james 2:1-10, 14-17
September 10, 2006
Don't you hate a smarty-pants? I mean that person who tells it like it is-- doesn't mince words, says what they think? They may even say the things you wish you had the nerve to say, but nobody wants to be known as a big mouth.
Well, James is one of those. He's like that pebble in your shoe. Martin Luther, the leader of the Reformation, thought the book of James was useless, if it were up to him, he would have left James out of the Bible entirely. James calls us to accountability, and that's uncomfortable. Essentially he's saying, "practice what you preach, people!" And we would agree, but we don't like it when somebody points out that we may not be practicing what we preach.
Some of you know, that like any other organization, the United Methodist Church has come up with a slogan. Everybody knows that the mainline church is declining in numbers, and so there's a campaign to try to reverse that. Maybe you've seen the well-done commercials on CNN and other cable stations through the year, advertising the UMC and what we stand for. In the past few years, they've come up with the slogan, "Open Minds, Open Hearts, Open Doors..." to define what we are about as United Methodist Christians.
I wonder what James would say to us about that slogan? We say it, but do we do it?
And I don't mean United Methodists only, I mean any church that professes Jesus Christ, that claims to follow his teachings. Do we live out what we believe? Do we practice what we preach?? Not just the church, but as individual Christians?
I went to a Christian College back in the mid-80s. I went to the first one that sent me a catalog, I didn't really look into it, didn't shop around, I figured all Christian colleges would be the same. I just wanted to be with like-minded people. I hoped it would be like summer camp for 4 years. I was a nerd in high school, a goody-two shoes, and I wanted to go to a college where I fit in better. I assumed I'd find that at a Christian college. I figured we'd all get along, support one another, encourage one another and build one another up.
The very first day I was on campus, I was told, #1 that the United Methodist Church was going to hell, and #2, that God doesn't call women into ministry and it's precisely because they ordain women, that the UMC is destined for hell. Hmm.
College ended up being a difficult experience, to say the least. I was not one to rock the boat or speak up back then, so at that time I gave up on my call to ministry and tried to fit in. However, during the spring semester of my junior year, I had to take a class called Methods of Social Research, in which we were split up into groups and asked to come up with a group research project. I don't remember exactly how my group came up with its idea -- the others insist it was my idea, but I'm highly doubtful. What my group decided to do for our project was to dress up as punk rockers and attend 5 different churches on Sunday mornings. Three of us were the punk rockers and the other three pretended not to know us, and observed the congregations' reactions to us. We wanted to see how people would respond to the way we looked. We didn't act any differently, we carried Bibles, we sang the hymns, said the creeds, said the Lord's Prayer. We tried to behave like regular church members.
But we looked very different.
I wore skin tight, black and pink tiger-striped leggings with black lace stockings and black and gold high-heeled shoes. I had on a ripped T shirt that was splattered with multi-colored paint. Over that I wore a black sequined jacket that I got at a Thrift store, and wore matching black lace gloves and lots of chains around my neck. Hanging from my ears I had huge silver crosses. My hair was shorter then, and I loaded it up with lots of gel to make it stand up straight, highlighting it with blue hair paint. I used lots of dark eyeshadow and eyeliner around my eyes so that I looked a lot like Cat Woman, and finished it off with black lipstick.
I looked horrible.
My friend Bob had spent a lot of time on South Street in Philadelphia, which was a punk rocker's hangout, so Bob was our costume and make-up consultant. None of this was a big stretch for Bob.
It took me two hours every Sunday morning to get my make-up and hair done.
As I said, we only had 5 weeks, so we went to 5 churches. We got a variety of responses, walking into those churches. In one church, we sat down close to the front. People stared. They didn’t even try to hide their reactions. Little kids pointed at us and whispered, mothers tried to shush them. One man walked past me, took one look at me and his face screwed up in horror as he said very loudly, “My God!” and walked on.
During the sermon, the pastor gave an altar call. Nobody came forward, but he kept inviting.
When we talked to him a couple of weeks later and told him who we were, he admitted that he’d given that altar call for us specifically. His wife said she was in the back praying that we would go forward. The pastor said quite honestly that when we walked in, he took one look at my cat-like eyes and said to himself,
“There’s going to be a battle with Satan today!”
At another church, people pointed at stared, but didn’t use the Lord’s name in vain--at least in our hearing, and they didn’t come anywhere near us.
