Sunday, July 1, 2012

A TIME OF BLOOMING

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 (continued from last Sunday)

I can still remember as a child of the depression using my imagination to turn cardboard boxes into ships at sea.  Back in the middle of November my wife and I sailed for five days on a luxurious ocean liner.  Was it better than the cardboard box of my youth?  Certainly.  Would I have preferred spending 5 days in a cardboard box rather than on a Caribbean Cruise? 

Hardly. 

But if I could never take a cruise again and not being able to ruined the rest of my remaining days, somehow I think I would be in trouble.  I guess what I am saying, and maybe not terribly well, is that I hope we are able to take another cruise, and if we do, I hope I do so with overwhelming thanksgiving.  That nothing that I can buy becomes more important than what God has freely given me.

Finding and practicing the Christmas spirit is not cutting-edge-technology, but it is clear what Christ would have us do if we would be content.  Get our priorities straight.  Have an open account with all the immeasurable treasures of heaven available.  Recognize the difference between that which is eternal and that which, like my cardboard ship of 70 years ago, is very finite.

When I first came out of Seminary, I held worship services at one small town church and three country churches and each one had so much of community in it. 

It wasn’t a separate activity, religion separated from the secular.  There was an ongoing relationship between the church on the hill and the hardware store on the corner.  It was a simpler time.       And, yes, as we of older years are prone to say, in many ways a better time.  Am I in favor of a theocracy?  Certainly not.  Would I like for the religious community to spill over into how we treat each other in the market place?  Oh, yes! 

And also into the political corridors so there is less corruption.  And into the homes so there is more of God and less of a placid agnosticism? 

.  If we look back at our own personal lives, perhaps we see how we may have over-reacted to something someone did or left undone.  People get mad and stay mad for too long a time over such stupid little things as, “He or she didn’t answer my email.”  Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greater commandment.  And the second is like unto it; love your neighbor as yourself

We are each an exceptional person; God’s person, created in some miracle-time of heavenly choice, all the destiny of days spread out behind and before us.  And if the Christian spirit in us is what it should be, then our outward actions will show it.  It is as simple as that.  Each of us placing the gift of our unquenchable, no-strings-attached love for God and each other front and centermost and tied with a ribbon of commitment. 

When God had Jesus travel from the Gates of Heaven to an earthly home in Bethlehem, He opened up a direct line of communication in a way He never had before.  Born in a lowly barn yet spelling out His majesty from the very beginning.  Being perfect and perfectly God all at the same time.  What a gift.

A nursery visit of expanded proportions, that was what it really was.  And then, in three short decades against a backdrop of eternity, would come a cross, a resurrection, a salvation offer and a King of Kings.  A Savior King.

Helen Keller was deaf, dumb and blind and in her book LIGHT IN MY DARKNESS she wrote, “For nearly six year I had no concepts whatever of nature or mind or death or God.  I literally thought with my body.  Without a single exception, my memories of that time are tactile.  I know I was impelled like an animal to seek food and warmth.  I remember crying, but not the grief that caused the tears; I kicked and because I recall it physically I know I was angry….but there is not one spark of emotion or rational thought in these distinct yet corporeal memories.

I was like an unconscious clod of earth.  There was nothing in me except the instinct to eat and drink and sleep.  My days were a blank without past, present or future, without hope or anticipation, without interest or joy.”

And then came Ann Sullivan.  And the messages she laid out across Heln's palm.  And with this new found intellect came a hungering in her soul for an improvement of the intellect of her soul.
She began to read the Bible and talk with ministers and pray, oh how she prayed.  And something deeper than she could ever imagine began to stir within her. Still deaf and mute and blind, but now for the first time she could really see.  A complete person with absolutely no blindness in her spirit. 

      “I am the light of the world,” said Christ and who better to understand what he meant than Helen Keller.

      God has offered us a challenge for each of us be a light unto the world and not a darkness.  Bringing kindness and patience to the marketplace and being a blessing to our families because we are giving them the best of ourselves.  But unfortunately, there will be family members and friends who will not be a Christian spirit.   .  Rather they will be a curse for how they act.

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