that many of us overlook or forget or were never taught.
Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:22-24 ESV)
Now that man is like us we have to get them out of the garden so they don’t eat from the tree of life and live forever! After eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil the Genesis story tells us that man and woman were just like God except God lives for ever and man does not. So if they would have eaten from the tree of life, they would have been exactly like God. So there are at least 2 trees that are special in the Garden of Eden, and the tree of life is now guarded by flaming spinning sword bearing Cherubim. (Cherubim are scary enough from the description of the in the Bible, I’m not sure why they need the flaming spinning swords!)
So what is true? Is the apple the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as we have been taught? Is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil the only special tree in the Bible as we have been taught?
I guess the question for the day shouldn’t be 2 trees or not 2 trees, but why do we cling to what we have been taught when it does not jive with the Biblical witness? Why do we claim to know the truth of God when we do not even really know what His word says?
Dear daddy God, please help us to give up our knowledge and to live and stay in the realness of you, and to be led in your path and go out doing your mission. Guide us in your mercy and love to show forth your grace. Amen
A house divided against itself can not stand!
Have you ever been there?
Luke 11:14-28 tells us the story we heard from Mark last Sunday of the reason Jesus can cast out demons according to the Pharisees and the scribes is because He does it by the chief of demons… Yet a house divided against itself can not stand. So if demons are casting out demons then the house of demons will fall. This is not only true for the house of demons, but also for the house of God…
Have you ever been involved in a congregation where there were struggles and fighting inside amongst the people that should be united under the cross of Christ?
We get hung up on knowing the full truth and making sure that everyone else knows this truth as we have discovered it… But is this really what the gospel is all about?
Jesus said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” Now what does this mean?
You see we are so ready to share what we think the word of God means, and look for those who believe the same as us, so that we can help others see the truth of the error of their ways… We use the information we have been given through the gospel to help others see how wrong they are. But Jesus said to keep the word of God. To store into yourself and allow it to change your life, and then that will show others how much Jesus loves them… And that will change them, and allow them to be changed and bring them into relationship with Jesus. Not us telling them how wrong they are, but keeping the word of God in us and allowing it to change us and that will change others!
So keep it!
The book of Life is the book we read about in Revelation 20. It tells us that anyone whose name is not written in this book will be thrown into the lake of fire…
We have to do the correct things to get our name in the book of life. We will be judged by what we have done. As Lutherans we believe we are held in God’s hand by grace and it is not by works that we are saved, yet Revelation 20 tells us differently…
But it also says there are other books that are opened. They are not named but books are opened…
Makes me think about the trees in the garden of Eden… There are many trees, but there are 2 special trees… The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree at the center of the garden that God tells Adam and Eve to not eat from. And then at the end of Genesis 3 we hear about the other tree, the reason for humanities expulsion from the garden, the tree of eternal life. We could have been just like God if we would have eaten from the tree of eternal life, having the knowledge of good and evil…
But we have to watch what we do so we are judged good, or we can have faith in he promises of God and know that Jesus paid the price for us… Or we can worry about the other books listed in Revelation 20 and what they could mean for us… Or we can hope in the unseen things and have faith in the promises of God.
Psalm 74 tells us how the people of God are surrounded by those who scoff at God a foolishly mock God and His ways. When oh when Lord will you come and smite these foolish people and bring us out of the calamity we are under…
But is that really what is happening? The psalmist here seems to think that God is slow in bringing about the promised relief from the foes, the enemies of God. God has obviously forgotten the plan, and needs to be reminded that the people He has claimed needs to be saved form the world around them.
12 Yet God my King is from of old,
working salvation in the midst of the earth.
13 You divided the sea by your might;
you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters.
14 You crushed the heads of Leviathan;
you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.
15 You split open springs and brooks;
you dried up ever-flowing streams.
16 Yours is the day, yours also the night;
you have established the heavenly lights and the sun.
17 You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth;
you have made summer and winter.
But the psalmist does understand that God is working through the creation and the things that are here, by using them to show forth His power and mercy. He is working in and through the world the way it is…
And the thing the psalmist misses and we sometimes forget is that we are also enemies of God, and foes to those who follow God. When we sin we are not a friend of God, but against God. When we think we have it all figured out and our way is the only way then we are the foe of God and sinning against those who follow God. We are the ones that the psalmist is asking for God to come and remove and smite and relieve those who are following God. When we ask God to remove those who do not believe we are asking for God to remove us from this place…
Anne Lamott writes, “The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.” If we are certain about anything that is controlled by God, then we are not really getting God. We need to live in the promise God has given us and not cling to any certainty that we have made.
So remember how the foolish scoff at you all the day, and remember we are all a part of God’s merry band of fools!
What are you completely sure of in life?
There is not much I am completely sure of, well maybe there is, but maybe there isn’t…
I’m sure I am the father of my 3 daughters, and I am sure I will love them regardless of what they do.
I’m sure that I will never be a millionaire. I really hope I’m wrong about that, I would like to be able to help lots of people…
I know that I want to be god in my life… Yes you read that correctly. I want to be the supreme ruler of my life, I want to be the god of my destiny, and determine everything that happens in my life…
I think if we were all honest with ourselves we would all have to say this, because this after all is the original sin, wanting to be god. This is what the serpent told Eve about the forbidden fruit, that if she ate it should would be like God. We want to control our lives, and not allow anyone else to have control over us.
But isn’t that where we get ourselves into trouble? If we could just let go and allow God to be the controller of our lives wouldn’t things run smoother, and be better?
So let go and allow God to have control….
aSacredRebel