Later, we waited in the pastor’s office to speak with him--because as part of our project, we were to talk to the pastor about ways we could get involved in the church. While we were waiting, the pastor’s little boy--a cute, curly-headed blond boy, came into the office, looked up at me and grinned a toothy grin. He took my hand, placed a stick of gum in my lace gloves and folded my fingers over it, skipping away.
The whole thing became very personal. Even though we knew who we were, we all felt the reactions to us when we went to these churches. We felt the rejection, the disgust, the unwelcome. On top of that, the three of us were all people who felt unwelcome at our Christian college, even as ourselves.
Finally, we went to a United Methodist Church in downtown Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I was a little nervous about that, being a United Methodist myself-- I wanted the UMs to look good. My hands were really sweating in those gloves that day.
Soon after we settled into our pew and tried to breathe during the announcements, the pastor got up and asked all visitors to stand. Well, there was no way we could pretend we weren’t visitors! So we stood. He asked us to introduce ourselves. The others looked at me, and in the moment I was unanimously appointed the spokesperson for the group.
We hadn’t planned on having to talk…
I gave our first names and we quickly sat down. The pastor said that he was really glad to see us and said we were “welcome.” After the benediction, I bent over to pick up my Bible, anxious to get out before the Methodists incriminated themselves! But when I looked up, I realized we were surrounded. Each end of our pew was blocked by members of the church! They came to us, asking all kinds of questions: Where did we live? Did we have jobs?
Some of them gave us their phone numbers, offering us rides to church, or a home-cooked meal. Others told us about the Young Adult Sunday School classes, and that the Youth Group needed some adult sponsors-- I thought THAT was interesting!
Again, my classmates kept their mouths shut the entire time, and I was forced to make up answers to all the questions about who we were. The pastor himself came to us, and told us that he makes a mean lasagna and that he’d love to have us over to the parsonage sometime. His wife reiterated the quality of his lasagne and said it was worth the trip!
Once we finally broke free and got back to the car we realized we’d stayed after church for an hour talking to people! All of us were moved. We all wanted to be a part of this church. We all felt welcomed and loved. It had become much more than a class project. We felt the presence of Jesus in that congregation in a profound way that changed all of us.
A couple of weeks later, we went back to the church office to speak to the pastor. We went as ourselves this time, and he didn’t recognize us at all. Again, my classmates left it up to me to tell him who we were. When I told him, he didn’t say anything at first. Then he leaned back in his chair…. and laughed!
We told him about our other church experiences, how it got to be personal, how we felt bad going into those other churches and being treated the way we were, just because of how we looked. And we told him how we felt at his church, how all of us were kind of misfits at school, how we didn’t fit in very well at our Christian school, how each of us had a hard time finding a church home while we were away at school. We told him how we all wanted to come to his church.
The pastor, Pastor Frank, stopped laughing and wiped his eyes. He told us that in another month, he was moving. In fact, he said, he was leaving the ministry altogether. He told us the church had been through some rough times during his ministry there. He'd done some unorthodox things himself in the effort to get the message of the Gospel across. One thing he’d done was dress up as a homeless man and visit each of the houses of the members of his Administrative Council. They didn’t recognize him, and every one of them refused to give him something to eat .
They were not too happy to find out later that it was him.
He did other things like that, too, that didn’t go over well. As a result, he said, the church had split. Many families had left in anger, and the ones who remained had lost hope. Some even had said that it felt like Jesus was no longer among them. Then Pastor Frank brightened up. He had an idea. He asked us to come back on a Sunday morning to tell the whole congregation what we told him. That we had experienced the love of Jesus among them
in a way that changed us and encouraged us. He told us that he believed that God had sent us to them to encourage them, to tell them that Christ was still among them, that they still had the Spirit in them….
So a couple of weeks later, we went back on a Sunday morning, dressed as ourselves. Nobody in the congregation recognized us. Nobody knew that anything special was happening that day until Pastor Frank got up and read from Hebrews about entertaining angels unaware.
Then he introduced us as someone who had a story we needed to tell them. Again, shy old me was appointed to be the first to speak; to break the news of who we were and what we’d done.
