(New thoughts are added each Sun, Tues and Thurs)
Would you want to clone yourself? Apart from the amoral aspects of such a question, would the creating of two of you make the world twice as better or twice as worse. Perhaps it would solve the problem of loving your neighbor as yourself because then your neighbor would be yourself.
But your real neighbor, your real church family member does do things differently, doesn’t he? She? Is all wrapped up in being the only self they’ve ever known. And you do not always shout out, “Viva la difference.” No, too often you want to change them; how they talk, how they act, even how they think. You want them to be perfect? Well, no not that. But certainly more like you.
This isn’t a description of you? Good. We are all blessed by the fact.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. 1 John 4:11
Have you visited my ONE A DAY YOUR SPIRITUAL VITAMINS site. Go to Google and where it says “Google Search” type in “Neil Spiritual Vitamins” or type in at the URL site oneadayyourspiritualvitamins.blogspot.com/
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
IN THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS
Look at the cross and consider the reason He is there. How it is always easier to get people to put a man on a cross than to take him down.
How, in all of time, we have chastised, condemned, castigated, and gossiped much easier than we have shown compassion, given understanding, sought truth or forgiven. Men sign treaties with less problem than they forget wars.
Indeed, after the Civil War, when the grass had long since grown green on the battlefields, men still hated as if the war were only yesterday. I was born in 1928; I knew a few such remaining folk personally. Who in the 1930’s and even in the early 1940’s were still fighting the Civil War. Old men and women who nursed their hate because they didn’t want to let it die.
Vengeance, thy name is me is the motto of far too many.
“I can’t forget. I won’t forgive.” “Don’t put me in the same group with her.” “We’ve got to move to a new neighborhood. I can’t live next to them.” “I can’t work in the same place with him.” “She, or he, drives me crazy.”
And it but emphasizes how often the cross stands for everything that man too often is not.
How it cries out: FORGIVENESS for that rebel man, REDEMPTION for his soul, STRENGTH for his weaknesses, SALVATION despite his sins.
Therefore with a prayer that is a shout loud enough to make your soul rumble. Let its shadow fall across your life each day. Let its message roam through your heart. Carry the cross to work with you tomorrow. Place it above the prices you set, the sales pitch you give, the promises you make.
Put it in the living room of your heart and home.
Have you visited my ONE A DAY YOUR SPIRITUAL VITAMINS site. Go to Google and where it says “Google Search” type in “Neil Spiritual Vitamins”
How, in all of time, we have chastised, condemned, castigated, and gossiped much easier than we have shown compassion, given understanding, sought truth or forgiven. Men sign treaties with less problem than they forget wars.
Indeed, after the Civil War, when the grass had long since grown green on the battlefields, men still hated as if the war were only yesterday. I was born in 1928; I knew a few such remaining folk personally. Who in the 1930’s and even in the early 1940’s were still fighting the Civil War. Old men and women who nursed their hate because they didn’t want to let it die.
Vengeance, thy name is me is the motto of far too many.
“I can’t forget. I won’t forgive.” “Don’t put me in the same group with her.” “We’ve got to move to a new neighborhood. I can’t live next to them.” “I can’t work in the same place with him.” “She, or he, drives me crazy.”
And it but emphasizes how often the cross stands for everything that man too often is not.
How it cries out: FORGIVENESS for that rebel man, REDEMPTION for his soul, STRENGTH for his weaknesses, SALVATION despite his sins.
Therefore with a prayer that is a shout loud enough to make your soul rumble. Let its shadow fall across your life each day. Let its message roam through your heart. Carry the cross to work with you tomorrow. Place it above the prices you set, the sales pitch you give, the promises you make.
Put it in the living room of your heart and home.
Have you visited my ONE A DAY YOUR SPIRITUAL VITAMINS site. Go to Google and where it says “Google Search” type in “Neil Spiritual Vitamins”
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
MEET, GREET AND SEAT YOUR ANXIETY
If you were sitting in the county jail with the usual kind of individuals who people such places, would you be anxious or at ease? If it looked as if you might soon be walking down execution row, how do you think you would handle it? To top it all off, suppose you hadn’t been feeling very good. Indeed, were pretty sick and worried about maybe getting sicker.
