Monday Morning Meditation
2/20/2012
Theologian Matthew Fox tells the story of a Catholic Sister in Chicago who worked with women in prison. She told the women she had funds which could either get them a good lawyer to review their cases for anything unfair and possibly reduce their time in prison. They had other choices instead, she informed them.. She could bring in a welder to teach them welding so they could have a good skill when they left; or she could get a career dancer or a talented painter to come teach them to dance or to paint. After reflection, 95% of the women prisoners chose the dancer or painter. Why? Each woman said in her own way it would be the first time in her life she could express her feelings, her thoughts, so at last begin to feel herself to be real.
Some individuals all around us live so unseen, unheard, untouched they feel less and less real as time passes. Much or our communication is by Email, text messages, FaceBook postings and phone messages. Less and less is by face-to-face communication as we become more busy. Many have lives more full of abstract relationships than close, caring, knowing relationships. Is your life a little more impersonal than is healthful and happy? Back in my college days a professor told our sociology class of a young woman in Tucson who suddenly died in her apartment. Her doors and windows were locked. Her toddler and little baby could not get out. No one missed the woman enough to make inquiry. No one learned the woman had died until neighbors reported constant crying and screaming by little children for several days and nights straight. The professor said we live in a secondary society, so unlike a primary society where all live in real community and everyone cares about every one else. An example of a primary society he said would be a long dirt road lined with homes and mail boxes all having the same one or two or three last names. All care for everyone's well-being there, we were told. All communicate with each other every day several times and look out for each other. People who line prison cells, mental illness hospitals and urban streets are products of secondary societies. We weren't meant for impersonal living.
Ashley Barker and John Hayes, current mission leaders among poor populations, reflect: “Today, perhaps, more than ever, the world needs Christians who allow themselves to not just be seen and heard, but touched and handled. We live in an age of information, of mass messages, and an era with an uncanny ability to multiply words. Yet an increasing number of the world’s people live lives without real change and without Christ. The world doesn't need more words, not even more of the ‘right’ words; the world needs more words made flesh." Of course the last phrase alludes to the Scripture telling us Jesus is the Word of God made flesh. God making goodness, grace, mercy and love concrete. Visible. Touchable. People around us, as well as you and I, need God's love made concrete every day. We all need to be a cherished participator in the conversation, a weeper with others' hands drying our tears, a strong shoulder for others' burdens, a welcomed dancer in the celebration of the day the Lord has made. Maybe we who are Christians can give up our impersonal ways for Lent, and take up for Lent more personal ways with other children of God.
A Prayer: Make me more like Jesus, dear God. Make me remember how he went home with law-breakers and cheaters, ate with them and blessed them, personally. Make me remember how he touched those with sores and sicknesses, and looked into hearts and understood, and know he still does all this and more. Please make me understand as a follower of Christ I need to live as Christ did while he graced our world. Amen
Pastor Diana
2/13/2012
Orel Hershiser led the LA Dodgers to a World Series victory a few years before Johnny Carson celebrated his 27th anniversary show with a special program. Some of you can remember back to 1988. Immediately after the Dodgers' win, Johnny Carson had invited Orel Hershiser on his program and one of the question he had posed to the pitcher was, "What do you do to calm your nerves between innings?" Apparently Carson had seen Bob Costas of NBC interview Hershiser in the locker room after the victory. He had asked what he was doing between innings when the cameras had caught him with his head back, "eyes closed, almost meditating." Hershiser had replied, "I was singing hymns to myself to relax and keep my adrenalin down, because every time I thought about being ahead, I got too excited to pitch." Now on TV the next night, Hershiser's answer to Carson was the admission he sang songs, so Carson asked Hershiser for a sample.
Carson later said the song had caught him off guard, but then truly moved him. So years later when a grand finale for the 27th Anniversary program of the Tonight Show was needed, Carson selected the segment showing Hershiser singing. What had the celebrated World Series pitcher sung, impacting Carson so much he made it his celebration show's closing? It was the Old 100th Doxology. Hershiser had sung on the Tonight Show, in 1988, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow; praise him all creatures here below; praise him above, ye heavenly host; praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen." Johnny Carson had been rendered speechless that night; the entire audience deathly silent. Then one person had stood and had begun to clap. Next the whole audience had joined in with loud, sustained applause. I imagine applause in heaven. I wonder if there was applause in any TV audience or in heaven again when the song became the finale of the Tonight Show's anniversary program. I wonder what wonders God does with public, courageous praise.
