Messages for Our Day by Willard Spencer Updated 6

Remembering John Edgar

I'm thinking of a man by the name of John Edgar. John has been gone for many years. In fact, I had his funeral, way back in the early days of

ministry. John was a carpenter, one who left his 'trade mark' on the homes he built. You could ride through the little hill town in which we

lived and pick out John's houses by the particular style of support under the eaves of the house. The woodwork was not just a simple

triangle, but a tiered work, with several small 'steps' within it. It was not obtrusive nor self aggrandizing. In the background, if you

looked, you could tell that the house was his work.

Friends, We remember some people we knew in the past, even the distant past. You might not even think of their names for years, then suddenly, in a twinkling, there before you stands the person, draped in memories. There are many reasons for recalling John's life, but one of them is that he left his mark on his community. Not that he sought 'immortality' through his craft, this hill carpenter. It is just that good work can still be recognized years and years later. Moving through that little hill town in my extended memory, I can see many of those houses still standing. Some work stands the test of the years. With so many temporary things surrounding us in our culture, here this morning and gone before the evening news at eleven, it is helpful (at least for me) to recall that some things last. This is a thought to ponder as we prepare to approach the manger, and as we near the close of this year of our Lord. Blessings on your journey.

John was thin and boney. with a full crop of wiry white hair that stood up in the middle. He used to kid me that he 'roached' it up when he was

young. I still do not know what that means. Here and there you could see a thin strand of reddish hair, telltale of youthful days. There are

certain behavior patterns associated with red hair, and I wondered if any applied to my friend. Maybe a part of his character that showed up

in ministry, came from the a boldness in his youth. John was a pioneer in ministry. In his middle years, way back in the forties -- when print

media ruled the world and television was just a dream -- John told the folks in his local church that the evangelistic tool of the future was

the movie. He bought cameras and film, projectors and instruction manuals, which he used to ready himself. He then launched a full scale

enterprise (free, donated) to reach out to people through the medium of film. He was still going strong when I arrived on the scene many years

later. Christian films in theaters, and the use of films and filmstrips in church school, had finally caught up with his foresight. Our little

church was ahead of the game in that kind of outreach. A vision effects life. A vision of what you can do to help can reach way beyond your

days and years on this side of the river. My friend's holy boldness in the media still moves me. If he had been around in the early

eighties, John would probably have bought a Mac and started learning how to put Christian software into Sunday School. What you dare to dream can embolden your actions for God, and enrich the ministries of your church. Someday someone will be looking back, recalling your life. May they be able to say, "Now there was a person who led the way in insight and action."

That isn't the whole story, of course. John had a family. I remember his wife, a pleasant person, a great cook. I can see her at church

meetings, working with the women of the church to support the dreams of the faithful. His daughter I can barely remember. Wonder if she is

still living in the St. François mountains that surrounded, cradled, the little community of my early days in ministry. And John was a printer.

He obtained a small electric press somewhere along the way and used it for publishing projects in the church. I was amazed to enter the preaching ministry in a small church where the bulletins were custom printed every week. Thank God for people who see what can be done, and then proceed to do it. Blessings on their memory.

A River and Life

In other days, in other writings, I have explored the river as a metaphor for life. I have reflected that there are 'slow holes,' where the river spreads out, slows down. In these a boater can relax a bit and look at the banks, take in the view of trees and hills, look deeply into the water. Also, there are sudden turns in the river -- turns that can take you into a riffle -- a shallow, fast moving, rock filled section of water, usually with a drop in 'grade.' Occasionally you find yourself in a 'shute' -- a long stretch of narrow, fast water. If you hit a log in a 'shute' you are in trouble. And there is always something new and unexpected coming toward you just around the next bend of the stream. Ultimately, all water flows to the sea. There is a goal, a destination, a final meeting of waters, where the boater arrives at last. These images are still lodged in my brain, though it has been many years since I took a canoe down a crystal clear river, like the Jack's Fork or the Huzzah. In the last few weeks my reflective thoughts have returned time and time again to the fact of the inexorability of the flow. The river flows on, over rocks and hidden logs, through fallen trees. It cuts new banks and washes away old sand bars. There is no holding back the force of the horizontal heaviness that rushes over all obstacles, down the long tilt of the land to the sea. A dam can stay it for a moment, catch the glorified gushing for an instant; but the water flows over the impediment and continues its way along its chosen path. It is unimpedible, irrevocable, and cannot be called back. So life is, friends. We can but ride the wave, share the moments, and give aid to other travelers on the journey, and mark the days till the final merging of all waters, life returning to the Life. May the days be blessed along the way.

A Joyful Sunday

It was a wonderful service. Since retirement has left me free from the pulpit, I find a different perspective on worship. I see it from the 'lay' point of view, of participation, rather that initiation. I find that I really miss baptizing babies and serving communion. I thought it would be preaching; but I am surprised to discover that that part of me seems to feel complete. I would like to preach once in a while; but feel no compulsion. But as a participant I really have enjoyed going to several churches and joining in with the celebration. Last Sunday we had a particularly good time. Didn't preach or teach. Just celebrated the joyful time of worship. The music was a good blend -- started with choruses, two old hymns were included in the instrumental music. A fine pianist brought us toward the throne with excellent music. Then we ended with a traditional hymn. The postlude was a Bach prelude and fugue -- we stayed in the pew to hear it all. The prayers were moving and the preaching was enthusiastic and stirring. There were thirty children down at the chancel for the children's time. So, it was a wonderful time. There is a good view to be found from the pew. Praise God for worship -- that prototypical gesture of the human soul.