When I finally told them who we were, I paused and looked around the congregation. Slowly people smiled, then broke out into laughter, like a ripple across the congregation. Some covered their mouths. I went on to tell them how profoundly we had felt Jesus’ love for us through them… Then the others in our group got up and told their stories as well.
After the benediction, we were surrounded once again, there at the front of the church. People came up to us crying. Little old ladies told us they’d been so worried about us, that they had prayed for us after we didn't return.
One woman said, “I can’t wait to go home and tell my husband— He was here that day, and he thought you were disgusting!” And she laughed a somewhat devilish laugh.
The people thanked us, and they, too, said that they believed that God called us together through this school project, to encourage each other in the faith, and to remind each other that God loves us all.
We went to the parsonage after worship and ate some mean lasagna fixed by Pastor Frank, took pictures of him and his family, and enjoyed an afternoon of laughter and visiting.
St. Francis of Assisi once said,
“Preach the Gospel at all times,
and if necessary, use words…”
I think we all know that the most powerful way to preach the Gospel is by living it. We hear lots of words, but they mean nothing if they’re not lived out. That’s what James calls us to--to preach the Gospel with our lives.
Are our hearts, minds and doors really open?
Do we welcome the stranger?
Do we welcome the one who isn’t dressed up?
Do we cater to those who we know can make a generous offering?
Do we want new members so that we can build each other up in the Gospel, do the work of Christ in the world? Or do we want only new members who can give the church lots of money?
We all need love. We all hunger to belong, to be accepted for who we are. And we all hope that here, of all places, in God’s house, in Christ’s body, we all hope that it is HERE where we can find God in each other, and the love of Christ in each other’s embrace.
Jesus said, "when you do it to the least of these, you do it to me."
We never know when Jesus will show up or what he’ll look like when he does. So let’s not turn anyone away from the loving, life-giving arms of Jesus. Let’s live up to the commercial, to the slogans. Let’s live what we believe.... because there are lives and hearts at stake….
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Tuesday, September 5, 2006
Sermon: "What Is There to Lose?"
WHAT IS THERE TO LOSE?
Romans 8:26-39
September 3, 2006
"All things work together for good for those who love God."
That verse reminds me of some of the sayings that we've come to know; little phrases or mantras of wisdom to get us through-- proverbs that others have passed onto us. Maybe you can think of some too:
"God doesn't give us anything we can't handle."
"It must be God's will."
"There's a reason for everything."
"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."
Or when someone dies, people may say: "They're in a much better place." "God must have needed them more than we do." "They were just too good for this world." And many of these statements are spoken by people who have good intentions, who want to help, who just need to say something. But all too often, these statements don't work, do they? And if they don't, then sometimes we might feel guilty about questioning their truth....
"God doesn't give us anything we can't handle." Have you ever questioned that? I have! What about all those people in psychiatric wards and institutions? What about when someone takes their own life? What about the death of a spouse or a child? What about a fatal car accident?
"It must have been God's will." How is it God's will that a child suffer and die? How is it God's will for someone to get cancer? How it is God's will for anyone, much less a young person, to die in a car accident??
"There is a reason for everything." Is this true? Is there a reason for the senseless suffering and horrors that happen in the world? Do we believe in a God whose will it is to kill a child? A youth? Or to make good people suffer? Is THAT God's will? And if that's God's will, what kind of God are we talking about? Certainly not one who created all that is good and right and holy. Certainly not a God who is Good, who is Love, who is Compassion, who is Mercy. How can any form of evil be God's will?
"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Well, I've seen plenty of people who aren't physically dead but who are walking around dead inside, traumatized by some event, some loss, some senseless tragedy. It doesn't seem to make them stronger.
The thing is, with all these statements, there are times that they ring true, but there are plenty of exceptions to all of them as well. I'm convinced that we hear the worst blasphemies when someone dies:
"God needed them more than we do." Isn't that pretty selfish of God to give us someone so precious and then snatch them away?
"They're in a much happier place." Well, that's true, but maybe right now I can't be happy for them because I want them HERE, and God knows that.
"They were too good for this world." What does that say about you and me that are still here?? Or the people that get to live long and healthy lives? Does that mean that we're not good enough for heaven?
