Nicodemus…

Nicodemus like many sometimes get a bad rap…

He comes to Jesus under the cover of darkness to ask his questions, because he could not risk asking them in the light of day.  He had the thought that Jesus was who he said he was, who the people said he was, but his position as a Pharisee did not allow him to think these things or to question his faith.  Faith is a gift though, and is capable of being pushed and pulled.  Nicodemus followed where his heart was leading.  In out passage for my devotion today, John 2:23-3:15 Nicodemus comes under darkness and leaves under darkness.  In this passage we do not know what happened to Nicodemus, did he get it?  If we read the rest of the gospel of John, we see Nicodemus return, and yes he did get it. His faith progressed and grew over time.  His next appearance in the gospel is defending Jesus in public, saying he needs to have a public trial, and Nicodemus’ next appearance has him with Joseph of Arimathea taking the body of Christ off the cross, and preparing him to be placed in the tomb.  He went from darkness, to standing up for him, to publicly in the light of day helping prepare the dead body, not something a good Jew or Pharisee would be doing, but something a disciple would be.

So ask questions and grow in your faith, knowing that that faith is a gift and the one that gave it to you can take you asking the questions!

Freed to serve…

So why are we here?

Many of us probably wondered this from time to time.  Why are we here?  Are we suppose to do something?  Does somebody have a plan for us?

I am wired that I want to know what I need to do and get it done.  So I want to know what I am suppose to do and get to work. And so many times we hear, we are suppose to serve the poor, we are to help the needy.  So let’s get out there and do it.  Jesus came and showed us that we are to serve.  But here is the kicker in this, how many of us are able and willing to be served ourselves?

You see in order for us to really serve another, we have to be able to first receive service.  We have to be able to receive before we can give…

So you are freed to serve, but in order to do that, you have to open yourself up to Jesus and allow him to serve you.

Gracious Lord, help me to open myself up to you and allow your healing service to take control of my very life.  Live in me and fill me, so that I might be blessed by you and then able to bless others. Amen.

Wandering?

“One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD,” Moses told the people.

They had been wandering in the wilderness for 40 years.  40 years of wandering because they did not trust in the Lord. They built a golden calf and worshipped it, and they did not trust the Lord to give them the land they were about to enter when they first sent spies into investigate.  They were worried and fell back on their own strength rather than trust the Lord.  So they wandered.

But look at this passage again.  They wandered, but had all the food they would need to eat for the day given to them by the Lord.  And they wandered and had no place to buy new clothes, but they did not need that because the Lord made sure their clothing did not wear out and the soles of their sandals did not wear out.  Now I want to know where to get those kinds of threads, and where I might get a pair of shoes that will last for 40 years!

The Lord humbled the people.  He humbled them to know that they should and could trust in the Lord.  It is not enough to say we trust and then when push comes to shove show that we don’t trust the Lord.  The Lord has given us all that we could need, and will give us what ever it is we need.

That is what Lent is about. Remembering the 40 years in the wilderness, and the 40 days that Jesus was tempted, and denying ourselves completely and allowing the Lord to humble us so that we will follow and trust Him always.

So do not live by bread alone, but listen to the Lord, and live and feast on His very word!

Lord, you feed us everyday in ways we can not understand. Help us to be humble and trust in you for everything we need. Amen.

Come and See

“Come and see,” Jesus said to the disciples of John who came after him.  Come and see.  A physical invitation and yet so much more.

How many of us get caught up in the physical aspect of the actual written word, so much that we miss the meaning behind it?

I read a great devotion this morning about this passage.  These disciples asked Jesus where he was staying, and he told them to come and see for them selves.  They went and saw, and then they stayed with Jesus. They physically came and saw and remained with him, and the transformation started and it went from a physical notion to a spiritual one.  And then one of them was so transformed by the experience that they went and got another…

Andrew went and got his brother and told him, “Come and see, we have found the anointed one.” Come and see, come and be changed. Come and allow the transformation over take you.  All of this happens in a few verses, and many of take a lifetime to invite others to come and see the diference Jesus has made in our lives.

So you have come and seen, why have you not invited others to do the same?

What do they see?

