Thanksgiving 13 notes Phil. 4, Dt. 26

I’ve been struggling with the temptation to go around barking that we are ungrateful and should be more grateful. In the end, isn't it like telling someone they have to love someone? Can thanksgiving ever be commanded? Can it be elicited by yet another scolding? Thanksgiving does not come naturally or easily to me, as Goethe said, we remember thanks not given but what of one we owe thanks? I think it a sterling spiritual practice ot read and rewrite psalms of thanksgiving to learn the practice to get a good start on that fundamental aspect of prayer.

Dt. 26 has an element of pushing a sense of gratitude but presents the cause for gratitude in a most matter of fact way. No one is self-made, not only in the very conception and gift of life, of course, but we are social creatures who draw on the gifts of others all of the time.So, the  idea of gift and legacy is a sterling reminder of what we owe each other. It pushes us into considering what we owe the future, or our posterity as the founders of the nation called it.In our day, we have come to see the environment as a gift as is life itself. Instead of a thing to be despoiled, we are inching back to see it as a gift, legacy, and obligation to the future. Jefferson said that the fruit of the earth belong to the living. Notice well, the fruti of the earth, what we use, is our right, but we have no right to despoil the very cause of that abundance. Yes take the fruit, but do not cut down the tree.

Phil. 4  concentrates the mind wonderfully and then expects the heart will follow. If one keeps the mind focused on noble truths on aspirations, it moves toward thankful wonder at life in this good world. At the same time, I wonder if all of the nagging about being grateful and thankful can reach into us. Thankfulness does not come naturally to the human heart. When our hearts constrict it becomes even more difficult to find that sense within. Words such as you should be more appreciative often fall on deaf ears and hard hearts. Still, perhaps the words themselves and the thought behind them may start to seep into a heart, to thaw its frozen core and let it beat with gratitude.  Paul’s advice gives structure to the organization of an open mind and heart toward virtue. The vice of pride inhibits our ability to feel gratitude, to even grasp the idea of a received gift.

In the movie Shenandoah form the Saturday service Jimmy Stewart’s grace is a hilarious, to me, words of grace that most of us consider one time or another, where he cleared and tended and harvested and milled the grain, but he is thankful anyway. In a similar vein, J. Smith it requires great grace to thank God for the grace given to others, when we are convinced that we deserve plenty more. In the Saturday service, I was struggling for finding a look or sound of gratitude, and I found something of what I was seeking in of all places, in Schindler’s list. Recall Schindler was an utter reprobate, but he started to use his con man skills to start to save Jews in his employment as they started to come under his protection. Toward the end, his assistant actually types up a list of people he would try to save that would require that he spend most of his ill-gotten fortune to save, over a thousand people. His assistant puts the typewritten list together, after he realizes that Schindler is paying for each name on it r and says this is an absolute good; this list is life, all around its margins lies the gulf.” Jefferson also said that life belongs to the living.

Westermeyer offers the great reminder that the Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts...nevertheless they set aside a day of thanksgiving. On the other hand, as Aristotle said, gratitude soon grows old.

In the end, thanksgiving emerges from an enlarged spirit that nurtures heart and mind. Thanksgiving and gratitude flow from a life that sees gifts raining down as gifts,already given and gifts yet to be received.

Is. 2 notes

1) Peace is often abstract. Consider ways of being specific and concrete.
2) Bill Veith, a retired pastor, often speaks of learning and teaching peace instead of waging war methods. With what are you familiar?
3) Specifically, list some ways swords are turned in plowhares, tools of peace.
4) When has peace surprised you, as in the fall of the Soviet Union?
5) Does one require inner peace to be a peacemaker?
6) Why is this alos in the book of Micah 4 so closely?
7_Why is it easier for churches to issue political position papers instead of waging peace within houses of worship or within a denomination?

Week of Nov. 24 devotional points

Sunday-Again instead of a psalm we have the psalm like prayer of Zechariah in Lk. 1:68-79. It speaks of the tender mercies of God. where do you seek and find those? It speaks of the paths of peace. where do you seek and find those? It speaks of light for those within the shadow of death> Where do you seek and find that? Already the roads are crowded wiht shoppers. Are any of the virtues of this prayer in those bags?

