Maybe A Little Out of Context

a psalm of David:
Psalm 15
Who may worship in your sanctuary, Lord?
Who may enter your presence on
your holy hill?
Those who lead blameless lives and do what is right,
speaking the truth from sincere hearts.
Those who refuse to gossip
or harm their neighbors
or speak evil of their friends.
Those who despise flagrant sinners,
and honor the faithful followers of the
Lord,
and keep their promises even when it hurts.
Those who lend money without charging
interest,
and who cannot be bribed to lie about
the innocent.
Such people will stand firm forever.

A prayer from David from the ancient prayer book of the bible, the Psalms. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, "Wherever the Psalter is abandoned, an incomparable treasure vanishes from the Christian church. With its recovery will come unsuspected power." Too often people turn to the Psalms as well as most Scripture seeking ways that they can apply its meaning to their lives, or they turn to them for answers, hoping that there would be a solution to a problem that they face. However, as I am discovering through an ongoing conversation with mentors such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Thomas Merton, the way back to the Psalms is the same way to the meaning of prayer. As I continue to wrestle with these I will be sharing with you insights and challenging you with ideas or questions. Are you consuming your life with holy things? May it be our prayer that we too recognize how it is those who are the faithful followers of the Lord that will truly experience, sanctuary.

We see in this Psalm David looks to be exclaiming out loud to the Lord a psalm about those who live a good lifestyle. We see David ask 2 questions from the get go about who may worship in God's sanctuary and holy hill. Then he goes on and answers himself by describing characteristics to those who would be able to do such a practice. I read this and I think to myself that this psalm is different. What is it that he is saying? Why is he describing this sort of person? How can this psalm become our prayer?

Recently I had the privilege to be at table with two people to talk about life and all that it entails. After down some Jo and hot chocolate we made our way to our spiritual lives. After some probing questions we found ourselves talking and wrestling with the lifestyle of a Christian. We talked briefly about what that entails and whether or not we should worry about certain aspects in our lives. Should we really worry about music that we listen to? I mean, it does not really affect us. I know when to call it quits, plus, I would never really think about carrying out the violence that those songs sing about. Or what about our movies? Yeah that movie was awesome, especially when that person's head got shot off. How cool was that? Again, after viewing such films my stand on justice and peace has not nor will it ever change. Yeah I take steroids to help me compete better, but it will help me out later in life, scholarships and what not.

We could go on and on about how we desensitise our self from society and reality by getting lost in that which is put on cd's and into movies for entertainment. But again, I ask the question, what does one who calls themselves a follower of Christ, lifestyle look like? In what way do we manipulate the message of Christ by justifying our actions by simply saying, "I can handle it." Maybe this is not a big deal. Maybe you simply do not think that such an issues is one you struggle with. However, I have a hard time in my own life entering into God's sanctuary after listening to the latest rap song or the latest movie that includes torture and death for no apparent reason but for the big $ sign.

As we read this psalm again we see there is a description for a person who can indeed worship in the house of the Lord. But this psalm is not a get to the sanctuary in 5 easy steps, quick fix. It is one though that we can approach with a heart recognizing where it is that we have just been. Bonhoeffer states that this psalm, along with many others, are psalms that lead us to the confession of guilt and direct our confidence to the forgiving grace of God. When we read and make this psalm our prayer, we are made aware of the faults that have consumed our lives and allow us to repent and turn from our guilt.

So I encourage you to stop and take a moment to look at yourself. Look back at the trail you just came from and ask yourself if you are worthy to worship in the house of the Lord?

Saving Me by Nickelback brought to you by YouTube

Continue to Save us, O' God

Again, we have the opportunity to be able to see prayers through the art of music. This time I have picked the song Saving Me from Nickelback. Let it be known that this is not a time of picking a part a song and trying to give psychological diagnosis to what it is they are singing about. Rather, it is a practice that we can begin to hear prayers through music and maybe even, use them in our own prayer lives.

So I invite you to listen to these words. Listen to the emotion that is put behind them. A man longing for direction and the one to lead him to make him a better man. We recognize that all we need is Him. That we often times find ourselves, in desperate situations, longing for his words, his touch & his love. Falling away, we realize that it is through His grace can we be rescued and put back on track. It is while we are leaning close to His heart, can we learn what is wrong and right, making us into people of our words, letting our yes's be yes's and our no's be no's and doing the work of goodness in His name.

Teach us O' God the creator. Do what you will so that we can hear your voice. Provide us the opportunities to redeem ourselves. Indeed we are your children, broken and tired, often times brought on by ourselves, we too have broken wings, we see you O' God. We see you reaching out to us and we ask, "Continue to rescue and save us, for it is you and only you that we need. Show uswhat is right!" Teach us to be like you, loving and serving those around us with love, say it to us so that we may learn. Say it to us because your words are words that save and change and we can change this life to honor you. Say it to us O'God if it will help us to save our lives, which requires us to lose them for the sake of your Kingdom. Hear our prayer O' Merciful God!