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”” (John 13:34–35 ESV)

When the world looks at the church, what do they think?  Are they over come with the amazing grace filled love that they encounter?  Are they taken back by the irrational joy and love they are met with in all of the reactions they have with the church?  The world when they look at the church are just drawn to the supernatural, selfless love that pours out of each member of the Christian church, because there is nothing that compares to this love that flows from God’s throne in the non Christian world…

Yes there are times that this happens.  That God’s love is the one thing that people see when they see the church.  The disciples are out of the way and God’s love shines through and it is so compelling and it draws people in…

But usually when we hear about the church from the world, it is more about schisms, moral failures of leaders and members, political anger, power plays, and all the rest that we have heard. The church is seen as being hypocritical, because it seems like the church wants to judge everyone by a code they themselves are not willing to keep.

But we can not lose heart today. Jesus gave the disciples then a new commandment, and today he is still working it out through us.  During this season of Lent we need to empty ourselves and allow God to have control. We need to walk the path set before us with humility, we need to walk that path in service to others, and in love for the other, because that is how they will know we are His disciples, by our love!

Lord make me an uncluttered channel of your divine grace, mercy and love. Mold me into the person you created me to be, and guide me to be an instrument for your peace!

A prayer for the season of Lent

I pray that we all would clean ourselves of all the unnecessary junk in our hearts and minds, sweep out the cobwebs and dust and dirt the clutters up our lives, and hand that lump of what is left of our lives over to the master potter, and allow him to spin us into the creation he saw before the beginning of time, before he first formed us in our mothers womb.  I pray that God would have total access to our lives and thus give us the true meaning each of us is longing for.

Lent – Time for Some Cleaning!

For some winter is still a reality.  It is cold and damp and snowy maybe, so to think about Spring cleaning is not for now. I mean we still have 2 weeks until Spring, and then it may not be worm enough to do cleaning.

But today is Ash Wednesday.  To day is the beginning of Lent.  The word Lent comes from the Anglo-Saxon word Lenten which means spring, so today is a day to start our personal spring cleaning.  It is time for us to sweep out the cobwebs from our hearts, and our minds, and to give up our selves completely.  We need to place our lives in the hands of God and allow him to mold and shape our lives the way he knows best to do it.

Lent is a time for us to center our lives on the life God has for us. To clean out all of the junk and garbage that keeps us from living the life and way God calls us to live, and allowing the one who knew us before he formed us in our mother’s womb, and consecrated us to be prophets to the nations, to mold us and make us.

Allow God to change your heart over these next 40 Days. (actually 46 days with Sundays.)  Place your life in the hands of Him who formed you and named you, claimed you as his own and truly knows what is best for you.

So get a broom and some cleaning towels and cleaner and start to clean out the dust and dirt and allow God to make you into the person he created you to be.

Carl – a Story from an email…

Carl was a quiet man. He didn’t talk much.
He would always greet you with a big smile and a firm handshake.

Even after living in our neighborhood for over 50 years, no one could really say they knew him very well.

Before his retirement, he took the bus to work each morning. The lone sight of him walking down the street often worried us. He had a slight limp from a bullet wound received in WWII.

Watching him, we worried that although he had survived WWII, he may not make it through our changing uptown neighborhood with its ever-increasing random violence, gangs, and drug activity.

When he saw the flyer at our local church asking for volunteers for caring for the gardens behind the minister’s residence, he responded in his characteristically unassuming manner. Without fanfare, he just signed up.

He was well into his 87th year when the very thing we had always feared finally happened.

He was just finishing his watering for the day when three gang members approached him.

Ignoring their attempt to intimidate him, he simply asked, “Would you like a drink from the hose?”

The tallest and toughest-looking of the three said, “Yeah, sure,” with a malevolent little smile.

As Carl offered the hose to him, the other two grabbed Carl’s arm, throwing him down. As the hose snaked crazily over the ground, dousing everything in its way, Carl’s assailants stole his retirement watch and his wallet, and then fled.

Carl tried to get himself up, but he had been thrown down on his bad leg. He lay there trying to gather himself as the minister came running to help him.

Although the minister had witnessed the attack from his window, he couldn’t get there fast enough to stop it.

“Carl, are you okay? Are you hurt?” the minister kept asking as he helped Carl to his feet.

Carl just passed a hand over his brow and sighed, shaking his head. “Just some punk kids. I hope they’ll wise-up someday.”

His wet clothes clung to his slight frame as he bent to pick up the hose. He adjusted the nozzle again and started to water.

Confused and a little concerned, the minister asked, “Carl, what are you doing?”

“I’ve got to finish my watering. It’s been very dry lately,” came the calm reply.

Satisfying himself that Carl really was all right, the minister could only marvel. Carl was a man from a different time and place.

