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A little message from your pastor about Pentecost.
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In last Sunday's sermon, I made the claim that "God comes to people through people."  Its not original to me; a professor of mine, Dr. Stewart, said it to us in our first year of Seminary, and if I recall rightly he was, in turn, quoting someone else.  It's an old priniple, in any case, best-proved by the fact that when God really wanted to come to us, God sent his own self as a person.  As I said:  it's not original to me.

But someone asked me, the other day:  What about when God comes directly to us?  Sometimes God uses other people, but doesn't God also sometimes speak directly to us: using our thoughts, and our inner conversations, to speak some message we need?

My answer was something like this: "I imagine that God prefers to use people, but doesn't always find a voice.  And if someone thinks they exclusively hear God's voice, and that they've got their own direct line, they probably need to do a lot more listening to God's people."

What do you all think?  What do you think the Bible tells us?  How has God come to you, what are the signs when it happens, and whom else has God used on the way?

Be well, pray often, and do it all with love.

Kirianne
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Make it last. 09/15/2009
 

Dear friends, 

Today is one of those heartbreakingly beautiful days that is so much more precious because we can see the waning of summer.  It is a little more poignant than coming to the last piece of the most wonderful pie, and a little less meaningful than the final hug as a child leaves for college... after all those other, earlier hugs that might have been the last ones, but weren't.  When the actual end of something comes - when the good-bye has left our lips, and we feel as if it took all our breath with it - there is a little lurching feeling inside of us, like turbulence of the soul.  We don't want good things to end.  We don't want the last to come.

But if you ever find yourself feeling that way, remember the wonderful double-meaning of the word "last."  Of course, it means the final something, the something after which there are no more something-elses.  But last means more.

It lasts.  It sticks around, and changes us.  It dwells in us, the way all the other earlier ones didn't.  It takes on meaning, and lives inside our memories - and when I say lives, I mean lives, because it changes and grows and calls us up from time to time when we need to hear from it, whether we want it to or not.  It is the lasting impression; the lasting moment.  The famous last words.  The everlasting life.

When we have to let go of things, or people, remember that in letting go we give them a chance at immortality.  Our hearts will be broken again and again, as we let go of a lifetime of friends and family.  But have faith, that we let them go so they may last.  And may our everlasting savior, Jesus, give us grace to wipe the tears from our eyes, and love us with hope.

Be well, pray often, and do it all with love.

-Kirianne

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O God, our Father, you have made us all, your people; and you laid the earth before us.  Now, we wait.  We sing.  We pray.  We meditate.  Advent reminds us of the quiet calm of time.  As we run by it, we can miss the peace of silence; miss the missing noise of violence; miss the waiting, miss the patience.  Calm us down, O Lord of Nations!  Help us stop, to dream and wonder at the beauty that is under this same sky we call our own.  We stand with awe before your throne.

So often in our lives, we throw ourselves into the world we know.  But you!  You are before us, and more worth our time to understand!  So in this Advent, help us to.  We wish our thoughts to be with you.  We seek your Son, the Christ, again.

Bless us with time, O Lord.

Amen.

 

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Dear friends,

Welcome to MEDs online!  You'll still get them in your inbox, but now you can see them at your leisure.  I hope you enjoy this new feature on our page!

So for this week's MED, I wanted to talk for a moment about forgiveness.  You know what I mean: the thing we strive for to heal all the wounds that exist between us and others and that make it really hard for us to love our neighbors as ourselves.

In my experience, forgiveness comes in three levels.  The first is the level in which we forgive others for our own sake.  What I mean here is that we seek a release from the anger and frustration we have been carrying, and - usually in the absence of a cathartic conversation - decide that we need to let go, for our own peace of mind.  This is a first step.  It is good, and it makes our lives more whole.

But the second level of forgiveness is one in which we choose to relate to wounded people: not to be wounded by them, but to be healers in their world.  This is the level of forgiveness that reaches out into what are sometimes very awful places.  It is missional, and evangelical.  It is forgiveness for others' sakes, more than for our own.  It requires great strength.

For us, as Christians, it's impossible to talk about forgiveness without talking about the cross.  And that is the third level, of course: what has already been done for us.  And the gift in the cross, for this conversation, is that when we are wondering where the strength will come from that is needed for all this forgiveness, there is the cross.  The thing is that it takes a great wealth and history of being loved to grow that kind of strength.  And God's love for us is right there on the cross: a model of forgiveness, a testimony to God's incredible love for us, and a symbol that for 2000 years has been trying to show us that God is on our side, and will be forever.

SO:  If you feel like a challenge this week - a little something to get your adrenaline running, a task-at-hand that might stretch your Christian wings a bit - try reaching into your storehouse of love, and spend some of it on some healing forgiveness for someone else's sake.   Love, after all, becomes more when we give it away.

Be well, pray often, and do it all with love!

Kirianne



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