February 29, 2012

Dear Family of faith,
Happy Leap Day! Why add the extra day at the end of February instead of at the end of the year? Well, before Christ was born the Romans began their year in March (which is why we have those strange prefixes for our months: Sept, Oct, Nov, and Dec (for the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th months respectively). That left February as the last month of the year, and thus the extra day needed was added then. Since this day exists on the calendar only every four years, I hope that you are doing something special to celebrate!
How is your Lent going? I have been pondering the changes that I need to make in my own life. Yesterday I heard a man say, "All my life other people have been telling me what to do, who to be, and where to go. From this point on I'm going to be the one in charge of my life!" He was lamenting the influence of home, church, and bosses on his life and was now living "footloose and fancy free" in a tent and moving around whenever he pleased. Although I have felt that longing for freedom like he did, I couldn't dismiss all the influences in my life as robbing me of my own dreams. Parents taught me much; the church gave me spiritual life; and the people I have worked for have financed my homes and family's needs. It so easy to be critical of others when the bondage we feel inside is really self-imposed. In my experience, those who aren't who they want to be have to look first at their own souls and the messages they tell themselves. Maybe Lent can be a time for that-- for realizing that God wants you to be real and for figuring out how you can let go of undermining that gift. Being real is the key to contentment and a joyful life.

February 22, 2012

Our Ash Wednesday worship was quite a contrast with last Sunday's Mardi Gras celebration during worship. Ash Wednesday and Mardi Gras Sunday are two opposite poles of our Christian experience-- the one somber and reflective, the other joyous and carefree. But isn't that just how life is? Don't we always live somewhere between the poles? Lately I've been hearing a lot about the discouragements and fears of people, about surgeries and illnesses and worries for the future. Even the cloudy weather has added its own dimension of darkness to our lives. Rather than curse the darkness, maybe we should greet it with anticipation as a time to 'lay low' and reflect on our lives. When we get to thinking that we have a problem bigger than ourselves, instead of falling into despair, we ought to look with expectation to God, pondering how God is going to help us out of something we can't handle on our own. The Ash Wednesdays of life lead us to trust more. The Mardi Gras Sundays are times of praise for what is. We need both.

February 15, 2012

Dear Family of faith,
I called my mother for Valentines Day last evening. She was glad that I did. "I was hoping that you would call," she said. Then she expressed disappointment that none of her grandchildren had called. She had expectations that didn't pan out, and it saddened her. I have dealt with a lot of people in my life who had expectations that were unrealistic or unattainable or just plain didn't work out. Some of those people have become obsessed with the unmet expectations, never quite able to let go of what they wanted and didn't get. It leads to all kinds of "baggage" in people's lives because they started with certain assumptions that were never going to come to fruition. Parents have expectations of their children which don't work out, so they live with disappointment. Spouses and partners have expectations about each other which never materialize and they feel cheated. Employees have expectations about a job that don't prove realistic. Retirees have expectations about what life will be like in their "golden years" and it's not at all like they envisioned. Unmet expectations result in everything from depression to anger. A lot of life's mental and emotional stress comes from them, and it would seem to be better not to have any expecations. Yet expectations also drive our passions. We dream big and plan large. Many times things don't work out, but once in a while they do. If we expect nothing, we won't get anything, right? What are we to make of it all? Especially in view of what has come to be called "the entitlement generation" that expects everything they want, how are we to live? My advice after all these years in the pastorate is this: Expect nothing of others that you don't control. You may expect your teenagers to be home at ten and have some say-so in that, but don't expect your neighbor to treat you the way you think he or she should; you don't control that. When we don't expect good things, we are surprised by them; and living in gratitude and delight over the unexpected joys and blessings of life is a far better way to live than to be continually disappointed because we expected more. The only one we can really expect to bless our lives is God; the rest of us always fall short.

February 8, 2012

Dear Family of Faith,
Are you feeling stressed? I had an appointment to see my physician today, someone I much appreciate. In the course of the conversation he told me that didn't know if he could keep going. He said that most nights he doesn't get to bed before 2 a.m. and he wakes up early to be in the office and make hospital rounds. I felt grieved when I heard his words, like someone had punched me in the stomach. The reason that he was being run ragged is because he is such a conscientious man, taking his patients' healthcare seriously, not "just in it for the money." As I reflected on the most dedicated and gifted people I have known, I realized that most of them were overextended. Even Jesus had little time to eat and sleep; one day his family came to "rescue" him from such a lifestyle because they thought he had gone mad. What about you? Do you ever feel like quitting? Last Sunday after worship, Kermit Jackson came up to me and said, "After that sermon I got to wondering what I would have rather been in my life. I would like to have been a golden retriever!" (He has one and knows how they get all the attention without any responsibilities.) Ah, the life of a dog! Some days it seems pretty appealing; yet in the end it's only our purpose in life that gives us meaning. We may burn out sooner than we want, but we can go a lot longer if we know why we're doing what we're doing. I don't think God ever wants us to retire from helping others or being kind and generous or showing the love of Jesus. On those stressful days, take a break; spend some time in quietness and prayer, and pray for those among us who go 24/7 because the needs of the world are great. Just don't quit!

February 1, 2012

Dear Family of faith,
This Sunday we are celebrating your birthday at a special party in Fellowship Hall following worship! I hope that you can be there! We are so excited about the Birthday Blessing Party, and everybody involved is excited about decorating, preparing the food, and welcoming the guests. It's really all about gratitude, about thinking about how old you will be in 2012 and being grateful to God for all those years of life. Sometimes we forget how blessed we are until we see others who are not so fortunate. My educational cruise allowed me to meet some people who made me grateful for what I have in my life. Take the energetic school boys who were selling little bags of peanuts on the pier in Barbados to earn money to buy school books. There was Mary Elizabeth, a weather-beaten and weary, elderly woman dressed far too heavily for the blazing sun, dragging her beaded chokers and necklaces around the beach to make a few bucks to survive. There was the creative rasta man with dreadlocks, peddling miniature steel drums made from used coffee cans, crassly painted and beaten in on one end, on the streets of Antigua. There was Cameron, the enterprizing beach boy who spent his days renting beach chairs and umbrellas and throwing in a free rum punch to get the tourist business on the sands of St. Maarten. Finally there was Jokim, our smiling, perceptive waiter from India, who left a wife and two growing children at home for the past 9 years so that he could spent 9 months each year on the cruise ship wait staff, serving irritating tourists and throwing away enough food each day to feed a small village in his own country, just so that he could feed and clothe his own family. All these people I met made me realize how blessed I am. I didn't have to sell peanuts to go to school. I didn't have to peddle beads or little drums or beach chairs to feed my family, nor did I have to be gone 9 months of every year to do it. I'm so glad that I didn't. I think that's what this birthday party is all about. I hope you will join me and Jill in bringing a gift in your envelope to express in a symbolic way what no amount of money can buy-- that God has blessed us more than we know.