The Birthplace of the Fog

There is a place where fog is born. I always just assumed that fog, that wispy ground cloud, just appeared in equal parts in equal places. That is not so. I have seen it twice since beginning this journey by Lake Norman. Tonight was one of those times. It has been raining and storming since late last week. The air is packed with moisture, fogging the lenses of my glasses when Billy the Dog and I ran up the little hill. This evening cooler air filtered in from the Blue Ridge -- running down the slopes from Boone and Blowing Rock, down to Lenoir and Hickory, and on down the Piedmont to Cooter Ridge. As I started up toward the cul de sac on the little hill, I saw the fog being born. It was not on the level pavement where Billy and I walked in the twilight. The ground cloud actually gathered above a certain set of trees in the little pine woods that surrounds our little cluster of houses. I looked twice. Shook my head. Took off my glasses and put them on again. There it was, being birthed out of the darkest part of the pine woods near the top of the slope. Then it flowed toward us and on down toward the lake. It was a birthing and quickening of the mist. The little moon smiled through the slight haze overhead. A whippoorwill gave a lonely cry in the deep woods. I heard the lonesome sound of a train whistle off in the night, hastening to some distant destiny. It was a still moment, a still point, and I new that I had to breathe deeply and say 'thanks.' Now my rationalist friends will shake their heads. They will talk about air currents and temperature differentiation, cold fronts and saturation points. But I have seen the birthing place and know who gives every good gift

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Birthdays Trigger Memories of Long Ago

That is way too long ago to remember anything. The waves of time have swept the beach many seasons since those ancient days -- ancient in my life. But there they are, lodged like a clear vision of the rising sun on a scorching summer day, the memories of my fourth summer. I suspect they have been re-invigorated by having watched our youngest grandson, Dylan, go through his fourth year and into his fifth. We were so very happy to have been close during that summer. He was four (five now and well into kindergarten, a soccer player and in possession of a winning smile.) But my memories go back to a day when the world was in black and white -- at least in the pictures taken then. We have a few pictures left from my childhood, inhabiting a little photo album, the binding soft and splitting with use and years. Still the memories are deeper than images. I can see my sandbox under an old ash tree. The sandbox was the locus of play -- tin soldiers scattered over the sand hills, reflecting the images of battle current in that day. (No, it was not the Spanish-American war! It was WW 2.) The little seedlets fell from the ash tree, like little helicopters, swirling downward to land safely in the sand hills. They added to our play. The ash tree was the pinnacle of our aspirations. If we could only climb its lofty branches, looking out over the whole land, surveying our little kingdoms from that watchtower of wood. The memories of that summer include a little car, one of the kind little ones sat in and propelled themselves with pedals. The clearest memory of the car concerned the fight I had with a neighbor friend over who would use it first, and the shots that followed -- for he bit me on the arm, and he had been bitten by an unknown dog previously. So we both had to take shots, his because of a dog bite, mine because of a boy bite from a lad whose name was Schott. Other memories of that summer gather in droves, piling up like books on a desk, waiting to be opened and gone through again. It still amazes me, and I cannot explain it, that so many thoughts were etched indelibly in me during that one summer. Do we all have one or two summers of childhood that we never forget? Are those days locked in the green-gold haze of summers past, but just under the surface, waiting for our summons? And does the passing of another year trigger those memories for me to re-live those memories of long ago, feeling again the cool sand beneath my feet and the breeze in my face rippling the leaves of a long gone ash tree? I think so.

The Last Soda Jerk
It was way back in the good old days, way back in the sixties, when the world changed and California went from odd to crazy. That was before Star Wars and its endless (now) Disney-like sagas. It was also before the computer revolution brought the power to type without erasing carbon copies into every home. Way back in the early days, before Al Gore invented the Internet and kids grew up with game boys in their back pockets -- not to mention Pocket Monsters and Digital Monsters. (Don't you hate the eyes of those creatures on TV? I wouldn't even watch the animated Tarzan movie because I thought his eyes were evil.) I remember his face -- full of the chiseling lines of the shaping years (Tolkien), he presided with great authority over a little soda fountain on the south side of Kansas City. It was way south -- 69th or 75th street, the years blur the location. But he was the last person I ever saw who could 'jerk' a soda. We would go to the little drugstore from time to time just for his creations. He has been gone many years now, and isn't it strange that someone four decades later still remembers. I've had some good ice cream sodas in the years since. And there is no frozen custard even close to Ted Drewe's in the southwest part of St. Louis, Missouri; but I am remembering the last soda jerk. He would put in some syrup. Then he would add a little ice cream, stirring the cream into the syrup to chill it. Then the foaming of the soda water and more syrup and ice cream. Last of all he would add the 'fizz' to create the high fluff top that were the 'mark' of all good sodas. I can still see, still taste it -- not quite the food of the gods, but in that direction. I have often wondered how much longer after our years in graduate school the old drug store lasted. Probably a few, even after the last soda jerk fizzed his last fountain creation. The big outfits took over and edged out the little guys -- an old story in our culture of constant consumption. Then, as if to try to reprise the true soda days, some venturesome young entrepreneur tried to re-create the old fountain culture, new shiny stools, slick plastic booths -- but they never caught the art, the reality of that bygone day. It exists only in memory now. All the old ones are gone. But once in a while I want to close my eyes are remember when Cokes were 5 Cents and you could buy a Grapette for a nickel, when burgers were a quarter, and when you could see a real soda jerk work for just twenty five cents.