Monday-”That your glory rises in the morning sun/and sparkles off flowing waters,

that the glory of the everlasting world/shines in this world/growing from the ground

and issuing forth in every creature,/that glory can be handled, seen and known/ in the matter of earth and human relationship/and in the most ordinary matters of daily life,

assure us again this day, O God,/assure us again this day.” John P. Newell

Tuesday-In preparing for a Holy spirit conference, I was assigned Moltmann. He writes in  Spirit of Life (178) “ before the earth dies, we will die of apathy...the spirit sanctifies life, with the Creator’s passion for life and wrath against the forces of destruction. The inbtegrity of creation and rebirth to life become intermingled in the Spirit of life.”

Wednesday-The soul is strengthened to all manner of good works by the fire of the Holy Spirit, but it is weakened by the cold of indifference and neglect. -Hildegard, Book of Divine Works-Where are we indifferent to the Spirit ? When and how do we neglect the matters of the soul?

Thursday-"Time is what we want most, but what, alas! we use worst; and for which God will most strictly reckon with us, when Time shall be no more."William Penn, from the preface to Fruits of Solitude, 1693. This day how can one be grateful for the gift of time? How are you spending time well or not well this day?

Friday-From Anne Lamott “You're living as if you may have a year or so to live, and want to make the most of it, savor and be filled, by spending time with those you love most, much of it outdoors in the beauty of our Mother? Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, "The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil." So are you out there, shaking your head with amazement, smiling about the earth's wild sweet beauty? That is the bigger picture. That is the meaning: wonder, presence, immediacy, being HERE. Like my teenage friend Mason says in Stitches, "I had brain cancer. I was in a coma. Then I was HERE again." Are you here? That's the big picture.

Saturday-Even more striking is how the scarcity assumption can reach beyond our material needs. We sometimes act as if non-material goods—like attention, care, or love—were in scarce supply. If you get more than your "fair share" then I get less than I "deserve." Things like these are available in abundance within us and between us, but how easily we forget! Sadly, the scarcity assumption leads to all kinds of things that kill the spirit—anxiety, resentment, hoarding, overwork, competition, and an inability to enjoying life.

Christ the King sunday sermon notes from all four readings

I’ve gotten teased that we had to move the installation date to Christ the King sunday for the installation service as pastor here. The underlying theme is that I am confusing myself with a royal installation, or as ruth calls it, a coronation. Nothing can be further from my mind, as I see the power in the pastorate as extremely limited.At ti s best and deepst, it is a wya of ocming to grips with or lives from different angles to help us glimpse hte hand of god in its often opaque ways.

We come to the close of the church year and mark Christ the king. for reformed Christians this marks one of the marks of being a messiah/anointed one as priests, prophets, and kings were anointed.Our more radical evangelical family members speak of many people and messages as being anointed.

Our readings go all over the map here, but I am going to foucs on how they deal with power.To speak of kingship in a country that broke away from royalty is problematic to begin with, but we all understand the use and abuse of power, certainly.When we feel dependent or weak, we look toward power to help us out. when we are feeling powerful, we resent power over us. A good way to look at a christian aspect of power is not power over against, but empowering, power with others, one that is more democratic and shared, one that vitiates hierarchy.

At the cosmic level we have the treat of reading the opening part of Colossians.the same Jesus who grew up and taught and healed and died a tragic young death has anotehr side. the very life of god  dwells with him, as John said the very plan, the very wisdom, of God in a human being is alos the very lynchpin of the universe. Put differently, with one set of eyes, Jeuss died a terrible, lonely, useless death for no good reason. With another set of eyes, the eys of a biblically tutored imagination, a faith drenched in Scripture, we see something much more than meets the eye.

A the level of brute power we once again hear of the end of the life of Jesus in the trial that would seal his fate.It is a culmination of the turning his back on power that we first realize at the tempation scene on the firs tsunday of Lent. If jesus will use power over others, he will not be able to face the sacrifice of his life for others. Jesus cedes power to the authorities. In so doing, jesus sets the stage for relinquishing power as an act that permits the gift of empowering others.

Jeremiah looks at the sorry history of the anointed kings of israel and Judah. Out of apparent desperation God will take the reins of power for a while and then appoint a zedekiah, a righteous king who will look toward the public interest of justice.Zechariah picks up on a theme toward the end of the great prayer.In the birth of a child, he sees a movmeent toward rescue, and salvation of rthe prupose of serving God and hearing of forgiveness. I don;t hear a political vision here, but a religious one. Read the very end again.It is a vision of what some call soft power, and we have seen the brittle nature of the hard steel of weaponry and coercion year after year.

