A Lenten Blog for You

I can only imagine what those forty days must have been like.

There he sat, stood, walked, slept and prayed, alone in the wilderness.

When I think of wilderness I think of wild animals, thick vegetation, so thick that at night, you really can’t see anything. I ask myself, could I have done it? Could I have fasted and prayed for forty days in a place that is foreign to me being tempted by desires that would distract me from God and prevent the Kingdom to happen?

Yet, no matter what was thrown at him and no matter how scary it may have been, for forty days, he committed himself to God, fasting and praying and reflecting, all the while preparing for what was to come.

Jesus examined his life and through these particular practices of prayer and fasting, experienced the mysteries of God. We too have the opportunity to engage in the same journey which Christ took and begin to allow room for us to listen to the questions God is asking us. During this season of Lent, I want to invite you to walk with Jesus through his life, ministry and death, and listen closely to the questions he asks you and I. This Lend, may we tend to our spiritual health by practicing in disciplines that will be the drive us this season and which will bring us, the weary spiritual traveler to the joys of Easter.

As you may come to discover, Lent is a time when people often times give something up for Lent. This being a way for people to set aside those things that perhaps prevents them from being aware of the movements of God in their lives and they make a commitment to God. Lent is a time where people evaluate their lives and become more sensitive to the sin in their lives, as mentioned above. It is important though to make sure we balance this time with the awareness of sin in our lives with the remembering of God’s love and acceptance for us and our humanity.

“Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news’” (Mark 1.14,15). Indeed these are the beginning words for the season of Lent. As we find ourselves on this Ash Wednesdays with the sign of the cross on our heads in ash, may we hear the good news, “repent and believe in it” and be made whole in Christ. Let not these conversions stop here but let us allow it to overflow itself into Easter season, the season of new life and celebration! May we remember the original meaning of Lent, as the ver sacrum, the Church’s “holy spring” and see Lent now as a season of punishment but one of healing, for it is the start of the great Easter cycle!

For forty days we are in this season of Lent. I encourage you to think of ways in which you can grow more intimate with God. My hope again, is that you will become overwhelmed with the love God has for your and decide to become a follower of the Way without any hesitations. Come to accept your own death as holy and how God has sanctified it but renew your gratitude to God for the new life that lies in Christ. In what ways, as Thomas Merton put it, do you consider Lent to be a “season of celebration?”

Peace to you all.

Love Discussion 5: Sleeping On a Rock

First Presbyterian Church Youth Ministry
“Sleeping on a Rock”
February 22, 2009
Youth Director Adam R. Quine

**GET A BIG OLD ROCK*

We have found ourselves having this discussion on love now for over a month. We have looked at where it all started, what we are to do with it, how we are to share that love with others. Yet if we are to take a look at what it is that we have already discussed, perhaps we have forgotten one of the most important pieces about love, ourselves. We are reminded by the apostle John that if we do not love ourselves then we cannot love others. So where does it begin, this loving ourselves from? What does this even mean? I think we can go back to the beginning again, Genesis.

It is a controversial character we get reintroduced to as we begin to rediscover the love we need for ourselves. How many of you know the story of Jacob? Why is it controversial? Jacob’s story is quite controversial. He stole his brothers blessing, really Esau gave sold him his birthright and thus became holder of his father’s Isaac blessing. Esau was to receive it but Jacob deceived Isaac and was blessed. Esau then was upset to the point where he wanted to kill Jacob but their mother Rebekah, warned Jacob and he left, escaping death. We Jacob fled and as he was making his way to Haran he stopped and he fell asleep. He needed to rest after a long walk and emotional turn of events.

There he slept, quite uncomfortable actually as he used a rock as a pillow. Then he began to drift off into dream world, and what a dream he was having. As he began to dream a stairway was set on the ground and it reached all the way to the sky, angles of God were going up and going down on it. Then God appeared and was right before him saying, “I am God, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. I’m giving the ground on which you are sleeping to you and to your descendants. Your descendants will be as the dust of the Earth; they’ll stretch from the west to east and from north to south. All the families of the Earth will bless themselves in you and your descendants. Yes. I’ll stay with you, I’ll protect you wherever you go, and I’ll bring you back to this very ground. I’ll stick with you until I’ve done everything I promised you.”