When my friend died suddenly from cancer at the age of 39, I told God he was mistaken if he thought I could handle this. It was the first time I really doubted that God knew what he was doing, especially if God thought taking Sandie away from her family was ok for any of us. I went through a real faith crisis. People said God wouldn't give me anything that I couldn't handle! I prayed for her, she had young children who needed her. She was a good person, with a lot of good gifts to offer the world, a very loving person. There was no good reason for her to die. At the time, I couldn't handle it. I felt betrayed.
Have you been there? When you realize that all those proverbs that you memorized don't stand up to real life? When you face the exceptions to those words of wisdom?
"We know that all things work together for good for those who love God and who are called according to his purpose." One might think that if they are bombarded with tragedy then maybe they don't love God enough. Maybe they're not good enough. Another difficult passage is the verse following that, verse 29: "For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. And those whom he predestined he also called."
When I was in college, and most of you know I went to a Christian college, my roommate was from the Christian Reforemd tradition, who believe in predestination. According to my roommate, they believed that God predestined people for heaven and some for hell, that no matter what we do in this life, if we are predestined for hell, we're doomed anyway, and so the best we can do is simply... well, hope for the best. We got into a lot of heated arguments, because as I said, how can God be good and loving and just and create people with the intention of sending them to hell?? Why would God assign heaven or hell to someone ahead of time? So that a murderer or rapist could go to heaven, while a saint goes to hell, just because God predestined it that way?
We never came to an agreement, but in my studies sine then, I've come to realize and be assured that that's not what Paul OR God intended at all. Paul never meant, I don't believe, for those words to be taken as a doctrine that God chose some and didn't choose others as if we're all a part of some cosmic game of chance. In actuality, the verse says that God foreknew us and predestined us to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. When the Bible speaks of God knowing humans, it means that God has a relationship with humans, a purpose for us and a plan. Look at the Old Testament. God had a plan all along, and people kept messing it up, kept throwing it back into God's face-- because we and they have a choice to refuse our destiny. But it is the destiny of us all to be God's children, to live according to the example of Jesus Christ. We have the opportunity to claim that and run with it or to throw it away and do our own thing.
From the beginning, God marks all of us as God's own at our baptisms. We are marked from birth as God's children. What we do with that is up to us. We are free to blow it, or to embrace it. And in time we have the opportunities to choose for ourselves whether we will claim our destiny or choose something else that will always be so much less. The whole context of Paul's letter to the Romans focuses on the struggle between doing God's will in this world and doing our own or somebody elses'. It's about the hell we often go through in order to finally claim our destiny.
"All things work together for good for those who love God and who are called according to his purpose." That doesn't mean that if we behave, we won't face trouble. A few years after pauls' letter to the Romans was written, Christians in Rome would be led into the coliseum, torn apart by wild animals for entertainment. They would huddle in the middle of the arena and pray and sing and maybe even weep as the animals move toward them while the people in the stands cheer and call for their blood. Looking into the jaws of death, those Christians would possess a peace that passed understanding, because they knew who they were, and to whom they belonged and no one can take that away. I bet they were scared! I bet they were scared to death, even in the midst of that peace of knowing God's presence; even in believing that they would soon be with Christ. We can stand firm on faith even while our legs are trembling, when our stomachs are churning and our world seems to have fallen apart. When there are no good answers to our questions.
Why do good people suffer and die? We don't know. But we do know that God understands the horror of that, for God showed up in the flesh of Jesus Christ-- the essence of goodness, holiness and perfection-- the essence of God. And Jesus' reward for staying true to the Gospel he lived and proclaimed seemed to be a vicious death at the hands of his enemies. But God raised him from the dead to say, "death never wins. Evil never wins."
Jesus walked through the fire ahead of us, to show us that life conquers death, and by his spirit, we, too, can triumph over death. If I've learned anything by growing up-- and I'm still working on it!-- it's that life is messy and unpredictable, life doesn't fit a set of easy rules, that if you do this, this will happen, and if you don't do this, that won't happen. It's not that simple, in fact, life is sometimes very hard and disappointing, but that doesn't make the promises any less true. Human proverbs don't stand up to the reality of this world, but God's promises ultimately do.
Verse 35 says, "as it is written, for your sake we are being killed all day long, we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered." It's a quote from Psalm 44, verse 22. It's a psalm of God's people trying to do God's will in a world that seems awfully allergic to it! It's a psalm of unshakeable trust in God no matter what, it's about how trying to do God's will in this world will put us at odds with the rest of the world, but we will go on trusting God nonetheless.