Well, meet the Apostle Paul, because these were his problems. Things had gone from bad to worse and weren’t getting any better. So what did he do? Well, he did not begin to beat his head against his jail bars in frustration. He did not throw a hissy fit. He just kept repeating over and over and over again, “Rejoice!”
And then sat down and began to write to his largely Gentile congregation in Phillippi a letter filled with exuberant optimism. Unbelievably, not with fear and frustration oozing out of every sentence, but rather with a host of whoopee admonitions: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Paul was the Norman Vincent Peale of 20 centuries ago.
Worry about nothing - pray about everything, he admonishes. Read the entire book of Phillippians and it really begins to get down to the nitty-gritty. A quitter never wins. A winner never quits. Hang in there.
Jesus doesn’t hold back. “Watch out,” He says, “I’m going to make you a better, stronger edition than you would ever be without me.”
Perfect? Don’t hold your breath, but better, stronger, definitely. When we take Him at His word and seek a relationship, He offers a joy that is more than toy-joy, rather a lasting joy.
Like everyone else, Christians have problems, but not like everyone else, they have Christ and there is the magnificent difference. Simple in the saying. Difficult in the doing.
It is all there in the book of Phillipians. Some pretty good life lessons.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding,will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Phillipians 4:6-7
Have you visited my ONE A DAY YOUR SPIRITUAL VITAMINS site. Go to Google and where it says “Google Search” type in “Neil Spiritual Vitamins”
Well, meet the Apostle Paul, because these were his problems. Things had gone from bad to worse and weren’t getting any better. So what did he do? Well, he did not begin to beat his head against his jail bars in frustration. He did not throw a hissy fit. He just kept repeating over and over and over again, “Rejoice!”
And then sat down and began to write to his largely Gentile congregation in Phillippi a letter filled with exuberant optimism. Unbelievably, not with fear and frustration oozing out of every sentence, but rather with a host of whoopee admonitions: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Paul was the Norman Vincent Peale of 20 centuries ago.
Worry about nothing - pray about everything, he admonishes. Read the entire book of Phillippians and it really begins to get down to the nitty-gritty. A quitter never wins. A winner never quits. Hang in there.
Jesus doesn’t hold back. “Watch out,” He says, “I’m going to make you a better, stronger edition than you would ever be without me.”
Perfect? Don’t hold your breath, but better, stronger, definitely. When we take Him at His word and seek a relationship, He offers a joy that is more than toy-joy, rather a lasting joy.
Like everyone else, Christians have problems, but not like everyone else, they have Christ and there is the magnificent difference. Simple in the saying. Difficult in the doing.
It is all there in the book of Phillipians. Some pretty good life lessons.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding,will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Phillipians 4:6-7
Have you visited my ONE A DAY YOUR SPIRITUAL VITAMINS site. Go to Google and where it says “Google Search” type in “Neil Spiritual Vitamins”
Sunday, August 23, 2009
THE NOAH SYNDROME
Many years ago at a Bible study, one in our group gave me a beautiful quote, “God loves us as we are, but He loves us too much to want us to stay that way.”
It is why I have a framed copy of the 13th chapter of First Corinthians hanging in my office. It beckons my memory to focus on how I should regulate my life by love and nothing less.
It is why I constantly pray for a flood to come, and stay, at all the Christian churches across our land. All those church members gathering together on Sunday morning wiping their minds clean, and then on that sterile slate of their cerebral pulsing w8ith the words, MY GOAL IS THAT FOR THE NEXT 40 DAYS I WILL FLOOD MY VERY BEING WITH LOVE.
Not a little gasp of empathy here and there. Not a little poof of patience somewhere else, but an all out effort to live up to the greatest of expectations. And then, continue the same for much longer than 40 days and 40 nights
“…not (just) in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth.” That’s the way 1 John 3:18 puts it.
One day a man excusing his ANGRY actions said to me, “When I get mad, it’s over in 30 seconds.”
I replied, “So is an atomic bomb, but look at the damage it does.”
