It Gets Sweeter In Time

Invitations have been sent out. Everyone of your close friends will be coming. No one was left out for this party is going to be one you will never forget. It is a celebration in fact. A wedding feast. A dear friend and their new spouse will celebrate the beginning of their lives together. Make sure you come prepared and trust me, there is going to be this one guy there who you don't want to miss.

Indeed this party is great. You reconnect with many of your old friends as you celebrate this wedding. Much laughter is taking place and the wine is flowing. You are glad you came if not for the merry making with friends but for this guy that someone heard something about from some guy who went fishing with this other guy whose brother first saw this man. Yet so far in the party, he has sat there with his mother and brothers and sisters, not really doing much. However you are keeping an eye on him right? You are paying attention because again, he did tell some of those friends he is with that they haven't seen anything yet.

Things are getting out of hand now as people are getting a little anxious waiting for the wine to come around again. Man what they served you first was great huh? Nothing like some great grape juice to go along with your dinner. But for real, when are they bringing out the next...wait, did you just see that? That lady they call Mary just leaned over to him, her son that is, and said something. Well, whatever it was, must not have settled right with him for the look he gave her was one of disgust. I wonder what he said.

You've seen nothing yet friends.

What are those servants doing now? Where are they taking those jars? Is that water going inside of them? Did He tell them to do this? Oh boy, this could get ugly if the host drinks this water. He was right, I haven't seen anything yet, nothing like a brawl that will soon take place. Yet he shows no signs of worry. There he sits, calm and collective, continuing his conversation with those 12 men.

The host is getting up to say something and the servants are squirming, "Usually a host serves the best win first and then brings out the less expensive one next. But you bridegroom have saved the best for last."

What? Did he just say wine? I thought it was water? What just took place? And it is the "best" wine? What did that Man do? Maybe what Nathaniel said was true. Maybe he is...the Messiah?

Drink deep friends of what Jesus can fill your life with. Place yourself in the party. Which table are you at? Who are you sitting by? What makes this party a good one?

Important to note how the tradition of a ceremony such as this would be to serve the better wine first and then the cheaper wine next, so that behind their drunkenness they would not be able to tell the difference. Yet the wine the drink last at this party is better than the best wine they served first. What does this say about Jesus? More than just a miracle happened here in Cana, we are exposed to what Jesus can provide for us. Their best wine was fine because the partiers never had anything better until Jesus came and provided more than they expected.

So why should we settle for less? As life goes on, as we continue to discover our lives in the life of Christ, we may begin to see that much like wine, our life in Christ will indeed begin to taste better.

Quietly He sat, replied hastily to His mother, yet life changing that party was for some. Where are you in this party?

May your cups of life be filled with the wine of Christ, a wine that gets better as time goes on. May you drink deep from it and come to the party with your lives ready to be transformed. Your invitation has come and a party is waiting for us. Drink deep of Christ and taste the richness of his love!

Peace and love to you this day.

d365

I wanted to give you another link for you to visit to hopefully help you take a moment of rest from the busyness of life.
http://www.d365.org/todaysdevotion/

It is another daily prayer opportunity for you. Again, my hope is that you would find time to settle down and take 10 minutes to do pray and meditate.

I am thankful for all of you!

Peace of Christ to you!

Adam

It'll take but 10 minutes...

Greetings friends! I hope that all of you are having a good, fresh start to this new semester and new year. We are almost done with January with only 7 more days to go. It is incredible how fast time can fly and to use a quote from the movie Ferris Bueller's day off, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." I post this blog in hopes that we may be able to stop every once in a while, a breathe, pray and contemplate God's movement. So I am posting this link where you can do all of that.

I encourage you to visit the Youth Ministry & Spirituality Project website and click on the tab entitled prayer. There you will begin a prayer session that takes 5-10 minutes and I encourage you to simply rest and pray. Not much is required for they post the prayers, questions and Scripture for you, so all you need to do is sit and be still before God.

Take some time and do this. Get comfortable, quiet yourself, close the door, turn down the lights, and begin to follow the instructions. Rest and pray, develop a new discipline that enriches our lives!

Linkin Park - Numb

Linkin Park - Numb

What are some struggles that you face? Do you stuggle with becoming something that someone else wants you to be? What about becoming like Christ? Is it a task that is impossible? Can we actually be like the God son? Music is a great way to express yourself and your feelings, to explain yourself in a more creative way.

According to the PCUSA Study Catechism, we are told that the mission of the church is to bear witness to God's love for the world through Jesus Christ. To be out of tuned to God and the sotry he has began to write for your life, such identity the church calls us to have, one in Christ, may seem foreign and even scary. However, the more we are authentic with ourselves, realising what REALLY matters in our lives, we will indeed begin to experience the love of Christ for God has found us and wants us to realize that we are his beloved, that we are loved and nothing can eternally take that away, but we can ignore this and turn our back when we do not want to realize that our true identity does not lie in the hands of others, but in the caring and crafty hands of the creator. He is our belovedness, we are his belovedness. One whom we can actually hold tightly too and know that we won't loose control. Trials and valleys, but hope and joy comes in the end.