My friend John in Florida once said to me, "The impossible just takes a little longer." And that's one of my new proverbs. The impossible just takes a little bit longer....
because.... "who will separate us from the love of Christ? Hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril or sword? No... in all these things we are more than conquerers through Him who loved us. For I am convinced (and Paul ought to know!) that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor power nor height nor depth nor anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord..."
What have we got to lose?
Romans 8:26-39
September 3, 2006
"All things work together for good for those who love God."
That verse reminds me of some of the sayings that we've come to know; little phrases or mantras of wisdom to get us through-- proverbs that others have passed onto us. Maybe you can think of some too:
"God doesn't give us anything we can't handle."
"It must be God's will."
"There's a reason for everything."
"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."
Or when someone dies, people may say: "They're in a much better place." "God must have needed them more than we do." "They were just too good for this world." And many of these statements are spoken by people who have good intentions, who want to help, who just need to say something. But all too often, these statements don't work, do they? And if they don't, then sometimes we might feel guilty about questioning their truth....
"God doesn't give us anything we can't handle." Have you ever questioned that? I have! What about all those people in psychiatric wards and institutions? What about when someone takes their own life? What about the death of a spouse or a child? What about a fatal car accident?
"It must have been God's will." How is it God's will that a child suffer and die? How is it God's will for someone to get cancer? How it is God's will for anyone, much less a young person, to die in a car accident??
"There is a reason for everything." Is this true? Is there a reason for the senseless suffering and horrors that happen in the world? Do we believe in a God whose will it is to kill a child? A youth? Or to make good people suffer? Is THAT God's will? And if that's God's will, what kind of God are we talking about? Certainly not one who created all that is good and right and holy. Certainly not a God who is Good, who is Love, who is Compassion, who is Mercy. How can any form of evil be God's will?
"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Well, I've seen plenty of people who aren't physically dead but who are walking around dead inside, traumatized by some event, some loss, some senseless tragedy. It doesn't seem to make them stronger.
The thing is, with all these statements, there are times that they ring true, but there are plenty of exceptions to all of them as well. I'm convinced that we hear the worst blasphemies when someone dies:
"God needed them more than we do." Isn't that pretty selfish of God to give us someone so precious and then snatch them away?
"They're in a much happier place." Well, that's true, but maybe right now I can't be happy for them because I want them HERE, and God knows that.
"They were too good for this world." What does that say about you and me that are still here?? Or the people that get to live long and healthy lives? Does that mean that we're not good enough for heaven?
When my friend died suddenly from cancer at the age of 39, I told God he was mistaken if he thought I could handle this. It was the first time I really doubted that God knew what he was doing, especially if God thought taking Sandie away from her family was ok for any of us. I went through a real faith crisis. People said God wouldn't give me anything that I couldn't handle! I prayed for her, she had young children who needed her. She was a good person, with a lot of good gifts to offer the world, a very loving person. There was no good reason for her to die. At the time, I couldn't handle it. I felt betrayed.
Have you been there? When you realize that all those proverbs that you memorized don't stand up to real life? When you face the exceptions to those words of wisdom?
"We know that all things work together for good for those who love God and who are called according to his purpose." One might think that if they are bombarded with tragedy then maybe they don't love God enough. Maybe they're not good enough. Another difficult passage is the verse following that, verse 29: "For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. And those whom he predestined he also called."
When I was in college, and most of you know I went to a Christian college, my roommate was from the Christian Reforemd tradition, who believe in predestination. According to my roommate, they believed that God predestined people for heaven and some for hell, that no matter what we do in this life, if we are predestined for hell, we're doomed anyway, and so the best we can do is simply... well, hope for the best. We got into a lot of heated arguments, because as I said, how can God be good and loving and just and create people with the intention of sending them to hell?? Why would God assign heaven or hell to someone ahead of time? So that a murderer or rapist could go to heaven, while a saint goes to hell, just because God predestined it that way?
We never came to an agreement, but in my studies sine then, I've come to realize and be assured that that's not what Paul OR God intended at all. Paul never meant, I don't believe, for those words to be taken as a doctrine that God chose some and didn't choose others as if we're all a part of some cosmic game of chance. In actuality, the verse says that God foreknew us and predestined us to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. When the Bible speaks of God knowing humans, it means that God has a relationship with humans, a purpose for us and a plan. Look at the Old Testament. God had a plan all along, and people kept messing it up, kept throwing it back into God's face-- because we and they have a choice to refuse our destiny. But it is the destiny of us all to be God's children, to live according to the example of Jesus Christ. We have the opportunity to claim that and run with it or to throw it away and do our own thing.