Sactus

Greetings brothers and sisters in Christ. This is a reminder that Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 @ 6:45 pm, we will be meeting again in the youth room for Sanctus.

This week we will be practicing the praying style of Lectio Divina an ancient prayer practice that allows time for silence and centering around God.

Hope to see you there and may the peace of Christ be with you until that day!

Shalom my friends.

A Speck and a Log

"Stop judging others, and you will not be judged. For others will treat you as you treat them. Whatever measure you use in judging others, it will be used to measure how you are judged. And why worry about a speck in your friend's eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying, 'Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,' when you can't see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite! First get rid of the log from your own eye; then perhaps you will see well enough to deal with the spec in in your friend's eye." Matthew 7.1-6 (NLT)

Judging others. A part of our lives that is difficult for all of us. How easy it is for us to look around to those around us and evaluate and question their lives and how easy it is for us to tell them they need to change. How easy it is for us to criticize what is that they are doing. How easy it is to be someone on the outside, judging those whom we encounter and pick apart all that they are and what they are doing.

I think we can compare it to a teacher in a sense. Let's think about it. We work hard on a paper. We pour hours upon hours into what it is that we have been assigned to write about and we do research, we interview people, we work hard on this paper. After hours of revision and pushing the spellcheck button a million times, we print off our good work, well in our own opinions we are handing in good work. We take our paper with a grin on our face and pass it forward, drop it in our instructors mailbox or we email it, nonetheless we hand it in with confidence. Now we wait in anticipation.

Days pass, we get busy doing other work and we simply forget about what it is that we handed in. Then the day comes and we get our papers back. Slowly our instructor hands out our papers, calling off the names and you wait with anticipation. The adrenaline begins to kick in more and those moths in your stomach turn into over sized monarchs. Then your name is read aloud. You walk up and the instructor hands your paper face down to you. You turn in over and then you feel sick. You see red marks and blue marks, this correction & that correction, this suggestion and that suggestion, and you look and you did not get what you thought or wanted. Immediately you may feel a variety of emotions. Confusion, despair, bitterness, anger, and hopelessness. You go through all of this all because of criticism on your paper. Of course, you come to realize that no one did well and your instructor schedules times for you to come in and discuss what it is that she expects, what you did not do and what you did great. Through this conversation you come to learn what it means to become a better writer or you learn how to handle criticism better.

Now this may or may not apply to what it is that Jesus is teaching about here. Again I only tell this story so that we could have an idea, an analogy of what it is like when we hear others criticize something of ours that means a lot to us. They may not know the full story, they may not understand all that we put into it, they may not know the importance of why we do/did what we do/did, but they take this piece of work and rip it apart, critiquing and looking at it with eyes that are looking for places we messed up. (Also again I realize I probably could have used a better analogy knowing that this is what instructors/professors/teachers are to do. We learn from them and lean on them for their knowledge. So imagine this teacher as being bogus. See we are already judging them and not knowing truthfully why they do what it is they do.)

What about those we are frustrated with in our lives? Those who do things that go against our own flow of life. Those who drive us nuts because their lifestyles are those that are not honoring to God. But h ow can we be angry or judgemental towards them if in our own lives we do not have "it all together". Often times we look at people and judge them for their actions because those same things that bother us are the same issues that we too are struggling with. Often times our bad habits or the traits that bother us in others are often the traits and habits that we have ourselves. Do you find it easy to magnify others' faults while excusing your own? If you are ready to go out and judge those whom you see not doing something you think they shouldn't be doing, ask the question, am I magnifying this person's mishaps only so mine do not seem so problematic?

If you want your friends or those whom you are judgemental towards to change their habits or to stop being so hypocritical, then we must take a step back, look and evaluate that log that is dwelling in our own eye and begin to take steps forward to working out our own issues before we can point out the speck in theirs. We must also understand that we are all created differently. So we must look past little petty things that separate us and cause frustrations in our relationships. But for those greater issues, again, may we be in prayer for them but also may we be in prayer for ourselves that we too may recognize the hypocrisy that we have stored up in our lives. Judge yourself first, and then lovingly forgive and help your neighbor.

Praise, honor and glory to God!

***Picture is from http://www.tonyboon.co.uk/imgs/images/logs.jpg***

Working at the Car Wash

This past Saturday the Jr. and Sr. high youth group got together for about 2 1/2 hours and had our first official fundraiser together. We washed cars, played a little football, sprayed each other with water, ate some apples, and had a great time. We made some good funds but made more memories than anything and that is what matters the most. Thank you for all the helped out and who came by with their dirty or not so dirty cars!