Notes on Retirement, No. 4

Friends, A few weeks ago I sat in church in a filled pew -- filled with Spencers and a couple of Steins. Our son Bill and his excellent wife, Karla, came down for a week end. Karla's sister came up from Atlanta. Cheryl and I sat near them and to Josh and Caleb Stein, two of our grandsons. (It is remarkable that all our grandsons are among the top ten grandchildren of the world.) Our daughter Anne sang a solo and 'nailed it.' We took communion together. My son Bill wore a tie. I did not. I said to myself, "This is what retirement's all about." What a joyful day. We celebrated all week end. Got out on the Lake in a Pontoon boat -- for tubing and swimming. Sat up late in the rocking chairs on our porch. I pray for many days like these were. Blessings on you wherever you are in the journey of days. Willard Spencer

Notes on Retirement, No. 3

Friends, There should be something said about building houses. If you want to experience a pre-view of building a new house, be sure to go to Six Flags (or some theme park) and ride the highest, fastest, most twisting roller coaster you can find there. That will prepare you for the ups and downs, the twists and turns, the slow climbs and the rapid descents of the process of home building. We have never built a house before. I hope not to have to build one again. It is a time of creativity -- sorting colors, designs, plans, and sprinkling them with dreams. Then there is the limitation of creativity -- the money limits, the 'we don't do that' limits, and other various and sundry barriers to smooth processing. I generally am inclined to understatement, so you will know what I mean when I say that I cannot wait to move in, am excited and eager, and can hardly believe it is about to happen; but I would rather have oral surgery than do it again. What do you think of a large planting of Lavender in a back yard garden? May the true Force be with you. Willard Spencer

Notes on Retirement, No. 2

Friends, Another thing I have noticed about the changes occurring in retirement is the getting up routine. For years, yea decades, the alarm has been set at a uniform hour. Each day the electronic rooster has climbed up on the fence and sounded its greeting to the day -- in the dark of short winter days, in the light lengthening days of early spring, in the long steamy days of summer, and in the softening days of autumn gold. Faithfully, without food or water, except the little electric jolts, carefully measured, running captive in tiny wires, the rooster crowed to announce the day. It was at six o'clock a.m. Even on the rare days of holiday the hour of arising seldom was later than seven o'clock. Those days have crumbled into dust, blown away by the searing wind of the Piedmont, merely shadowy memories of times past. No longer do we hear the rooster -- packed in a box somewhere. No longer do we hear the back-up reminder of my faithful wrist watch. The sun does not penetrate the slumber, the domain of death's little sister, until a later hour. Nothing seems to challenge the new experience of sleeping late. It is a surprise. The old hands at this retirement game tell us this only lasts for a short span of time -- a month or two. But I don't know. We like to sit up late and read, and, so far, are blissfully unaware of any need to change this pleasing pattern. It remains to be seen. Light and Warmth, WS

Notes on Retirement, No. 1.

Friends, one of the first things I noticed about retirement is that days are perceived differently. I used to think that there were seven days in a week; but early in retirement learned that there are only two -- today and Sunday. Then, with the flow of river, I came to the idea that while there are two days in the week, they are called today and tomorrow. Now, after experiencing a couple of months of retirement, and receiving the first Social Security checks, I have come to the current conclusion: there are only two days in the week, this day and that day. No, I am not getting disoriented or going over the edge to funny town, just adjusting to an interesting change. I sometimes have thought that retired people have seven day week ends. That's not bad. But really, the days and hours are filled with the usual things: bills, traffic, housing, Krispy Kremes, etc. (Remember that a balanced diet is a Krispy Kreme in each hand.) So there is not all that much change. I could enjoy the process of building a house if I could learn to love oral surgery, root canals, etc. The builders inch along toward completion of a relatively simple project. Just get it done. I won't mention the paperwork. The best thing about retirement is that I get to spend the days with my beloved of 41 years. I am counting on that lasting for the duration. Be good and keep working hard and enjoying your two day week ends. Light and Warmth, WS

Count the Bell and Tremble

Now the day is over. Night is drawing nigh.

Shadows of the evening steal across the sky.

Jesus, grant the weary, calm and sweet repose

With Thy tenderest blessings, may their eyelids close.

Grant to little children, visions bright of Thee.

Guard the sailors tossing, on the deep blue sea.

When the morning wakens, then may I arise,

Pure and fresh and sinless, in Thy holy eyes.

Glory to the Father, Glory to the Son,

And to Thee, blest Spirit, While all ages run.

Sabine Baring-Gould, in Church Times, 1865.

Ah, a much better quotation than Marvel’s line about time’s winged chariot hovering near. "Now the day is over." It reminds us of the shortness of time. Job, in the poetic theodicy bearing his name, says that our days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle. And so they are. Before we know it we are singing with more than casual interest, "Now the day is over."

St. Paul often referred to the brevity of time. In this passage in Romans we hear such phrases as, "Knowing the time!" "The night is far spent!" "The day is at hand!" There were things to be done, and little time in which to do them—lest the day end and we are not finished. Robert Lewis Stevenson pondered the theme:

The morning drum call on my eager ear

Thrills unforgotten yet; the morning dew

Lies yet undried along my fields of noon.

But now I pause at whiles in what I do

And count the bell, and tremble. Lest I hear

(My work untrimmed) the sunset gun too soon.

Stevenson,in Songs of Travel and other verses, XXI

Of course Paul speaks not only of the day being over, he speaks of another great day just ahead. He anticipates the second coming of Christ, that great crisis which he expected. The early church looked for it each day. So, they were aware of the urgency of the hour. The Bible parables of foolish farmer who built himself bigger barns, and of the foolish virgins who failed to have oil ready for their lamps, underscore the understanding of the Day. It was soon. Preparation was urgent.