In endings we may find new beginnings. Next week we begin the cycle of readings again with the first and second advents of Jesus Christ.As the church years closes, we do well to ask ourselves where does Christ wish us to ocntinue to follow as citizens of his commonwealth here

Installation Notes on being a pastor

I wanted to use the time in an installation service ot review some of the points of ministyr in my eyes.

preach-I do not find the bible easy reading. I do find it a receding horizon where more can be discovered wihtin its precious pages. further, it is a door into one’s own self and one’s communities.I work hard at it, for it is my contention that the people deserve sustained attention to what emerges fromt he passages in reflection and prayer.It is saying out loud the whispers we hear from God through the bible and our lives.

teach-we have always, always prided ourselves as a thinking faith as Presbyterians. In Calvin’s view, once a human life and community find a place with god we constantly are involved in a school for christianity across the board to learn of how to see and live life through a Christian lens.-these gowns are less symbols of   being clergy but a demonstrations of the ancient name that we have restored, the teaching elder.what we are to do is expose the height and depth and length and breadth of the faith.Learning to listen is a vital habit, for others teach all of the time.

pastoral care/spiritual care-finding god in the everyday-finding god’s hand in the everyday

every person’s life , every person’s body every person;s heart is a gateway to the osul, to the realm beyond.Like it or not, clergy do represent the care and indwelling presence of god in good times such as a wedding and in the hard and difficult moments of anxiety in a hospital room or grief.We invoke the presence  of the eternal one, the holy one into moments not seen as holy. Oh that we could magically heal, and sometimes we do see it. Most of the time, we help eachother see that God is with us, has not forsaken/abandoned us, but works iwth us and through us and even suffers with us in our trials.   It is both keeping a respectful distance from experience sof others but offering the gift, one prayers, of compassion and even empathy in our often stormy troubled lives.

humility is not a virtue that we commonly associate with clergy.. Humility derives its anem from the soil; at its best, it means that we seek be be grounded in normal life, rooted in the bible. Humility also picks up the fundamental equality of being made in the image and likeness of God, Part of the marvel of vocation is that we bring skills sets and severe limitations to any place where are to bloom where we are planted.

patience is not a virtue that comes easily to me. things take time in the church. Since I am most definitely not a CEO of a business, all the tools given  us are oriented toward patience, incremental steps in process as well as product. I don;t know if many of pastoral activity can be well-measured. So the only direct power a pastor has in in sleecting bible readings and the hymns, and both of those here are shared iwht the common lectionary and with our music people.

install like a carpet? less about the individual and more about the position where they are being placed. Notice the passive construction there. Just as we are called to  a vocation, we are placed/installed to a position. Bring life, the spirit of life, to what we do. It is an installation to having a place in this particular place and time to work a tthe timeless work of god

OT Notes for Is. 65:17-25

1) This is the great biblical antidote to the notion that apocalyptic material is only about destruction and chaos.I am so tired of moderate Christians ceding the field to the right wing on this matter. in part, our inattention to it has created a vacuum.

2) Consider looking at the series of painting on the peaceable kingdom by the Quaker Kicks.

3) New heaven and new earth may fly in the face of scientific projections about the fate of the universe. this may be a good time to look at science and faith as mutually exclusive, or in conflict, or as complements to one another.

4) I’ve been doing work on the Holy spirit. What would the role of the spirit be in new creation?

5) Notice that the new heavens create a forgetting of the former things. What constitutes the former things?

6 Is the longesvity and security of jerusalem  an insufficient view of such an fundamental promise?

7) How does v. 14 affect your view of prayer?

8) the last word seems to be a priestly revulsion against violence. is it the real last enemy?

Devotional Pts. for Week of Nov. 10

Nov. 10-Sunday-Ps 145 is part of the praise psalms that close the psalter’s arrangement of songs to God. Here, we receive the image of God as king. the image is one of power, support,  and justice combined. Generosity to all, to all, living things is highlighted in v. 16, as god’s open hand offers  satisfaction to all.Where have you sensed God’s open hand in your life? where would you like to perceive it more fully?

Monday-I am scheduled for blood work soon. the idea is that it identifies various indicators of potential trouble in the body. What would similar indicators look like for spiritual health, do you think? To me some easy ones would include weekly worship, comfortable level of giving to the church and other causes, and satisfaction with prayer life as a start. i was struck by the high level of demands some folks place on an adequate spiritual life. I guess I lean to the soft level of expectation as Jesus said a small amount of faith is plenty, but Jesus still seeks growth from whatever level we may find ourselves.

Tuesday-We had a meeting last week that looked at three views of the reformed wing of the faith, the American conversionist, the ecumenical, and the rational one. Perhaps many of us are mixtures of all three, where we have adopted American models of what it means to be religious, with a good bit of open-textured faith, and some concern for doctrine thoughtfully and carefully expressed.

