Loving Jesus Style

Scripture: Luke 16:13 (NRSV) 13  No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” Devotion:             For his 1979 album entitled Slow Train Coming, Bob Dylan wrote a song entitled Gonna Serve Somebody . Who you serve will determine the level of peace in your life as well as in the lives of those around you. We may not bow down to idols made of wood and metal as our ancestors did but whatever it is in your life that lays claim on your heart is an idol to you.             For some people it is a sports team or sports in general. They serve their team by watching and cheering for them faithfully. Some people have television shows that they are addicted too. I have been told by folks at one place I preach that we could get more peo...

We are like a broken stain glass window. We saints and sinners are lying on the floor. Broken shards of glass mixed together and spread out across the floor. Our sharp edges rub against each other and in so doing either sharpen or dull our own pain. Among the shards of glass you may see a glimmer of some saint from long ago. Perhaps you see a piece of Ruth or Esther, or Daniel or Moses. Almost certainly you can find a fragment of the cross. But you might catch a glimpse of Rahab or Tamar, Sampson or a fleeting reflection of David with Bathsheba lying among us broken on the floor. We are saints and sinners broken by the living of this life. Some day our Maker will come and restore us to the fullness and beauty of a life together as a stain glass window of God’s love. Until then our glory can only be imagined as our brokenness is kissed by God’s Son light streaming down on us as we sit broken on the floor.

cripture: 1 Corinthians 3:21–23 (NRSV) 21  So let no one boast about human leaders. For all things are yours, 22  whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all belong to you, 23  and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God. Devotion:             One way we can go about being a peacemaker is to be what one author calls self forgetful. Many Christian leaders cause untold mayhem for themselves and their followers by thinking they are something they are not. We are all live under the threat that we may believe our press clippings and start to build our egos rather than our faith and obedience to Christ.             I have seen Christians who have been told that they are great preachers, teachers etc. They become more and more enamored with the sound of their own voice that they very rarely let oth...

Scripture: Revelation 22:1–5 (NRSV) 22 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2  through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3  Nothing accursed will be found there anymore. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; 4  they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5  And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. Devotion:             When we consider the idea of peacemaking we are often left to wonder why we should keep on trying to be a peacemaker. The world appears to be content with...

Today I want to introduce you to Dr. Osvaldo Vena a professor at Garrett Evangelical Seminary. Dr. Vena's classes were some of the most formative of my seminary career. Dr. Vena has a deep passion for justice. He has taken childrens poetry from Israeli and Palestinian children and from children in his native Argentina and turned them into beautiful but truthful songs. Check out his web site at http://www.stilladream.com/index.php/about.html

Scripture: Psalm 84:3 (NRSV) 3 Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Meditation:             Hi, my name is Felix and I am a kitten. One day I saw this tree and I thought it would be a great idea to climb it. So up, and up I went until I got so high that looking down made me very scared. So scared I couldn’t even move. I stayed up there for a long time.             Then a person came along. I think they were trying to help me get down from the tree but they couldn’t reach me. The person tried climbing the tree but the tree couldn’t support them. The person then tried to bend the tree by hand but I was still too high to be reached. Then the person disappeared into his house for a while.          ...

Scripture: John 4:1–15 (NRSV) Jesus and the Woman of Samaria 4 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John” 2  —although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— 3  he left Judea and started back to Galilee. 4  But he had to go through Samaria. 5  So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6  Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. 7  A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8  (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9  The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10  Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a dri...

Scripture: Jeremiah 7:8–10 (NRSV) 8  Here you are, trusting in deceptive words to no avail. 9  Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, 10  and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, “We are safe!”—only to go on doing all these abominations? Meditation: Our world has fallen so far so fast that we are no longer able to recognize evil when we are participating in it. We steal from each other daily by refusing to acknowledge that we are complicit in the social schemes that take wealth from one person and give it to another.             We murder daily by making false and derogatory statements against those we disagree with. We permit the slaughter of millions of unborn babies and call it choice. We have become so numb to our own violent and warlike attitudes that we no longer cry ...