Peace, Rest and other Confusing Theological Conversations

Have you ever stopped and looked around at all that surrounds you? Looking at the people that make up your lives. Your parents, your teachers, your friends, your colleagues if you work, and other people that make up your life. Have you ever stopped and looked around to the ways your life is shaped around? Looking at the activities that you are a part of or the things in your life that makes up who you are? Is there ever an end to joining something, becoming a part of, signing up to, and the list goes on. Why is it that we continue to put ourselves through agony in respect to time?

Being busy twenty four hours a day is not a healthy lifestyle. Joining and attending and being apart of everything is not a healthy choice for us to make. But why is it that we continue to find ourselves longing to do "good" and be apart of something that is "good" when in the end, our spirits are broken by it. One of my favorite movies of all time is the movie Tomb Stone. There are many memorable quotes that come from this movie that is based in the days of the "wild west". It stars great actors such as Kurt Russel, Val Kilmer, Sam Elliot and others. I mention this movie because Kurt Russel's character is the famous Wyatt Earp. To get to my point without spoiling the movie, Wyatt Earp is this famous marshal to moves to Tombstone to retire but then gets himself into some trouble by taking on more and more responsibilities. None the less, by it is all said and done, he finds himself loosing many of his close friends, mainly his wife and few brothers. In fact, his brothers die due to Wyatt Earp's involvement with the law. A man of "honor" comes in to settle down, only to find himself not escaping the demands of his popularity and cries of society.

What about your? Where is that you can find peace and rest? Where is it that you can find a place to retire for a short while? Or have you been deceived by the culture of our day to be involved in so much that you simply cannot find time to find rest? When you do find time for rest, in what ways do you feel new life come to you? How is it that your body becomes resurrected? Does that Christ that is the Prince of Peace play apart in your life? Or is he simply a god that you come to sit in and listen to on Sunday mornings?

Our Christian faith is much about conversation. Community is key in the life of a church and one of the spiritual body. You see, everything about our faith is for community. We hear the famous Bible verse, John 3:16, but why do we limit Christ saving grace to just this verse that if you continue on with verse 17 that Christ did not come just to save YOU but rather to save the WORLD and not condemn it. But where does all of this play out in your life? Many people get turned off by the saying of, "my personal relationship with Christ" but I cannot help but to argue that this must be better in the sight of our Trinitiarian God than those who faithful to the building of church rather than the Body of Christ that is the Christ. Because you simply go to church does not make you a Christian, or a follower of Christ. Just like attending a St. Louis Cardinal Baseball game does not make you a St. Louis Cardinal. One simply is a spectator that has no say or control of the organization of the baseball team. Christ, God, Holy Spirit, it is not a organization but often times the way we approach God, we turn him into just that, a country club feeling.

In 1 Peter we receive words of encouragement from the writings of Peter while he explains that we are all indeed going to go through these times of fiery trials and rough patches. In verse five of chapter 1 we read in his letter that God and his mighty power will protect you until you receive this salvation, because you are trusting him. This is in response to the previous quote that our priceless inheritance is in heaven for us, pure and undefiled, waiting for us. So when we trust in the Lord our God, we will receive this salvation, the hope we have of the eternal life. Much discussion on theology can be had here as we bring up the issue of salvation, eternal life, etc. but my main point here is that we are to put our trust and our hope in Christ, the one who came to bring Hope, Peace, Love and Joy. if we find ourselves, molding our lives into something that can be tarnished, that can be defiled and that can be rotten, then where is the joy in life? Christ is not a genie, God is not like the genie from Aladdin, but he loves us more than we can ever know, and if we claim to love God but do not love our selves or others, then we are simply liars. If we claim to love the Lord our God with all our soul, strength, mind, but put our hope and joy in earthly things, then we are simply liars.

What we need in our lives is love. A love that can not be found in anyone or anything. A love that comes from a god that cannot be seen. Although we may not see him, we trust him, knowing His story and his demonstration of love for us. Christ my friends, meets us daily but we find ourselves too busy and living in a fear of being like "them" that we simply miss him. Find Christ, seeing Christ, and being Christ goes deeper than any social club or showing up on any particular day. Much is given and much is required.

Let us get away from hypocrisy, jealousy, coveting, and backstabbing this season, and begin to fulfill the longing that sits in our hearts with the love of God, that was made possible through Christ Jesus. May we follow in the footsteps and bask in the light of the one who suffered for us, only to find ourselves becoming last and not first, lowly rather than exalted and praying rather than complaining. In the words of the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Philippians, "No, dear brothers and sisters, I am still not all I should be, but I am focusing all my energies on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead. I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us up to heaven." Live the life of Christ, don't just hear about it and pretend to do it. Love those who need love, lay aside all selfish ambitions and begin to discard everything so that you may have all of Christ.

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?