A few weeks later the three returned. Just as before their threat was unchallenged. Carl again offered them a drink from his hose.

This time they didn’t rob him. They wrenched the hose from his hand and drenched him head to foot in the icy water.

When they had finished their humiliation of him, they sauntered off down the street, throwing catcalls and curses, falling over one another laughing at the hilarity of what they had just done.

Carl just watched them. Then he turned toward the warmth giving sun, picked up his hose, and went on with his watering.

The summer was quickly fading into fall Carl was doing some tilling when he was startled by the sudden approach of someone behind him. He stumbled and fell into some evergreen branches.

As he struggled to regain his footing, he turned to see the tall leader of his summer tormentors reaching down for him. He braced himself for the expected attack.

“Don’t worry old man, I’m not gonna hurt you this time.”

The young man spoke softly, still offering the tattooed and scarred hand to Carl. As he helped Carl get up, the man pulled a crumpled bag from his pocket and handed it to Carl.

“What’s this?” Carl asked.

“It’s your stuff,” the man explained. “It’s your stuff back. Even the money in your wallet.”

“I don’t understand,” Carl said. “Why would you help me now?”

The man shifted his feet, seeming embarrassed and ill at ease. “I learned something from you,” he said. “I ran with that gang and hurt people like you we picked you because you were old and we knew we could do it But every time we came and did something to you, instead of yelling and fighting back, you tried to give us a drink. You didn’t hate us for hating you. You kept showing love against our hate.”

He stopped for a moment. “I couldn’t sleep after we stole your stuff, so here it is back.”

He paused for another awkward moment, not knowing what more there was to say. “That bag’s my way of saying thanks for straightening me out, I guess.” And with that, he walked off down the street.

Carl looked down at the sack in his hands and gingerly opened it. He took out his retirement watch and put it back on his wrist. Opening his wallet, he checked for his wedding photo. He gazed for a moment at the young bride that still smiled back at him from all those years ago.

He died one cold day after Christmas that winter. Many people attended his funeral in spite of the weather.

In particular the minister noticed a tall young man that he didn’t know sitting quietly in a distant corner of the church.

The minister spoke of Carl’s garden as a lesson in life.

In a voice made thick with unshed tears, he said, “Do your best and make your garden as beautiful as you can. We will never forget Carl and his garden.”

The following spring another flyer went up. It read: “Person needed to care for Carl’s garden.”

The flyer went unnoticed by the busy parishioners until one day when a knock was heard at the minister’s office door.

Opening the door, the minister saw a pair of scarred and tattooed hands holding the flyer. “I believe this is my job, if you’ll have me,” the young man said.

The minister recognized him as the same young man who had returned the stolen watch and wallet to Carl.

He knew that Carl’s kindness had turned this man’s life around. As the minister handed him the keys to the garden shed, he said, “Yes, go take care of Carl’s garden and honor him.”

The man went to work and, over the next several years, he tended the flowers and vegetables just as Carl had done.

During that time, he went to college, got married, and became a prominent member of the community. But he never forgot his promise to Carl’s memory and kept the garden as beautiful as he thought Carl would have kept it.

One day he approached the new minister and told him that he couldn’t care for the garden any longer. He explained with a shy and happy smile, “My wife just had a baby boy last night, and she’s bringing him home on Saturday.”

“Well, congratulations!” said the minister, as he was handed the garden shed keys. “That’s wonderful! What’s the baby’s name?”

“Carl,” he replied.

March 2011 Front Page

Jer. 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for wel- fare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. (ESV)

These are comforting words from Jeremiah. God has already planned out what is going to happen, and we get to tag along for the ride!

I write this newsletter article with hope for the future. Here at FEELC we do so many things that are ministry to the community around us. We help Christ’s Kitchen, the Salvation Army, Texas Lutheran University, Cross Trails Ministry, and the list goes on. We reach a hand out through Heritage Day to the organizations in our area that help those in need. We do a lot of ministry in the name of Christ. Yet, can we do more? Absolutely! I look at FEELC and see untapped potential for many new and various ministries. Ways we can reach this community, the com- munity that surrounds us, with the message of love and grace that God has for them. We have potential do many more things than we are to spread the gospel message of Christ. In order for us to do this we must be united in Christ, across our differences on any issue that tries to divide us. We cannot let differences separate us from the mission we are called to: to build and nurture relationships for Jesus Christ!