How many of you have ever had some pretty intense dreams? How many of you can say that you had God stand in front of you with an escalator full of angels ascending and descending and was told that you were going to be blessed? You’re dreams are meaningful and indeed dreams are definitely ways with which God speaks to us. But this is not what we are focusing on here. We are focusing on what Jacob does next. Jacob woke up from his sleep. He said, “God is in this place—truly! And I didn’t even know it!” Jacob became terrified and overwhelmed as I am sure we all would be. He began to whisper, “Incredible. Wonderful. Holy. This is God’s House. This is the Gate of Heaven.”

Jacob then, we assume, falls back to sleep. When he wakes up first thing in the morning, he picks up where his stammering beat-box session ended and looks around for the rock. He took the rock he had used for his pillow and stood it up as a memorial pillar and poured oil over it. He then took some oil and poured it over the rock, christening it and saying, “This will be the place called Bethel (God’s House).”

He took a rock, stood it up and all of a sudden, this pillow becomes a place where God lives. A once, profane and useless rock, well I guess I shouldn’t say useless because it was used as a pillow, but nonetheless, this rock becomes an altar, a pillar reminding Jacob and others that this is where God lives. Well what is the big deal with this then? A temple was a place where people knew where the gods lived, a place where heaven and earth meant.

What is so fascinating is how the temple was constructed. Let’s take a little walk to the sanctuary.

Stop and take a minute and look around. Sit still and quietly as you take in all that makes up the sanctuary. Look at all parts of it: the pulpit, the lectern, the baptismal font, the chalice and platen, the bread and grapes, the pitcher of water, the candles, notice how we are sitting, notice the shape of the sanctuary. Everything thing in here, everything that you see in front of you, behind you, to the left of you, to the right of you, everything here is used for a reason. This is no different than the temples of the Old Testament. Turn your Bibles to Exodus 25-30. What we have here is a detailed set of instructions on how this first temple, portable, movable temple was to look. The instructions weren’t to go, get anything you see and put a sheet over it and there you have it, a temple. No, it was much more than that. The temple was a place where the sacred could be met, where the sacred overtook the profane, and where the sacred could me the Israelites, where the Holy God of Jacob could meet us.

We came here to this sanctuary not only to be reminded of where we come and where we know we can encounter God, but we come here to be reminded or even perhaps learn for the first time that our bodies are like this sanctuary, our bodies are like those temples. We posses the divine spark that we talked about weeks ago, thus making us a dwelling place for where God lives. The writer of 1st Corinthians shares with the people of Corinth these words, “your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God.” Remember how we a few weeks ago talked about how we treat others reflects how we treat the Creator? How you treat yourself, will show others how you feel about the One who created you. Every single one of you in here is a beautiful child of God and each and every one of you possesses that divine spark, the Holy Spirit, for your body is indeed a temple.

It does not end there for us though. As simple a concept it is to think about, it is slightly more complicated and more challenging. Turn again to 1st Corinthians 6.12-20.


What was the point for this letter than for the Corinthians? Why did the writer focus much of his writings on the body? For this understanding of the body by the Greeks: “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food.” You see the Greeks saw the body as being only a physical body, thus when you are hungry you go get food and when you are tired, you go and get sleep. You did whatever to satisfy your body’s urges. Yet this is very understanding of the body is why the writer makes the statement of how our bodies are temples, something that we do not use or abuse. He asks the people of Corinth to consider that there is more to life than the next fix. Yet sometimes we find ourselves struggling, not respecting our bodies, being so overwhelmed with our own desires and urges that we begin to desecrate the temples. We begin to over eat, we begin to view our bodies, our own bodies, as objects for people to have, we begin to loose sleep because we worry so much, we hurt our bodies because we are in so much pain, we begin to loose the sacredness of our bodies and begin to treat them in a way that an animal does. You are not a lone though in your struggles.

Friends, you, me, we: are not alone! God created us to be in community with each other. From the same dust we were formed and to the same dust we shall return. You and me, and all of these people, we are creations of God. We are continually being renewed and reshaped and recreated. We are God’s beloved and God’s holy creation. We posses the spark that creates and illumines the church, the temple, our bodies!

May it be so then, that we not view our bodies as simply hot or not, skinny or overweight, clear skin or rough skin, instead may we see it as Jacob saw the rock, a place where God lives. Respect your bodies and know that no matter what shape, size or whatever your body is, above all, it is a temple unto the Lord. Take good care of it and may you too soon realize that you’re not just sleeping on a rock!