Wednesday-I was so glad that some folks looked for Carrie Newcomer lyric sheets for some of her songs. Here’s some from Geodes, that she performed at church recently: “All these things that we call familiar,/Are just miracles clothed in the common place./You’ll see it if you try in the next stranger's eyes,/God walks around in muddy boots,/Sometimes rags and that's the truth.

You can't always tell, but sometimes you just know.”

Thursday-Haggai at first hits the people for not attending to the temple. When it is reconstructed, they “look at it as nothing.” Expectations color the way we perceive almost anything. Sometimes we let the past collor our view of the present too much. sometimes we let the dreams of a brighter future inhibit our enjoyment of today. We judge what happens by the set of expectations we bring to a situation or an event. it seems that we slide more easily to negative evaluations than positive appreciation.

Friday-It hit me that like many males, I look  for a retreat, some solace from the world, in a relationship. so, I resist feeling pressure and expectations in one. I am wondering how much of that seeps into my views of spirituality.the old line was God comforts the afflicted, but god afflicts the comfortable. i yearn for the comfort but I often resist the challenge.

Saturday-We are at a table for trivia night at Knights of Columbus, Godfrey, I to raise funds for research to fight juvenile diabetes.I like to win at it, but I seem to be fairly healthy about it and toss off not knowing whole categories with some ease.It is a good example of something utterly trivial being used toward a noble cause. It is a low pressure way for people to gather around

Sermon Notes Haggai 2, Lk. 20 Expectations, worship, and heaven

We ;love in a culture of frenzy, complaint, and inflated expectations. We complain of the frenzy we ourselves create and to which we acquiesce. In response, we revert to the imagined glory days of a missed past, and some of us look to the future as a pole star of hope.We continue a brief look at some material from the book of the 12, the minor prophets.The people have straggled back home from exile, but the great symbol of the faith the temple was in ruins. It took a while, but rebuild they would. Now they were disappointed. Some hoped for better, and a few remembered its former glory, but I rather suspect that it was burnished by memory.

end times already and not yet, not yet in heaven not yet in the new age of transformation

With Haggai since we do not know the future we work toward it anyway even heaven may be an interim solution haggai deals with disappointment in the present vis a vis the past and the future. In the first chapter the people are told that they have not paid attention to the temple while they were rebuilding, so things have not gone well. So they rebuild a temple, but instead of applauding their results and hard work, it appears to them as nothing. their expectations are disappointed. I’ve been reading the theologian Jurgen Moltmann again, he speaks a good deal about seeing

god’s presence as a key to grasping the faith’s arc through time.The opposite of absence is presence of course. Was god absent with the temple destroyed,? No. Would god be present in the new temple even if it is not as opulent as the one remembered that was destroyed? Yes.

Worship is a gateway to the relam of heaven, a portal where earth and heaven connect, a thin place as celtic spirituality likes to say.For me heaven is being in the presence of god. Like anyone I like to speculate on what it iwill be like, but the hints are few and visionary.Worship is a mindful, attentive movement into the presence of god. God really does not ask all that much in terms of duties, to come to chruch once a week, as the chruch has long interpreted the comman do to keep holy the sabbath.

Jesus deals with the desire to make literal and physical the resurrected bodies of heaven against religious opponents who are laughing at the idea of it as opposed to seeing the older biblical material as dispositive: dead is dead. Maybe we have imported the idea that we would have wings like angels due to the analogy jesus makes in this passage. I don;t think he means that we will look like angels in heaven but he was making a point tha tour phsyical bodies and anture will be transformed.

Jesus was in the group that believed in an afterlife in jewish circles.His questioners are making fun of the notion, so thyte ask their trick question about being married in heaven. Folks who have been widowed and married again may well wonder the same thing. He posits a different type of existence. Based on the resurrection, heaven will have our physical lives continue but in a new key, a new dimension: recognizable as ourselves but transformed.

What hints of heaven do we get in worship? (see lathrop and Saliers) Look at popular culture> MCC In My Heaven (see Ashes and roses Carrie gathering of Spirits Heaven Can wait--What Dreams May Come-Brandy Clark What will keep me Out of heaven)

Maybe heaven will be the one place our expectations iwll not be disappointed.

expectations column nov 8

When I was a child, I heard someone say that a  pessimist keeps expectations low, so they are never disappointed. I could not grasp why people then said it was not good to be a pessimist.Part of the point against it is a magical sense that we draw negative experiences to us like a magnet that attracts such experiences.  Part of it may be the fear of the self-fulfilling prophecy, so pessimistic attitudes will help create or set up a condition for failure or disappointment.