It may be that the expectancy has diminished over the millennia, but the fact remains: we do not know when God will call us to account. There is a clock tower in Strasbourg, France on which the words are carved: "One of these hours the Lord will come." As the days pass the Day draws nearer. So, life has a double expectancy – its brevity and the Day of Christ’s return. Count the bell. Night is drawing nigh. We, too, must have all things ready.

The last verses of this scripture in Romans are unforgettable because they are the verses through which Augustine found conversion. Augustine led a careless life, floating from one thing to another, until he came to a time of change. It was Ambrose’s preaching that called to him. He was walking in a garden one day. He was distressed by his failure to find answers to life’s questions. He kept saying, "How long? How long?" Suddenly he heard a voice saying, "Tole lege, tole lege." It sounded like a child’s voice. Was it from a child’s game? He hurried to a friend who was seated in the garden. There he took up a volume of St. Paul’s writings: "I snatched it up and read silently the first passage my eyes fell upon: ’Let us walk not in revelry or drunkenness, in immorality or in shamelessness, in contention and strife. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, a one puts on a garment, and stop living a life in which your first thought is to gratify the desires of your Christless human nature.’ I neither wished nor needed to read further. With the end of that sentence, as though the light of assurance had poured into my heart, all the shades of doubt were scattered. I put my finger in the page and closed the book: I turned to Alypius with a calm countenance and told him." (From C. H. Dodd’s translation of The Confessions.

Have your lived all your life searching for something? Has someone told you life is a search not a conclusion? How would a vacation be if you never got there? Life is going somewhere, friends. To say that life is just a search works for a little while, but then we come to a place of choosing, a path where two roads diverge in a wood. And we must choose. To put on Christ! Ah, night is drawing nigh. Shadows of the evening steal across the sky.

‘Tis not in man to trifle, life is brief, and sin is here.

Our age is but the falling of a leaf, a passing tear.

Horatius Bonar 1808-1889

Do not wait until the last leaf is on the branch and it is dark and the wind is blowing.

Willard Spencer

Text: Romans 13:11-14

Moses in the Back Forty

He had Egypt and its court mastered. He was a shining star of the upper classes. His ego was big enough that he wanted to master the Hebrew slaves as well. Then that pivotal event (Are any such events merely chance?) An Egyptian slave foreman was beating a Hebrew slave and Moses intervened with a fierce violence that made him shudder to recall it even years later. He seized the day! He decided in his own time that he would try to free the Hebrews. He killed the Egyptian slave master.

It only took a short time for that event to be known. It came to bud, then to flower, and a bitter fruit. Another Hebrew echoed the rumor about Moses. "You going to kill me too?" Throughout the court of Egypt and the city the rumor flew that Moses was on his way out. Yesterday’s shining boy was today’s shadow. It happens sometimes. Moses watched his carefully constructed world crumble before his eyes. It required some action.

He did what you and I would probably do. He ran. He fled not down the labyrinthine ways described by Francis Thompson in his Hound of Heaven; but to the outer limits he fled. Out into the hills and beyond. Way out there near Flat or Duke, near Cooter or Wayland – that is, beyond the reach of anyone’s concern.

Have you ever visited Midian? (I heard a preacher say that he had been appointed there once.) Would you like it? Would you really like living in a place where the local leaders name was Jethro?

Moses went to Midian and, let us say, grew a beard, put on a baseball cap, and drove a pick-up. We could say, rather, if we were to observe the austerities and sobrieties of staid religion, that he took on local ways. The one bright spot in this whole flight experience was Zipporah. My Old Testament professor, Charles Baughman, who was both preacher and teacher, and would break into a sermon in many a lecture, used to say that Moses and Zipporah might have been called "Birdie and Sonny." They were a match, and Moses left behind his haste and his own time schedule for doing things. He threw away his Franklin Planner, and settled into the slow rhythms of the desert. He got a got with a local sheep rancher and gradually began to change. His feelings, fears, his night dreams of failure were tempered by the fierce wind of the Sinai wilderness.

Then his first son was born. Moses gathered up his old grief and spat it out in the name of that child. It was Gershom. Know anyone by that name? I knew an old preacher in Southeast Missouri who had Gershom in his full name. Gershom means "stranger, alien." He was a stranger in a strange land. Moses began to accept the consequences of his acts and he began to live in that land, the first of his forty year wanderings in the wilderness.

So things changed for Moses. Time heals all wounds, and, a humorist added, "wounds all heals." Healing set in. He found things in the wilderness that were interesting, then fascinating, then uplifting. He found the flower in the rock. His wandering became a time of learning and joy. He gathered knowledge that was to serve him well in another day, when, in God’s time, he would be a deliverer.

His second son’s birth demanded a different appellation. It was "Eliezer" – "God was with me." That, dear friends, is not only a name but a great answer. We remember Moses this day only because he came to that answer, sought, found and fleshed out in that name. Eliezer! "God was with me from the beginning!" His first born was "stranger." The second born was "With me! God was with me!" It was a great change. (Read about the names in Exodus 18.)

This picture of Moses early life is also a picture of you and me. We live between youth and age, between ego confusion and ego integrity; between seizing life and saying, "I am my own and I’ll do it my way!" and giving life to God and saying, "You have been with me all along." Friends, we live between Gershom and Eliezer.