March 2009

March 2009 is just a few days away and that means so is Spring! Check out our calendar of events:

March 1st--5-7pm Kirk Night all youth from Kids for Christ through Senior High are invited. We will be having a game night with a Wii Bowling Tournament! Winner will win a gift card!

March 3rd--Bible Study in the Upper Youth Room from 6:30-8:00 pm

March 8th--Middle High Only 5-7 pm @ the Church

March 10th--Bible Study in the Upper Youth Room from 6:30-8:00 pm

March 15th--All Youth Play 5:00-7:30 pm

March 17th--NO BIBLE STUDY

March 22nd--Birthday Breakfast at the Cracker Barrel 8:15 am
Senior High Only Native American Night with Henderson Church
On the 22nd we will hear from Woody Maglinger who is an adjunct professor at Western Kentucky University. On this night we will be joining with the youth from Henderson to learn a little about Native American history. If you are attending the mission trip, it is highly recommended that you be there! 5-7pm Senior High!

March 24th--Bible Study in the Upper Youth Room from 6:30-8:00 pm

March 29th--Movie Night at the church 5:00-8:00 pm

March 31st--Bible Study in the Upper Youth Room from 6:30-8:00 pm

February 2009

It is hard to believe that for some of you, it has been over two weeks since we last gathered together. Although there were some of you whom I have seen on numerous occasions, it is always a good time when all of us get to gather together for prayer, worship, fun, fellowship and of course food. I have missed you all dearly and am anticipating the next time when we will gather together....

Which looks like it will be this weekend! Rumor has it the power will be back on at the church by Sunday evening. Thus we will be gathering again in the upper youth room where we will share life together! I am looking forward to being with you all again!

Here are some dates for the rest of February:
8th--Youth Group at the Church 5-7pm
15th--At the church 5-8pm (Potential Destination Unknown)
22nd--Sr. High Breakfast @ the Barrel 8:15 am
Youth Group 5-7:30 pm (Love)

Senior high, be expecting information in the mail about the mission trip and the due dates for deposits and other important dates. We will be gathering more often to prepare ourselves for the trip and to begin holding each other in prayer.

Until later....

Love Discussion Week 3
“An Image Bearer”
January 11, 2009

LOVE. We are back to the discussion again. Before we begin let’s have a recap as to what we discussed last time we were together.

We did not get a chance to get too much into it for we had other things going on but what was something that we did?
(Recreated the Creation story)

That is right. I wanted us to take time, to think about how we would create the beginning poem and story of our bible. You guys did a wonderful job. The ways in which you represented each step and how you too notice of the difference between the good story. It is important to that we remind ourselves how we are created in the image of God. That our belief on God differs from others in the world and how we do not believe we will turn into God but that we have a divine spark within us, that we are not God and we aren’t going to become him but in some distinct, intentional way, something of God has been placed inside us.

We even began a discussion about how we blow out that divine spark by the ways in which we treat and talk about people. We also mentioned how when we allow our conversations to take us from seeing a person as a child of God and instead, we view them as a “that”.

This lead us into a reality about how the Hebrew’s viewed heaven and hell differently. How there was heaven that belonged to God but we are in control of the earth so we have a choice: a choice to bring God’s kingdom to the earth bringing heaven on earth or do the opposite of that, neglecting the cries of the world and bringing hell on earth. We have a choice. We will always have a choice.
 Hell is when we exploit women
 Hell is when we snicker at someone who is different than us
 Hell is when we knowingly ignore someone who needs help
 Hell is when we pick on someone

Yet there are debates over these things. How whether or not we should encourage our kids, you the students, to overwhelm yourself to the point where you cannot go on. But more controversial is that we even have began to debate whether or not we should carry out some military like actions: bombing, torturing and killing. My question to you is, why are we debating this? What is this saying about us as a Christian people? You see no longer is it about the person who is being tortured, just like it is not only about the person you pick on, but it is about the one DOING the torturing, and the one DOING the picking-on.