From the beginning, God marks all of us as God's own at our baptisms. We are marked from birth as God's children. What we do with that is up to us. We are free to blow it, or to embrace it. And in time we have the opportunities to choose for ourselves whether we will claim our destiny or choose something else that will always be so much less. The whole context of Paul's letter to the Romans focuses on the struggle between doing God's will in this world and doing our own or somebody elses'. It's about the hell we often go through in order to finally claim our destiny.
"All things work together for good for those who love God and who are called according to his purpose." That doesn't mean that if we behave, we won't face trouble. A few years after pauls' letter to the Romans was written, Christians in Rome would be led into the coliseum, torn apart by wild animals for entertainment. They would huddle in the middle of the arena and pray and sing and maybe even weep as the animals move toward them while the people in the stands cheer and call for their blood. Looking into the jaws of death, those Christians would possess a peace that passed understanding, because they knew who they were, and to whom they belonged and no one can take that away. I bet they were scared! I bet they were scared to death, even in the midst of that peace of knowing God's presence; even in believing that they would soon be with Christ. We can stand firm on faith even while our legs are trembling, when our stomachs are churning and our world seems to have fallen apart. When there are no good answers to our questions.
Why do good people suffer and die? We don't know. But we do know that God understands the horror of that, for God showed up in the flesh of Jesus Christ-- the essence of goodness, holiness and perfection-- the essence of God. And Jesus' reward for staying true to the Gospel he lived and proclaimed seemed to be a vicious death at the hands of his enemies. But God raised him from the dead to say, "death never wins. Evil never wins."
Jesus walked through the fire ahead of us, to show us that life conquers death, and by his spirit, we, too, can triumph over death. If I've learned anything by growing up-- and I'm still working on it!-- it's that life is messy and unpredictable, life doesn't fit a set of easy rules, that if you do this, this will happen, and if you don't do this, that won't happen. It's not that simple, in fact, life is sometimes very hard and disappointing, but that doesn't make the promises any less true. Human proverbs don't stand up to the reality of this world, but God's promises ultimately do.
Verse 35 says, "as it is written, for your sake we are being killed all day long, we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered." It's a quote from Psalm 44, verse 22. It's a psalm of God's people trying to do God's will in a world that seems awfully allergic to it! It's a psalm of unshakeable trust in God no matter what, it's about how trying to do God's will in this world will put us at odds with the rest of the world, but we will go on trusting God nonetheless.
My friend John in Florida once said to me, "The impossible just takes a little longer." And that's one of my new proverbs. The impossible just takes a little bit longer....
because.... "who will separate us from the love of Christ? Hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril or sword? No... in all these things we are more than conquerers through Him who loved us. For I am convinced (and Paul ought to know!) that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor power nor height nor depth nor anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord..."
What have we got to lose?
Small Is Tremendous
A WORD FROM PEGGY
A few weeks ago we went to the Concert at Harmon Park in Kearney, to listen to Zoe Lewis and The Rubber Band. The name itself was worth going for! However, they proved to be a delight, with their music and their stories. It was FUN. One of the songs that has stuck with me is “Small is Tremendous.” Part of this is due to the fact that as Zoe sang out, “It’s the little things!” the audience responded loudly with “that make the biggest sense!” But it’s true, isn’t it? Think about it. It is the little things. As we listened to the music, I noticed two little girls dancing their hearts out in the grass near the stage. They were lost in joy, waving their arms, giggling, their curls bouncing, their feet shoeless, and they just let the music scoop them up and take them somewhere beautiful.