So then, are you willing for the next 40 days to practice damage control? Flood your being with love? Complete, and uncompromising? Nothing negative poking its peaks above the surface of your sea of overflowing love? Looking out and seeing nothing but an ocean of compassionate concern? Aboard your ark named Conscience sailing serenely, practicing in a new way an old admonition? Of course, it will be difficult to keep some negatives from stirring but just keep pushing them back down.
And what shall we name this all out attempt? Why not THE NOAH SYNDROME.
Have you visited my ONE A DAY YOUR SPIRITUAL VITAMINS site. Go to Google and where it says “Google Search” type in “Neil Spiritual Vitamins”
It is why I have a framed copy of the 13th chapter of First Corinthians hanging in my office. It beckons my memory to focus on how I should regulate my life by love and nothing less.
It is why I constantly pray for a flood to come, and stay, at all the Christian churches across our land. All those church members gathering together on Sunday morning wiping their minds clean, and then on that sterile slate of their cerebral pulsing w8ith the words, MY GOAL IS THAT FOR THE NEXT 40 DAYS I WILL FLOOD MY VERY BEING WITH LOVE.
Not a little gasp of empathy here and there. Not a little poof of patience somewhere else, but an all out effort to live up to the greatest of expectations. And then, continue the same for much longer than 40 days and 40 nights
“…not (just) in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth.” That’s the way 1 John 3:18 puts it.
One day a man excusing his ANGRY actions said to me, “When I get mad, it’s over in 30 seconds.”
I replied, “So is an atomic bomb, but look at the damage it does.”
So then, are you willing for the next 40 days to practice damage control? Flood your being with love? Complete, and uncompromising? Nothing negative poking its peaks above the surface of your sea of overflowing love? Looking out and seeing nothing but an ocean of compassionate concern? Aboard your ark named Conscience sailing serenely, practicing in a new way an old admonition? Of course, it will be difficult to keep some negatives from stirring but just keep pushing them back down.
And what shall we name this all out attempt? Why not THE NOAH SYNDROME.
Have you visited my ONE A DAY YOUR SPIRITUAL VITAMINS site. Go to Google and where it says “Google Search” type in “Neil Spiritual Vitamins”
Thursday, August 20, 2009
HIS NAME WAS GOD. HIS NAME WAS MAN.
Dung and deity. Smelly shepherds and a Savior. The Son of God not delivered on earth’s doorway in some heavenly chariot but rather, like you and I, from a mother’s womb. The Son of man and the Son of God all bound up in one magnificent moment.
Now it goes without saying that we Christians are comfortable with heavenly angels announcing His birth, and Wisemen coming from afar. But the carpenter Jesus plying his trade just off the main road to Jerusalem in a little town called Nazareth, this we downplay. It is not that we do not mention His humanity, but we do go to great lengths to emphasize His divinity and downgrade His earthly side. Push into the background the fact that He was muscle, bone and sinew, as well as God. And that when He died upon the cross, He bled real blood and His nerves screamed like yours and mine would scream. And when He died, it was as horrible a death as every crucifixion was meant to be.
But when we do this, allow ourselves to down play His own description of Himself, the Son of Man, we do God a great disservice. And we do ourselves a great disservice. And worst of all, we miss the point that Jesus understands us because He was like us. We must not run away from this fact, the ultimate reality of who this Jesus was. That He was God...emphasis on God, and that He was man...emphasis on man. For, indeed, He was both. Otherwise, it is all meaningless. If He did not truly suffer, then the cross is pointless. If He did not truly die as men do and then rise from the dead, our talk of the tomb and resurrection is as nothing. If He did not feel the pain of rejection and become depressed by it, as do we when we are rejected, then what is it all about?
We must remember He came from heavenly highways to the dusty roads of Bethlehem. From a place of love and light to be tempted by the king of darkness. Straight from a place of no sin to a place where sin daily wears a crown.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. " John 1:1-7
Now it goes without saying that we Christians are comfortable with heavenly angels announcing His birth, and Wisemen coming from afar. But the carpenter Jesus plying his trade just off the main road to Jerusalem in a little town called Nazareth, this we downplay. It is not that we do not mention His humanity, but we do go to great lengths to emphasize His divinity and downgrade His earthly side. Push into the background the fact that He was muscle, bone and sinew, as well as God. And that when He died upon the cross, He bled real blood and His nerves screamed like yours and mine would scream. And when He died, it was as horrible a death as every crucifixion was meant to be.