We are like this in our feelings about things. There are times in life when we feel like strangers, alienated and lost, our world in pieces. And then, from time to time, looking back on those rough stretches, we find ourselves saying, "No, No! Not Gershom, but Eliezer, God was with me on that road."

God was with me! It is simple to say. Easy for the intellect to grasp, but to learn this great truth with the heart may require years, tears, and the bending of the will in one holy direction until all our "alienations" are transmuted into the dearly bought phrase, "God was with me all along."

Moses went on to greater things. In God’s time he was to be a deliverer of his people; but that is another story for another day. Today I wish for you this one thing: that somewhere between the hither and the farther shore, between youth and age, between the heady idealisms of Egypt and the tempered vision of a Mount Nebo, you should discover "Eliezer."—that God was with you all along.

Willard Spencer

Text: Exodus 2:11-22

Abraham's Call -- the Voice beneath all Voices

The Wind Beneath the Wind

A biblical scholar observed that the Bible is a book of calls. It is a record of the summoning of people to obedience and action. This divine to human communication gives the Bible its character and value. It is a book of calls.

Note the nature of this call. The voice of God bids someone to give attention to a message. The voice summons one to a particular action or direction. With booming notes of authority, and the accent of love, the voice catches a person where they are -- in a garden paradise, in the temple, by a river in a foreign land. It is a clear call of love. We remember and honor those who responded in faith.

Samuel was called when he was a child. Moses was summoned when up in years, caught by the sight of a burning bush. Isaiah was called in the stillness of the Temple in Jerusalem. Matthew was called in the hustle of daily business. Place and circumstances vary, but the element of a summons to service is unchanged.

This day we consider one such call. "Now the Lord said unto Abraham, 'Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee.' " (Genesis 12:1.) Abraham, son of Terah, was summoned to the Lord's service.

Look and you will see, in the first place, that this call was given to Abraham not in Ur of the Chaldees, but in Haran. Ur was the city where Abraham grew to manhood, a teeming seaport on the Persian Gulf. It was alive with many influences and a large trade. It was alive also with pagan deities. A rabble of godlings was found there. Haran was in the north, on the east bank of the Euphrates River. It was Abraham's father, Terah, who left Ur and traveled to a new location.

Why did the father leave Ur? We do not know. Some scriptures connect Terah with Shem, Noah's son, whose tribe always loved the open world. If this is so we may suppose that Terah was a nomad at heart and felt the call of open country. Perhaps he had been too long in city pent. (Keats.) Wordsworth tells of a country girl walking down a London street and hearing a captive skylark sing, and her longing for the country was so strong that in a moment her heart was home -- with hills and mists and a cottage, and even s stream flowing down the vale of Cheapside. (The Reverie of Poor Susan. 1797.) The human soul can long for the hills and the rivers, the fields and forests. Perhaps such inner thoughts prompted Terah to take to the road, in search of a special place. Whatever the motive, it could have been a need for pasture; it was the hand of God that led Abraham nearer the Promised Land, uprooted him from his settled ways and set him upon his journey. A change in residence can be a change in destiny.

Next, consider that while this movement of people was not in one sense exceptional. In another sense it was quite unusual.

Abraham's day was an age when life seemed fluid. Everywhere there was movement and migration. It was a day of tribal growth and expansion. On the surface, the movement of Abraham and his clan was but another of these tribal wanderings. So in a sense his little line of camels and people was just a part of the roving passion of his day.

On the other hand, there were many reasons for Abraham to stay in Haran. Near the Euphrates there was pasture in abundance. There was food to be had and profit too. Abraham was prosperous. Remember also, as a reason for him to stay put, that he was no longer young. He was seventy-five when he departed for the Promised Land. This in itself would tell us that his craving for adventure had been tempered by the fleeing years. With age change becomes a little less attractive. We become dependent upon familiar comforts. Familiar places! Familiar faces! So it was not just love of change, nor seeking greener pastures, which moved Abraham to cross the river and journey west. Other tribal groupings were following their own inclinations. Abraham was obeying God. It was a most unusual journey. It occurred because of a Call, a summons to belief and action. It happened because of a man's faith.

So let us also consider that this journey could have only happened as a faithful response. He had to hear and believe.

To hear God, Abraham had to silence the voices of the false gods of Ur. He had to separate himself from the culture of his childhood. He rejected many falsehoods, ah but they were clothed in gentle memory. Though false, they were his. How easy it would have been to cling to his city gods and remain unknown. He would have been just another prosperous Middle East shepherd lost in the dustbin of history. He had also to break with Terah's household deities, hill gods with ties to land and harvest. The land gods were deeply rooted in the nomad culture. What a great faith to hear beyond the ties to the world the voice of summons, the words from a greater world.

I stood in the mountains one evening many years ago. I recall the evening. It was calm. The sun had just set. A halo of light held over the ridges. All was still, except, something was moving. Some slight motion caught my vision and I searched to see what was breaking the spell of stillness. It was the Aspen trees -- whose small, delicate leaves had found a breeze no one else could feel. They rustled and quivered in the stillness. They had found the wind beneath the wind. It was there. They found it.

So with Abraham -- in a world gone dark and still he found the still small voice, the gentle wind of God blowing, and his heart quivered in that breath. He broke with the old days, the old gods, and the old ways. He set out on a journey, trusting himself to the wind of God.

And his example is ours to find. By the grace of God in Christ, we too may follow in faith, leaving the past behind.

You can hear the voice beneath all voices. You can extend your senses to feel the silent wind. You can hear that calling of your name. You can dare the journey in faith. You can find yourself filled because fulfilled by the response you give to that summons. He is calling. God is calling your name. You can dare to journey, you really can.