Music is one of those “little things” that keeps me going. It soothes me when I’m anxious, it inspires me when I’m dull, it gives me joy. It connects me to people. It’s easy to forget what’s most important in this life, when there’s so many “big” things coming at us: bills, terrorism, war, taxes, stress at work, stress at home, etc., etc. It’s easy to get consumed by all that and lose our vision. But it’s the little things that make the biggest sense. A new baby, wide-eyed and drooling on their mother’s shoulder in a restaurant. A little kid who catches your eye at a reception and starts playing hide and seek with you behind their father’s leg. The joy of people being together, laughing, teasing, telling stories, loving each other by simply being there with one another. Hearing about one of your own doing mission work in New Orleans, and helping to support him. Having your child get through their first day of junior high and still smiling! Seeing someone come out of their shell a bit and try something new. Realizing you have a friend who would do anything for you, and you for them. Having your 12 year old say, “let’s do something together as a family.”
Larry and I went tent-camping for a few days for our 15th anniversary. Wow. Three whole days, just the two of us! It was delicious. I love camping. Everything takes time, you can’t rush it. You have to work together to get the tent up, or to get food prepared. You need to gather wood and sticks to make a fire, and it’s a wonderful feeling when it finally burns!! You have to slow down to camp. We met a couple from California who were moving to North Carolina in a well-used camper. We met a retired state trooper who told us a story of realizing he was laying on a bull snake when he was doing a stake-out. We met bikers coming back from Sturgis with their brand new T-shirts.
Mustard seeds. Jesus likes the little things too. Because he knows it’s the little things that make the bigger things possible. A kind word. A gentle touch. A friend for life. Having someone love you for who you are. A cup of coffee with your favorite people. A broken friendship mended, the past forgiven. Sitting around a campfire with people you love. Seeing your family in Christ every Sunday and at potlucks and Bible Studies and birthday parties and anniversary celebrations and at the Concert in the Park. There’s a lot of things in this crazy world that don’t make sense. But it is indeed the little things that make the biggest sense!
Peggy
A few weeks ago we went to the Concert at Harmon Park in Kearney, to listen to Zoe Lewis and The Rubber Band. The name itself was worth going for! However, they proved to be a delight, with their music and their stories. It was FUN. One of the songs that has stuck with me is “Small is Tremendous.” Part of this is due to the fact that as Zoe sang out, “It’s the little things!” the audience responded loudly with “that make the biggest sense!” But it’s true, isn’t it? Think about it. It is the little things. As we listened to the music, I noticed two little girls dancing their hearts out in the grass near the stage. They were lost in joy, waving their arms, giggling, their curls bouncing, their feet shoeless, and they just let the music scoop them up and take them somewhere beautiful.
Music is one of those “little things” that keeps me going. It soothes me when I’m anxious, it inspires me when I’m dull, it gives me joy. It connects me to people. It’s easy to forget what’s most important in this life, when there’s so many “big” things coming at us: bills, terrorism, war, taxes, stress at work, stress at home, etc., etc. It’s easy to get consumed by all that and lose our vision. But it’s the little things that make the biggest sense. A new baby, wide-eyed and drooling on their mother’s shoulder in a restaurant. A little kid who catches your eye at a reception and starts playing hide and seek with you behind their father’s leg. The joy of people being together, laughing, teasing, telling stories, loving each other by simply being there with one another. Hearing about one of your own doing mission work in New Orleans, and helping to support him. Having your child get through their first day of junior high and still smiling! Seeing someone come out of their shell a bit and try something new. Realizing you have a friend who would do anything for you, and you for them. Having your 12 year old say, “let’s do something together as a family.”
Larry and I went tent-camping for a few days for our 15th anniversary. Wow. Three whole days, just the two of us! It was delicious. I love camping. Everything takes time, you can’t rush it. You have to work together to get the tent up, or to get food prepared. You need to gather wood and sticks to make a fire, and it’s a wonderful feeling when it finally burns!! You have to slow down to camp. We met a couple from California who were moving to North Carolina in a well-used camper. We met a retired state trooper who told us a story of realizing he was laying on a bull snake when he was doing a stake-out. We met bikers coming back from Sturgis with their brand new T-shirts.
Mustard seeds. Jesus likes the little things too. Because he knows it’s the little things that make the bigger things possible. A kind word. A gentle touch. A friend for life. Having someone love you for who you are. A cup of coffee with your favorite people. A broken friendship mended, the past forgiven. Sitting around a campfire with people you love. Seeing your family in Christ every Sunday and at potlucks and Bible Studies and birthday parties and anniversary celebrations and at the Concert in the Park. There’s a lot of things in this crazy world that don’t make sense. But it is indeed the little things that make the biggest sense!
Peggy
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