I read a blog by a man who said he was a little boy when he saw that first show of the star pitcher singing. He had been asked in school by some kids if he went to church or synagogue or what, that very day. He had side-stepped the question. When they pressed him, he had said he had no religion. That night he somehow was awake to watch Orel Hershiser singing to the Trinity on The Tonight Show. He saw the silence, then applause. It blew him away, he wrote. He went back to bed and bawled. That moment, he wrote, was his conversion experience. It took a few practice times for him to tell his friends and non-friends at school he was a Christian, but once he began, he found he was powered be a Force beyond himself. He actually testified to them about God's love on which he always relied and found always true.
I wish you that Love, which God is, for Valentine's Day. I wish you praises from deep in your soul, filled with joy to God in Three Persons. Even if it is between innings and you are on the mound, and you are very nervous.
A Prayer: "Praise God from whom all blessings flow; praise him all creatures here below; praise him above, ye heavenly host; praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen."
Pastor Diana
2/6/2012
Lee Strobel, teaching pastor at Saddleback Community Church in Lake Forest, California wrote about his own transformation: "How can I tell you the difference God has made in my life? My daughter Allison was 5 years old when I became a follower of Jesus, and all she had known in those five years was a dad who was profane and angry. I remember I came home one night and kicked a hole in the living room wall just out of anger with life. I am ashamed to think of the times Allison hid in her room to get away from me. Five months after I gave my life to Jesus Christ, that little girl went to my wife and said, 'Mommy, I want God to do for me what he’s done for Daddy.' At age 5! What was she saying? She'd never studied the archeological evidence [regarding the truth of the Bible]. All she knew was her dad used to be this way: hard to live with. But more and more her dad is becoming another way. And if that is what God does to people, then sign her up. At age 5 she gave her life to Jesus. God changed my family. He changed my world. He changed my eternity."
As he gave himself away to Christ Jesus, he must have realized God's unconditional love for him that takes away guilt and self-dislike and anger. He must have been filled with God's unconditional love for his wife and daughter, Allison. He was changed so completely it changed his little child. It even made her want that change.
His testimony tells us we too can be changed in astonishing ways by God's love within. Our relationships can be transformed. Our households can be transformed. I know many people long for that with deep yearning because they tell me so. On the brink of questionable engagements or of separations and divorces, people yearn for new, deep love. Unhappy in their jobs, dissatisfied in their social life, people long to see transformation. Can our workplaces be changed too? Our churches too?
A survey of 8,600 people from congregations in 39 different denominations measured their `love quotient’ as it was termed. The conclusion: growing churches are more loving to each other and to visitors than declining churches. Loving churches attract more people regardless of their theology, denomination or location. Loving, unhampered by politics. - Loving, unbowed to social conditions. - Loving, humanizing of the stereotype, shattering of the stigma. - Loving, not counting the costs. Loving - not with our own imperfect love but God's unearned, perfect Love flowing from our beings to everyone, no matter who; that love transforms and grows churches.
Pastor Lee Strobel reminds us how we acquire, or get a great refill, of that love that will make every aspect in our life surprisingly better. He said, .... "the difference God has made in my life" .... "I became a follower of Jesus" .... "I gave my life to Jesus Christ ....," and I find in his words the way Jesus also prescribed. When we find again and again God's love for us and we love with God's love, we discover that we are not alone; not on our own. We have the power of having submitted the feelings in our hearts and the attitudes of our minds to the counsel of God's Spirit. It changes our world.
A Prayer: Please let us understand your amazing love for us, God, is not earned, because Jesus has earned it for us. Let us understand it cannot be lost nor weakened, because Jesus has secured it forever. Let us understand you ever and ever offer to refill us to overflowing with your holy love. Help us come joyfully receive, again and again. Amen.
Pastor Diana
1/30/2012
With hatred in his eyes and a mocking expression on his face he glared at me, this brand new arrival. He was about 14 years old, and I soon learned he would do anything for negative attention. I had never ever met a student I didn't like, and had never had a student I wasn't soon crazy about, until I met him, about my 4th year at the Arizona School for the Deaf and the Blind, back in my Tucson days.