Text: Genesis 12:1-3

The Penitent Thief

How brief are the Bible references to individual human lives. Not much said about the habits, the dress, or interests of people who are mentioned there. There is usually a name mentioned, a short spoken exchange, and a person returns to the anonymity of silence without disclosing details about personality, family, character. It is not that these details are unimportant. They are of great importance to each individual – hopes, dreams, family, friendships, careers, lessons learned and achievements are a few of the important details of life. The Bible mentions few of these not because they are unimportant, but because the Bible, in particular the New Testament, focuses on Jesus the Christ, who he is and what he does for the human soul.

But once in a while, a person stands close to Jesus, and the light of the gospel reveals him for that brief hour, and then passes on following the main character of history. Just a moment – but in that moment, standing in the light of the Cross -- all is revealed that needs be. Clearly fixed for all time are the lessons of those who stood near the cross.

So, we do not wonder at the short space given to the criminal whom we know as the penitent thief. And we understand the efforts of legend makers to give this person a name, a birthplace, many journeys, intellect, his self-control in the hour of death – but these interesting speculations are paled by the one shining glory revealed when he hung in the light of the cross. The author of the Gospel shows us a person passing from darkness into marvelous light, from death to life, from the realm of the Dark Lord to the Kingdom of God.

How had he come to that day? What caused him to be crucified on a Roman cross? Let us use holy imagination and see what we can. Perhaps he was a man turned evil by degrees, a little at a time. Perhaps he had been an honest tradesman, whose trade was ruined by the conquering Romans. Perhaps he was simply outraged by the occupation of the Promised Land by alien rulers. Maybe he was, at first, interested in justice for his people. So, he began a journey toward justice that got side tracked into anger and malice and terror – a journey that was to end on an executioners cross. Look at the lines on his face, etched by malice, they show the narrow passage from violent justice to violent crime. Plunder became his trade. Murder became just a mere incident to a life of crime. He was one of two criminals mentioned – there must have been hundreds more, many of whom were caught and executed by swift Roman justice.

His slow drift toward crime and degradation contrast to the change that marks his last hour. If you look you will see a way to heaven from the very gate of hell. It must be taken with a desperate suddenness – in a flash of insight – the poet says it this way:

For the main criminal I have no hope

Except in such a suddenness of fate.

I stood at Naples once, a night so dark

I could have scarce conjectured there was earth

Anywhere, sky or sea, or world at all.

But the night’s black was burst through by a blaze—

Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore

Through her whole length of mountains visible;

There lay the city thick and plain with spires,

And like a ghost dis-shrouded, white the sea.

So may the truth be flashed out by one blow

And (Guido) the criminal see, one instant, and be saved.

Pope, Bell and Book

So, for the dying thief on the cross – a life of slowly gathering shadow was pierced by God’s light, instantly, near the cross.

His first awakening is fear. His fellow thief jeered and cursed the Christ. A newly awakened feeling answered: "Do you not fear God, seeing you are in the same condemnation?" You are about to die and you are cursing one in the same situation you are in? God’s justice becomes a concern near the cross. Next, conscience stirs, "We deserve what we are getting here." It is what we have coming. It is justice. The reality of God and the awareness of sin are the two great realities ever available to every person. Sooner or later, we must all face them – sooner, and they are the first rays of dawn.

Look again, next his soul wakes up even more. Of Jesus he says: "This man has done nothing wrong." There Jesus was, condemned by the highest court in the land, reviled by the mob below, scourged by the Romans, deserted by his closest, yet acquitted by a thief – a thief whose souls stirs and welcomes the strength of growing light within. It is sunrise for his soul.

Let us not stop now, on the edge of his finest moment. Note with great care the road his growing faith follows, for every one must walk that road if you are to find the light. He says, "Lord!" What a great distance between calling him "man" and calling him "Lord!" Grace bridges the gap between looking at Jesus and calling him just a man, and calling him Lord. And, as the lightning flash lit the whole land, so his faith hastens to completion, for he calls him "King!" "Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

Oh, if we could ask that thief, "Thief, first Christian believer, what did you see through the pain? What did you see through the dripping blood? Thief, how did you see the Lord of life whom we often fail to see? Tell us how you saw the kingdom beyond the cross which no one had eyes to see? Did you see the crown? How did you see that life was not to be lived in violence and strife, but in loving fellowship? We know you did not have time to think it out, but you saw it – saw enough to act. You saw the certainty of life beyond the cross, the light beyond the shadows. O blessed thief, whose soul was swept from the doorway of hell to the open gates of heaven, we cannot equal nor add to your praise. The Lord Jesus gives your reward with his words: ‘Today, you will be with me in paradise.’"

It drives us to wonder. It sends us to awe. It moves us to prayer! We pray for that thief’s ending! – that we too may stand near the cross for one brief hour, that brilliant light dispersing our shadows, that love healing all our deep distress, that mercy luring and leading each of us into that blessed kingdom, where we will join heaven’s host in perpetual praise, where we will cast our crowns before God, lost in wonder, love and praise. Give us an ending like that. And this day, this Sabbath day, let the light of your cross shine on us.

Willard Spencer

Text: Luke 23:32-33, 39-43

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An Invocation for Lent

How can we find our way in the wilderness, Holy God? We do not like the wilderness. We prefer ease and comfort. We even like the sameness of our days, because we are familiar with the routine. How can we stand the wilderness? Teach us prayer and fasting and reliance on your Word, that we may resist temptation. Lead us in these light lengthening days.

