Guardrails on a Mountain are nice…

Have you ever driven along a mountain road that had no guardrail?  It can be really scary.  And you ask yourself, “why are there no guardrails here?”  What were this people thinking, someone is going to drive off the side of this mountain and kill themselves…

Isn’t that just exactly how life is?  We as Christian’s have a set of guardrails that follow us everywhere we go, it is the Holy Spirit.  That little voice that tells us when we are about to jump the rail and throw ourselves into the ditch.  We get caught up in the adrenaline rush of what we think sin will give us and jump the rail and go for the ditch, only to get knocked down and bruised…

Follow Christ and stay within the guardrails, and minimize the bumps and scrapes.  The guardrails are there to help and guide you, just like Christ said he always would be…

avalanches – The Melheimian Sabbatiblog

avalanches – The Melheimian Sabbatiblog.

Another wonderful post from Rich Melheim…

My comments on his sight:

Could it be like, someone planted, someone else watered God brought the growth…

I applied a little pressure, and set something in motion and a mother/father picked up on the motion and added a little something over there, and then God helped the whole thing just role down and cover over us all!

How can we stop an avalanche though?  Are there ways we hinder them from happening?

Soccer – The Melheimian Sabbatiblog

Soccer – The Melheimian Sabbatiblog.

Where is your church at in Evangelism.  My comment to Rich Melheim on his blog is here below. I wonder where you think we are at, or where you are at with your church in Evangelism…

This is great! I believe unfortunately most Lutheran Congregations are like the Chinese diagram in the way they prepare for the World Cup in the way we do Evangelism…

The statistics I heard on this is the average Lutheran invites someone to church once every 27 years! We do not know how to talk about our faith to our friends and our family, why do we think we can talk about Jesus to those that do not love us?

How can we change this? What can we do, because the boats are not bringing any more Lutherans over, and we can not have more children, we need to talk about our faith, first with our children, and then the flood gates will open. Because children share the things they love, wether you want to hear it or not, they are so full of life and love a of something and they bubble over with it and have to tell you.

If only all of us had this child like faith and shared! I mean we have the greatest gift ever given, why do we not share it?

How to Love Unconditionally – wikiHow

How to Love Unconditionally – wikiHow.

Interesting article on how to love unconditionally.  Wonder if any of the people who helped write it know or have an understanding of how God fills us and through that we are called to love, because to me it seemed this article was a very nice moralistic thing to do, and can be completely devoid of God in any way shape or form…

Seth does it again: Good bye office

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/06/goodbye-to-the-office.html

Here is Seth’s blog on the office, and how it was necessary, and is now fast becoming an item of the past.

Why is it we go somewhere to be with a bunch of people we do not collaborate with, when we can do what we do there somewhere else?

And in ministry, we should be out among the people… So go sit at Wal-Mart and write a sermon, or how about Walgreens and work on the bulletin. Get out with the people…

Interesting Poem from a 15 year old…

WRITTEN BY A 15 yr. old SCHOOL KID IN ARIZONA :

New Pledge of Allegiance (TOTALLY AWESOME) !

Since the Pledge of Allegiance and The Lord’s Prayer are not allowed in most public schools anymore Because the word “God” is mentioned….
A kid in Arizona wrote the attached

NEW School prayer :
Now I sit me down in school
Where praying is against the rule
For this great nation under God
Finds mention of Him very odd.

If Scripture now the class recites,
It violates the Bill of Rights.
And anytime my head I bow
Becomes a Federal matter now.

Our hair can be purple, orange or green,
That’s no offense; it’s a freedom scene.
The law is specific, the law is precise.
Prayers spoken aloud are a serious vice.

For praying in a public hall
Might offend someone with no faith at all.
In silence alone we must meditate,
God’s name is prohibited by the state.

We’re allowed to cuss and dress like freaks,
And pierce our noses, tongues and cheeks.
They’ve outlawed guns, but FIRST the Bible.
To quote the Good Book makes me liable.
We can elect a pregnant Senior Queen,
And the ‘unwed daddy,’ our Senior King.
It’s “inappropriate” to teach right from wrong,
We’re taught that such “judgments” do not belong.

We can get our condoms and birth controls,
Study witchcraft, vampires and totem poles.
But the Ten Commandments are not allowed,
No word of God must reach this crowd.

It’s scary here I must confess,
When chaos reigns the school ‘s a mess.
So, Lord, this silent plea I make:
Should I be shot; My soul please take!

Amen

No room in the Inn

We are in the midst of doing VBS at the congregation I serve.  Yesterdays scripture passage was Luke 2:1-20, the birth of Jesus.

Now this is a story most of us hear year after year, because those of us who go to churches that follow the Revised Common Lectionary use this set of verses every Christmas Eve.  So this is a story that we have heard many times and so then know by heart!  Right!

I find it, that the more I think I know a passage of scripture, is when I really need to stop and take a good look at it.

Like this story, here we see the shepherds and the wise man visiting Jesus in the manger right?  Not quite.  Some of the discussion we had in our Adult class during VBS was the way we mix up the Christmas stories from Matthew and Luke into one story.  In actuality, Matthew does nto have a Christmas story, but has the story of Epiphany, which probably happened about 2 years after the birth of Christ!  That’s right the Wise Guys probably did not arrive at the house where Jesus and his family were living for about 2 years after the birth. This is why the decree was sent down by Herod to kill all male children 2 years old and younger, so he made sure he got Jesus…

Well Luke has the shepherds, the lowly, unreliable shepherds. Those who could not be witnesses in court, were the first to witness the new born king of all the world.

But that is not what caught my eye.  There was no room in the inn.  WOW.  Did you hear that?  There was no room in inn, the place they stopped to stay was all filled up, no room for Joseph and Mary.  And now you are saying, yes we know, we have heard it.  We know the inn keeper told them to stay in the stable, with the manger.  But you see the inn keeper is not in the story.  However I do like Todd Agnew’s rendition of how that story might have went.  His song No Room is a wonderful portrayal of the story. The inn keepers are saying that they have had all of these people coming to the door and asking for something, and they have given everything they have, and if you were wealthy or important we might be able to find you some room, yet they took pity on them and sent them to the stable…  One line in the song says “if you could only save me, then I might find you some room…”

Isn’t that really the point to no room at the inn?  Isn’t that exactly the way we act as christians, or people who do not claim to be christians???  We say that I’ll give you this hour God, and then the rest of the time is mine, the rest of my life is mine, there is no room in my life for you.  If only you could bring me some comfort and safe me from all my worries, then maybe I would make some room, but as it is, there is no room for you here…

Where are you saying to God, there is no room?  How could life be so much better if we only allow God the room he is seeking, and instead say, I’ll make the room, because you made the space first for me!

Seth’s Blog – Trying to please…

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/06/trying-to-please.html

Check out Seth’s blog about pleasing and what or who we are trying to please. One of my collegues in Ohio said, “our business as the church is pleasing God.”. While I have mixed feelings about this statement, because I am a Lutheran and therefore think any works are bad and can not help me to please God, yet I have to do something because “faith without works is dead”…

So what do you think?