My vision for FEELC is a mission outpost of the ELCA, a center of hospitality and outreach for the good news of Jesus Christ. It is a vision, which continues to build on our current mission opportunities while reaching out to find new ways to use the gifts we have to spread the grace, peace and mercy of God to all of this hurting community.

The Soul of the Fisherman

I LIKE THIS AND I  WONDER HOW MANY TIMES WE JUDGE PEOPLE BY THE WAY THEY LOOK AND NOT WHATS INSIDE OF THEM, HOPE YOU LIKE THIS AS MUCH AS I DID

Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

We lived downstairs and rented the upstairs rooms to outpatients at the clinic. One summer evening as I was fixing supper, there was a knock at the door.  I opened it to see a truly awful looking man.

“Why, he’s hardly taller than my 8-year-old,” I thought as I stared at the stooped, shriveled body.  But the appalling thing was his face, lopsided from swelling, red and raw.  Yet his voice was pleasant as he said, “Good evening.  I’ve come to see if you’ve a room for just one night.  I came for a treatment this morning from the eastern shore, and there’s no bus ’til morning.” He told me he’d been hunting for a room since noon but with no success, no one seemed to have a room.

“I guess it’s my face … I know it looks terrible, but my doctor says with a few more treatments ..” For a moment I hesitated, but his next words convinced me:

“I could sleep in this rocking chair on the porch.  My bus leaves early in the morning.” I told him we would find him a bed, but to rest on the porch..  I went inside and finished getting supper.

When we were ready, I asked the old man if he would join us.  “No, thank you.  I have plenty.”  And he held up a brown paper bag.

When I had finished the dishes, I went out on the porch to talk with him a few minutes.  It didn’t take a long time to see that this old man had an oversized heart crowded into that tiny body.  He told me he fished for a living to support his daughter, her 5 children, and her husband, who was hopelessly crippled from a back injury.

He didn’t tell it by way of complaint; in fact, every other sentence was preface with a thanks to God for a blessing.  He was grateful that no pain accompanied his disease, which was apparently a form of skin cancer.  He thanked God for giving him the strength to keep going. At bedtime, we put a camp cot in the children’s room for him.  When I got up in the morning, the bed linens were neatly folded and the little man was out on the porch. He refused breakfast, but just before he left for his bus, haltingly, as if asking a great favor, he said,

“Could I please come back and stay the next time I have a treatment?  I won’t put you out a bit.  I can sleep fine in a chair.”  He paused a moment and then added, “Your children made me feel at home.  Grownups are bothered by my face, but children don’t seem to mind.” I told him he was welcome to come again.

And, on his next trip, he arrived a little after 7 in the morning.  As a gift, he brought a big fish and a quart of the largest oysters I had ever seen!  He said he had shucked them that morning before he left so that they’d be nice and fresh.  I knew his bus left at 4:00 a.m. and I wondered what time he had to get up in order to do this for us.

In the years he came to stay overnight with us, there was never a time that he did not bring us fish or oysters or vegetables from his garden. Other times we received packages in the mail, always by special delivery; fish and oysters packed in a box of fresh young spinach or kale, every leaf carefully washed.  Knowing that he must walk 3 miles to mail these, and knowing how little money he had made the gifts doubly precious.

When I received these little remembrances, I often thought of a comment our next-door neighbor made after he left that first morning. “Did you keep that awful looking man last night?  I turned him away! You can lose roomers by putting up such people!” Maybe we did lose roomers once or twice.  But, oh!, if only they could have known him, perhaps their illnesses would have been easier to bear. I know our family always will be grateful to have known him; from him we learned what it was to accept the bad without complaint and the good with gratitude to God.

Recently I was visiting a friend, who has a greenhouse, as she showed me her flowers, we came to the most beautiful one of all, a golden chrysanthemum, bursting with blooms.  But to my great surprise, it was growing in an old dented, rusty bucket.  I thought to myself, “If this were my plant, I’d put it in the loveliest container I had!” My friend changed my mind.  “I ran short of pots,” she explained, “and knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn’t mind starting out in this old pail.  It’s just for a little while, till I can put it out in the garden.”

She must have wondered why I laughed so delightedly, but I was imagining just such a scene in heaven.

“Here’s an especially beautiful one,” God might have said when he came to the soul of the sweet old fisherman.  “He won’t mind starting in this small body.” All this happened long ago – and now, in God’s garden, how tall this lovely soul must stand.

The LORD does not look at the things man looks at.  Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7b)