In the name of Jesus the Christ. Amen.

A Lenten Prayer -- when we know we are already in the wilderness

Dear Lord Jesus, we are reluctant to go into the wilderness. We seem to be living in the middle of noise and pressure, problems with violence and with people. We hear of dangers from Teddy Bears and shoe bombs. Aren’t we in the wilderness already? Dear Lord Jesus, be with us in the wilderness of traffic and taxes and too much stuff. Let the wind of your Spirit take us to a quiet place, where we may reflect on the daily pressure cooker life we all live. We need space to let our thoughts catch up with our lives. We need a time of Lenten quietness in which we may recover a certainty of who we are – and who you are, Dear Lord Jesus. It was you who survived the howling winds, the blowing sands, the temptations of the devil – pride and show and power. And then angels came and ministered to you. Bring us to a place where we may find ministering angels waiting with the cooling balm of wholeness and peace. Dear Lord Jesus, we long for a true Lenten space, where we may sit quietly in your presence. Let us sit at your feet and breathe deeply of your grace. May your holiness cleanse us from our stress. May your power renew our enfeebled souls. May your life and laughter fill our lives again. Bring us to such a place for a Lenten journey. It seems that would be away from the wilderness – your presence is not wilderness.

Keep us steady on our daily journeys. Help the weakened to stand. Heal the hurting ones who call on your name. Comfort those whose lives have been visited by sorrow. Sustain all parents in their essential vocation, and bless all of us, always. We pray in your strong name, and lift your own words toward your throne….. Pray the Lord's Prayer.

Prayer for Scouts and for Those Suffering Loss

Dear Lord Jesus, Your name is holy, we speak it with reverence. Your mercies are from everlasting, we rely upon them. Your promises are life-giving and true, they put to flight the shadows of fear and death. You are the Faithful One, the Word Incarnate; you are the Name above every name, and in your presence we bow this day, seeking solace from our grief, release from our chains, and strength for our burdens. To you, this day, we raise our fervent prayer.

Dear Lord Jesus, we remember youth involved in scouting organizations. May these groups remain faithful to their original purposes and keep reverence as the base of their laws. Bless scouts and their leaders. Grant them success in all their true endeavors.

Dear Lord Jesus we remember before you those who have newly come to grief. Your resurrection is certain in our minds. The hope you give of life beyond the grave is secure. But show us a ray of your Easter light in the darkness, to give us hope to walk in the truth we believe.

Be with all who need you today. Bring a new season of peace in this war torn world. Enfold all the earth in the arms of grace you hold out to us. Place your Word in our hearts that we may always remember who we are and what to do. Bless your churches, pour out your Spirit upon them, and infuse them with your power to overcome obstacles. Be with all of us – old and young and in between. We give lips and life to your glory. We sing our praise before you and reach out to you with the cherished words of your prayer… Pray the Lord's Prayer.

A Prayer about Approaching the Throne of God

Dear Lord Jesus, our hearts fill with joy as we approach your throne. For you are the light behind the light, the word beneath the words. You are the beginning and the ending. You, Dear Lord Jesus, are the victory beyond the shadows of pain and death. You are the king, and yours is the glory forever. We rejoice to draw nigh to thee.

Dear Lord Jesus, our hearts fill with fear as we approach your throne. For you are holiness beyond any stain. In your light there is no darkness. Yours is the purity of which we may only speak. Your life is ever fresh. Your days are always shining with the sunlight of truth, the laughter of righteousness. You are beyond the approach of ones whose lives seem so short and so shadowed. We try and we fail. We suffer defeat of our strongly held intentions, loss of our fondest dreams. We are so weak and weary. Our lives do not measure up to the standards. We cannot live the holiness to which you have called us.

Dear Lord Jesus, in your mercy abundant, draw nigh to us: cleanse us from our sins, wash away the old feelings of grief and pain. Polish the image within, tarnished by hard living here in this wilderness. Let your light shine on us. Let your smile fall on us. Reach out your hand to us that we may rise again and renew our journey home, filled with forgiveness and the holy manna on which you feed us. And hear every prayer, answer every need. In your strong name we stand, Dear Lord Jesus, and in your name we pray your prayer… Pray the Lord's Prayer.

A Prayer for the Words We Need to Hear

Dear Lord Jesus, We give you all praise and honor and glory, O Most High God. To you we bring the gathered breath, the sound, the words you have given us. We lift our voices to join the whole of creation in solemn, joyful songs of thankfulness. To you we listen. Toward you we lean, reaching with the inward ear to hear your heart words. We gather together in your sanctuary, bowing on holy ground, and place our lives before you, hoping for a word of grace.

Dear Lord Jesus, speak to us words we need to hear this day:

+Speak peace to the troubled in mind and heart.

+Speak joy to the despair that steals from us our happiness.

+Speak a call to holiness to all who need to leave behind them useless and harmful patterns of life.

+Speak healing words to those suffering from illness, the terrible scourges of this fallen world.

+To those alone bring companionship they need.

+For the violent, break the chains that bind them to the evil cycle of anger spilled over into abuse.

+Bring peace to the peoples of the world, ever fearful of the stranger, the alien, the different.

+Bring a hope that does not fade to those who are giving up on life.

+Bring the sunlight of everlasting life to those who make their final journey to the river.

Dear Lord Jesus, we are grateful for your love given to us, your wandering children, journeying thorough this wilderness of high pressure lives. We thank you that we can rest in your shadow, finding security, peace, and joy – joy, like the living waters flowing from your throne. We thank you for your sacrifice and for your presence with us this day.