Our Old Testament reading for Sunday deals with expectations. At First Presbyterian, we follow a selection of common readings from the bible on Sundays called the Revised Common Lectionary. One of the reasons I like it is that we read things often forgotten in Scripture. for instance, this Sunday we read from the small collection of Haggai, after the destruction of the temple and the return of some of the exiles and life under Persian domination.   

One of the marks of maturity could be in managing expectations. Set them too high or too low, and they can cause real problems. Set them too low and we settle for the barest level of performance. Some evidenc eindicates that the low levels of educational expectations we hold for both competence or mastery of subject matter of what President bush called ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations” for minority students does have an impact on achievement.

Why do we get disappointed after achieving something? It seems that our expectations are higher than we thought. Why do we get disappointed in relationships at times. We expect more out of the partner, or more out of the relationship itself than it may be possible for a limited human being, or two human beings to offer.Take initiative and one can be seen as pushy or controlling. Take a more  mutual approach and one is seen as too passive or distant. Indeed, the series of relationship books by lerner describe relationships as a dance of distance and closeness that start to form the expectations within a relationship. the trouble comes when the steps get out of whack and pursuit becomes too aggressive or distance becomes a cut-off.

I wonder if we rise to the level of expectations if those are out of reach? Sometimes not, as the story of the musical Annie goes, most folks thought the high notes were too much for young singers, but now many young singers can hit the note required. when an athletic mark, such as the four minute mile falls, then a series of folks seem to break the old barrier  in due course.

We accord expectations too much power. In the stock market, we have raised expectations to a new form of gambling. a stock price goes up or down depending if its best guess about quarterly reports get met or not. We play a similar game in primary elections for president, where candidates try to spin the election results by comparing  the final vote to their predicted vote before hand. if a popular candidate wins but does less well than predicted, they lose stature, and a losing candidate may gain stature if they exceed modest expectations.

As I reflect on expectations, I suppose I fear that they prevent us from appreciating or enjoying a moment for itself. It seems that expectation becomes a pretext for being judgmental.Surely god has reasonable expectations about our sorry histories and limited capacities. I do not see God as a blind optimist, but God’s vision is one of hope, a serene confidence that we can overcome our weakness and live into the aspirations god holds for us all to live out our creation in God’s image and likeness.

sermon notes nov 3 Hab.1,2 Lk.19

For our dorm floor reunion, a friend and I visited the newseum and relived our childhood experience of watching the wall to wall coverage of the aftermath of those dark days of November almost 50 years ago. He memorably replied ot a question, “life is unfair.”  Granted, he had a patrician sang froid about him, but his young life knew terrible loss and a year or so  after this he would lose an infant child and himself be killed befor e combing grey hari, as the Irish say.It does not take a child long to say, it’s not fair. We run political campaigns on notions of fairness. we come to church, in part, to seek some fairness in life, to wonder why it is not fair. Two stories highlight the issue of justice this morning.

In all likelihood Zacchaeus is  a cheat but weasels his way into the kingdom in the eyes of others. It is possible I suppose that he does fully repent. I would agree tha the is delighte dot to be noticed by Jesus and that he gets to invite him to be his guest when the other onlookers would spurn such a request. In our time we are focused on justice for the poor, and that is right and Biblical. here, jesus shows special solicitude for a rich man who is doing the work of the roman overlords.Perhaps Z is a role model for us all. Instead of the abject misery of the tax collector in the story at prayer, this guy may well respond well because he is notice and accepted by Jesus.Instead of contrition, that may be what possibly turns him to a new leaf.He promises to do more than the law requires, so he is shown now to be in the same thought world as the Pharisee who goes over and beyond the basic religious requirements.Jesus acting so to Zacchaeus both answers and creates some problems of perceived fairness. I love tha tthe little guy gets front and center. We still discriminate against the small in all sorts of ways, and one of the defense mechanisms would be to compensate socially. Still, it hurts the elder brother, the Pharisee, in us when we see someone who does not appear ot be ethically deserving get such attention from Jesus.

One of the reasons I am working  on a collection of essays on the minor prophets/book of the 12 is its gems for contemporary questions in life. Few books look so boldly at the issue of the unfairness of life and God’s response to it.Habakkuk wonders why the people wait so long for deliverance while the evil prosper, indeed prosper over them. Its start is the very foundation of lament, how long. When we are at the end of our rope, we cry out how long, or maybe mumble it in the quiet recesses of the heart. One way we can perhaps avoid becoming chronic complainers to each other is to place those complaints in the envelope of prayer and send them to God.