This then is where we are tonight. We are children and people of God. We are no longer separated by labels society gave to us. You see, we have a common bond with each other. There is something here that brings us all together. Our first Christian brothers and sisters had a name for this common denominator. They had a work for when they no longer viewed each other as Jew, Gentile, Greek or other. When Christ came, those labels no longer worked. Instead of seeing people in their ethnic races, the early Christians called the new commonality, this new bond the brought these people together, the “new humanity”.

The new humanity were followers of, “The Way”. This friends was what the early Christian movement was called. Before there was Christians, there was The Way. In order for The Way to happen, people had to begin in the beginning. The very same place where we did the last time we talked about God. They had to be reminded that they, like we, are created in the image of God. That God gave us an image to bear. Something that is so precious to God, that when we tarnish this image, sadness overwhelms God. It wasn’t until AFTER God gave us God’s image did we become male or female. Then after that we were giving tasks to do within the Garden, we have something to do, to take care of the world and move it forward, taking part in the ongoing creation of the word. However people messed this up and something else happened.

We began to view ourselves no longer image bearers. Instead we began to move to a different way of labeling people. As time went on and as we were given things to do, people began to spread across the world. It takes years and years of human history to get to the place where these people are from here and those people are from there. Different locations, skin colors, languages, and cultures come much later in the human story. You see, we have it backwards. We begin describing people by their cultural background and their skin colors and their nationalities, and it sonly when we look past these things that we are able get to what we have in common—that we are fellow image-bearers with the shared task of caring for God’s creation.

The new humanity is about seeing people as God sees them.

This is where we are tonight. I want us to begin thinking about how God views us, individually. So this evening, we are going to spend time in reflection as we think about, pray about and eventually demonstrate how, we think God views us. What we are going to do is sit ourselves in front of many artistic opportunities and allow ourselves to pray with paint-brushes, canvases, magazines, and other art related things.

I want you to stop and think about what God was thinking we he created _____________. Use this time to paint a picture of who you are. You can paint an actual portrait or you can paint images that represent how you see yourself through the eyes of God.

In order to love others, you must love yourself. In order to be a new humanity, you must not hate yourself, for it was John who reminds us, “We love because he first loved us”. So tonight, God loves us and we are going to artistically express how we feel God’s love in our lives!

Love Discussion 3: Loving Yourself 1st

This Sunday you as youth will have the opportunity to pray differently. As we continue on with our discussion about love, we will have the good practice of taking time and looking at who we are through God's eyes. For God created us as people in God's image. Thus we are the apple to God's eye. How we view creation is how we view God. How we love ourselves reflects how we love God and others.

Come prepared with old clothes, maybe a picture of yourself but more importantly, come with an open mind as we pray with paint, a blank canvas and 2 1/2 hours of contemplative, communal praying, through art! Our task together will be creating ourselves with art as if we were God. What does God see when we are created and who are we in God's creation?

So time for reflection, hoping, praying, laughing and painting. I'm sure it will be a great time!

January 2009 Youth PresbyNotes Meditation

2008 was an exciting journey for us as a youth group. We shared many great experiences with each other and maybe even made a few good memories on the way. Above is just a collage of some of the activities that we did in 2008 as a youth group.

Stop and give thanks for the ways in which we have seen God moving in our life as a youth group. The ways God has brought us closer together, the ways in which God has brought new faces to our youth group, the many ways God has opened the door for opportunities to go out into the community and serve him, the ways in which God has showed us how much we are loved and cared for. This past year we spent much time learning and trying to figure what community is and what that looks like for a youth group. We had our share of good times and yes, even some bad times. Overall though, 2008 was a year that brought the youth group of First Presbyterian Church closer together. It brought us a few steps closer to community!

What is to come in 2009 for us? What will our community look like as we further explore the topic of love and what exactly it means and looks like? What adventures will we embark on? What will South Dakota look like as we serve a people who has suffered years of oppression and poverty? In what ways will we see ourselves and our faith grow and stretch in this next year? How will we welcome the handful of new 6th graders in August? In what ways are we going to experience God’s grace?

My prayer for us is that we will continue to seek the risen Lord in everyone we meet. That we will continue to work towards community and learning how to LOVE one another along the way. My hope is that we will become a youth group where not only we feel welcomed but our friends will feel it so much that they want to come back. Above all my hope is that we will worship our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as often as we can and through every activity we have. May 2009 become for us a year of Jubilee and a demonstration of the Kingdom of God to the world!