But when we do this, allow ourselves to down play His own description of Himself, the Son of Man, we do God a great disservice. And we do ourselves a great disservice. And worst of all, we miss the point that Jesus understands us because He was like us. We must not run away from this fact, the ultimate reality of who this Jesus was. That He was God...emphasis on God, and that He was man...emphasis on man. For, indeed, He was both. Otherwise, it is all meaningless. If He did not truly suffer, then the cross is pointless. If He did not truly die as men do and then rise from the dead, our talk of the tomb and resurrection is as nothing. If He did not feel the pain of rejection and become depressed by it, as do we when we are rejected, then what is it all about?
We must remember He came from heavenly highways to the dusty roads of Bethlehem. From a place of love and light to be tempted by the king of darkness. Straight from a place of no sin to a place where sin daily wears a crown.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. " John 1:1-7
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
THE HANDS OF CHRIST
A long time ago He lived, your Christ and mine. What were His hands like? The Bible does not give answers to such a question, but let your imagination give you some answers.
The hands of Christ? Certainly they were not those of a bully, administering a beating to someone weak and defenseless.
The hands of a thief? Not our giving, forgiving, loving Jesus.
The hands of a carpenter making sure a job was always finished in proper fashion and on time? I have no doubt.
Hands helping Him to climb a mountain, there to be tempted. Hands healing the sick and maimed. Hands reaching out with compassion toward a woman of adultery. In an upper room, His hands washing the feet of the Disciples and then gently holding the bread as He said to them, “This is my body which is broken for you.”
And holding the cup as He said, “This is my blood spilled for you.” And by those hands, one day He hung on a cross.
And on that cross he said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
The hands of Christ? Certainly they were not those of a bully, administering a beating to someone weak and defenseless.
The hands of a thief? Not our giving, forgiving, loving Jesus.
The hands of a carpenter making sure a job was always finished in proper fashion and on time? I have no doubt.
Hands helping Him to climb a mountain, there to be tempted. Hands healing the sick and maimed. Hands reaching out with compassion toward a woman of adultery. In an upper room, His hands washing the feet of the Disciples and then gently holding the bread as He said to them, “This is my body which is broken for you.”
And holding the cup as He said, “This is my blood spilled for you.” And by those hands, one day He hung on a cross.
And on that cross he said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Sunday, August 16, 2009
OPEN DOORS AND NEW BEGINNINGS
Are you still sleeping?” Jesus asked the Disciples in Gethsemane. And what is behind the question? Is there something here more than a physical awakening? Is there an implication that, like Nero, we sometimes fiddle while modern America burns? Is it at Gethsemane we realize how easy it is to be spiritual sleepyheads? Transient in our moral natures? Lazy and lackadaisical?
The terrible slaughter of ageless dreams; so often has it taken place during the history of mankind. Not so much because of bad men who accomplished too much evil, but because of good men who accomplished too little good.
A new creature in Christ - it always comes back to that. For as the old saying goes, “I am but one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. What I can do, therefore, by the grace of God, I will do.” (anonymous)
Have you ever said to someone, “You’ve made your bed, now lie in it”? But that’s not what the gospel says. The gospel does not speak of slug-a-beds. The gospel speaks of open doors and new beginnings. Of sunrises, not sunsets. Of journeys that begin in a little Nazareth town and finish at the gates of heaven.
The terrible slaughter of ageless dreams; so often has it taken place during the history of mankind. Not so much because of bad men who accomplished too much evil, but because of good men who accomplished too little good.
A new creature in Christ - it always comes back to that. For as the old saying goes, “I am but one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. What I can do, therefore, by the grace of God, I will do.” (anonymous)
Have you ever said to someone, “You’ve made your bed, now lie in it”? But that’s not what the gospel says. The gospel does not speak of slug-a-beds. The gospel speaks of open doors and new beginnings. Of sunrises, not sunsets. Of journeys that begin in a little Nazareth town and finish at the gates of heaven.
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