Not long ago we spoke of making unanswered prayers part of our conversations with God. here habakkuk  has a rare printed prayer dialogue with God. the words go out but god responds here.Habakuk cries out that the punishment with israel may well be deserved, but God has picked a poor instrument to deliver it. why would frail israel have to see pagan Babylon be used as God’s tool: it is not fair.” Part of me thinks that all will be made clearer when we get to heaven, and our perspective will be changed and broadened. I crave a justice and understanding that I realize I will fail to see here on earth. the image of a future of justice and peace gives a goal to strive for in this life. Emboldened by that vision of a future coming to life, we work toward it now, in the sense that we are on the right side of history, of god’s way for the world.

Devotional Pts for Week ofNov.3

Sunday-Ps.119-137-144 is our selection for today. Agian this hymn to god’s instruction , torah, is a very long piece. I assume it is included to link with Zacchaeus, “ I am small and despised, but I do not forget your precepts.” Following the ways of god can make us appear small and even despised at times.when have you felt small? What gives you an lenalrged sense of self? Does it connect to god?

Monday-to another person, or to your sense of divine Presence. Now, pause... in the silence: "Try to remember what you already know." What do you already know about patterns of how the Spirit has worked in your life in the past? What has helped you through previous struggles? What spiritual practices help you get in touch with your best Self? Make some notes in your journal or notebook.

Tuesday- "One of the great functions of art is to help us imagine what it is like to be not ourselves, what it is like to be someone or something else, what it is like to live in another skin, what it is like to live in another body, and in that sense to surpass ourselves, to go out beyond ourselves." Adrienne Rich, quoted by Mary Chapin Carpenter

Wednesday-Carrie Newcomer-”what makes life most marvelous and deeply satisfying happens in the small moments and infuses our ordinary days.” She does a workshop here at 2PM that explores more deeply this important insight in matter spiritual. we spend so much time looking for mountaintop experiences that w elose the depth and power of the everyday. What small moment has been important to you of late? What small moment has had an important impact on you through the years?

Thursday-Anne Lamott writes: "The third great prayer, Wow, is often offered with a gasp, a sharp intake of breath, when we can't think of another way to capture the sight of shocking beauty or destruction, of a sudden unbidden insight or an unexpected flash of grace. 'Wow' means we are not dulled to wonder.... 'Wow' is about having one's mind blown by the mesmerizing or the miraculous: the veins in a leaf, birdsong, volcanoes." .

Friday-Like a lot of people, i have struggles with money offerings for the church. I was a member of congregations for a long time, so i do know both sides of the church a bit. I know I reject church fundraising that use the tithe as a model and prefer Paul’s injunctions much more.I do know I resist the current schemes to only give to programs one likes, so as to avoid the organizational responsibilities inherent in any organization, including building maintenance.Building an organization is a testament to its future. I do not get where we got it into our heads that we have to agree with everything it does, but that we stand behind its presence.

Saturday-I make a habit of trying to have quotes for our reflective service, but we are not having it this Saturday due to a wedding and a concert. anyway, here’s one “be faithful in small things for therein your strength lies” (Mother Theresa) Bigness brings problems of its own of course. Do you think being faithful in small things is an element of character, similar to do things anonymously or unseen? I mean more than from a tiny acorn comes a mighty oak but that the small has intrinsic worth and fits our limited fallible nature better than grand schemes. How does this apply to spiritual life?

Haggai for OT of Nov 10

This points to  time, memory, and expectation. I went to a dorm reunion and was struck by thoughts of would have, could have, should have.

Bruce Springsteen sings of Glory Days and surely that was the tune behind the memories of the temple.

On the other hand, their expectations led them to be disappointed.We hear of polls allowing expectation games to be played.


Why were they not more proud of their achievement in a fairly short time in a devastated land?

Note how hard it must have been to mark time under a foreign ruler's regime.

Note how the presence of God is stressed. Was God absent when the temple was gone? Would God be present in this new, apparently inferior temple?

Notice church and state are both addressed. Do you think that material from Joshua on taking heart is b eing applied here to Joshua of the high priesthood?

I love that instead of an earthquake destroying things this shaking seems to be a shakedown of other nations for plunder, or offerings. It would feel good to hear of this when your trasure was pouring out to Persia, no?