I was extremely uncomfortable with disliking a student. Pained. Kept awake nights. He learned his hatred for adults somewhere. Could he help it? Why could I not combat it by some loving means? Positive attention didn't work, nor any other technique in my training. Finally a technique pronounced by a Sunday School teacher when I was a very little kid came to mind, as it had several times over the years and had worked. My teacher had said praying for someone you disliked would take all the anger you hold toward that person away and make you like them, and soon even love them.
Happy to remember the advice, I wasted no time beginning to pray regularly for my student. It didn't take a month of earnest prayer for him to change my heart toward him completely. Change so thoroughly, my countenance, actions and communications with him, before the first semester was over, changed him. I became his favorite staffer on campus. His positive feelings soon spread to many of the staff and then to most of his fellow students. He was a new person. Praying for an unlovable person brings love in our own heart and mind for that person. It is a divine love God will make thrive and blossom. A love that will spread in all directions and come back to us many times over.
Why did the advice of a Sunday School teacher stay with me all these decades? Because like many little children I had bigger kids around me who liked to pick on smaller ones, and had one or two actual bullies. Because they caused pain and fear I hated them. The teacher's advice had filled me with amazement. Had given me an epiphany moment. I believed the advice so I prayed and prayed for those I hated, asking God to take care of them, take away their anger, make them happy, put joy and love in their lives, and on and on. Before I knew what was happening I cared about them, and they soon were no longer bullies in my life, so thoroughly did they back off. Made a believer out of me. The same technique has been working ever since. Many have received it from other sources. I've thanked God for the teacher often.
On a Monday isn't it good to be still for a few moments and know God cares about the difficult relationships that may pain us this week? Isn't it good to remember each difficult one is a child of God for whom God cares deeply and to believe God will listen to our prayers for each one's best? Isn't it good to anticipate God removing the difficulty from our minds and hearts as we pray, replacing it with love so comfortable, compassionate and compelling it changes everything? Even us?
A Prayer: Help me remember dear God, as soon as I dislike anyone, to pray for blessings to be outpoured upon that one, and as I pray, let your love fill me. Amen.
Pastor Diana Williams
1/9/2012
She regarded him thoughtfully as she swallowed her tiny spoonful of food. He seemed a little more quiet, perhaps pensive, than his usual with her. Before he placed the next bite carefully in her mouth, she gently asked him if he was feeling troubled. The sudden downward tilt of his head and clouded expression answered, Yes. My sister trained some years ago as a Stephen Minister, training that includes segments on the art of listening, as well as the way to pray with a person for that person. "I can listen, and I can pray, she told him." He fed her that spoonful, since it takes her a quite a few seconds to swallow, and leaned back, regarding his patient. He had told her the week before he assumed she was a Christian because a worn Bible is on her bed tray, and a Christian book she is reading. He had said he was a Christian too, then had sat down beside her and described the joy and glory of Heaven as he envisioned it. She had enjoyed that. They had a comfortable nurse - patient bond. Now he leaned back and as they looked into each others eyes, he told her about his trouble, and she prayed for him. There in her hospice bed, there in her paralyzed body, there in her fulsome ALS sickness, there receiving oxygen yet struggling to breathe .... she served God!
God often chooses to utilize those who seem to have no power, no earthly status, station or standing, to minister to others, conveying God's unconditional love to someone who needs it. "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts. (Zechariah 4:6)"
When I arrived that day I immediately noticed a radiance in my sister's face, the light of happiness, and an unbidden smile. Barely had I crossed the room and sat down when she told me about God using her, HER! What an honor it was. What a joy. She kept her nurse's confidence of course, telling me nothing about his trouble, but she told me about the powerful Spirit of God she felt within her as they sat together and he spoon-fed her. In her fulsome suffering she was filled with God's joy-giving Spirit, so she could serve God.
On a Monday morning I don't know how you feel. I know if you and I don't feel our best or if we do, God can utilize that very state of being, no matter what it is. God can make us very good for others in spite of everything, which God makes very good for us. All by God's Spirit says the Lord.
A Prayer: Thank you for employing us in your service God, making us fit when we don't feel fit, don't look fit, and no one would judge us fit; no one but you. Give us, please, the joy of service, no matter how we are today. Amen.
Pastor Diana