Be with all who need you. Speak your wonderful words and grant us the joy of praying your sacred prayer…….Pray the Lord's Prayer.

My New Associate Pastor

I had a new associate Pastor a few Sundays ago. It happened without the knowledge of the Staff Parish Committee. The Bishop or the District Superintendent had not been approached. Sometimes events just occur in the course of destiny – or, as Christians prefer, in the unfolding of God’s will. But, without too much theologizing about it let me tell you the story.

I did not realize it at first. Then I looked behind me to see him robed and following me in the chancel area. There was a cross about his neck. We checked the pulpit mike, the lectern mike, and also paused before the altar – to pray and check the candles too. Then he accompanied me down to the sanctuary floor (actually the "Nave") and we greeted people and shook some hands. Then, as quickly as he had appeared he "flew" off into the direction of my study where his grandmother was waiting for him.

Well, you know now. It was my four year old grandson, Dylan, who had on his blanket robe – tied around his neck, flowing over his shoulders and draped down his back. He had his Taize cross – the one he likes to wear every Sunday, it is his Church cross – hung around his neck, and for a few moments I had a new associate Pastor. It was one of those blessing moments, quickly forgotten by swift moving children – or maybe remembered in a small corner of the mind, a time of two people moving in holy space together, linked by blood kinship and by the blood of Christ that unites all of us. I know that it will linger in my mind for years to come.

Light and Warmth,

Willard Spencer

Prayer About Stars, Breath, and Closeness

Dear Lord Jesus, the worlds stretch out above us. We see the glimmers of those distant places, shining brightly in the night, across the vastness of space. We look up and give them little or great thought. We reflect upon the clarity of the sky and from time to time we remember that your are the Creator of all the worlds, and that even the light of distant stars join in the dance of praise of all the worlds before your throne. And yours is the power and the kingdom and the glory forever.

Dear Lord Jesus, we awake in the morning and become aware again – aware of the light, of thought, of pressing needs that flood in upon us as we emerge from the domain of death’s little sister. We awake from sleep and become aware of breath. We breathe in the precious air, pausing at the end of the inhalation to let every ounce of the life sustaining elements reach deeply into our lungs. And we thank you for that awakening breath. May we breathe your Spirit, becoming filled with your life-giving presence. And yours is the power and the kingdom and the glory forever.

Dear Lord Jesus, we bow before you in this place, holy ground, touched by tears, hallowed by prayer, lifted by laughter and joy. We reach out for your healing touch. We strain our hearing for your saving word. We long for a closeness that is nearer than breath, with you, Dear Lord Jesus. And we ask for lives that join in the great dance of praise before your rainbow throne. Today, Dear Lord Jesus, for Thine is the power and the kingdom and the glory forever. In your name, as you taught us so we pray...Pray the Lord's Prayer.

A Prayer for New Years and Winter

Dear Lord Jesus, The cycles of the heavens have completed another revolution and returned to the point of beginning. We call that point the New Year. It is a time after Christmas when the ice and snow appear, when the frost is heavy on windshields, when we really look for the least hint of spring. Dear Lord Jesus, even the seed catalogues are a welcome sign in winter. We build fires. We light candles. We drink hot chocolate – all to hold out the cold. The stubborn season has made stand in our land. But you are beyond the bitter cold and snow. You are in glory at the right hand of the Father. So, remember us in this land of ice and chill and send your Spirit to be with us on this journey we now mark as a New Year.

Dear Lord Jesus, help us to remember you. Renew our certainty of your love for us. Remind us of our frailty and your rescue. Steady us to stand again on the road to forever, to journey toward the everlasting day, where there is no ice, no snow, no pain, no suffering, no death. Quicken our steps. Give us smiles of hope, laughter to overcome the obstacles ahead of us in this New Year.

Dear Lord Jesus we remember those who have finished the journey. Bless their families with warm memories. Be with all who need you. Show us signs of your presence during this winter season, as the light slowly bends toward spring. Touch us this day with renewed promises to keep. Hear every prayer. We ask because of you, Dear Lord Jesus, and because of you we pray together…..Pray the Lord's Prayer.

Entering Advent -- A Dance of Hope

Dear Lord Jesus, We enter today into a new landscape on our journey to your kingdom. We enter the season of Advent. Yes, we bring with us the familiar symbols, the candles, the music, the decorations, the familiar colors on the altar; but this is the only Advent 2001 we will pass through. This is another of those familiar, yet different locations on the journey home. This place is filled with the growing light from our wreath of candles, with feelings of hope, spoken as we light them. Here we find a longing for certainty in a world filled with too much information and too little certainty. And here, within these walls, we experience the intense longing for your return. We need you with us on the journey. Show us your face. Make this a place of grace. Fill our hearts with the overwhelming knowledge of your unceasing care. Tell us you love us. Lift the heavy burdens from our spirits. Pry us loose from unnecessary bonds to this mad world. Give us more light to see the true path. Sing to us that we may hear more clearly your wonderful song. Endow us with a will to face today and tomorrow and not turn aside from this journey to the Promised Land. Bring us laughter. Bring us the unfettered joy of the children – their sounds, their hopes, their dreams. Protect us from the ravages of the evil one. Place in our steps a lightness, a dance of hope, to carry us through another unfolding of time. We look for you and believe will return. Hear every prayer, especially the prayer we offer together… Pray the Lord's Prayer.

Prayer of Glory and Shame

Dear Lord Jesus, you are the glory coruscant; you are the Light that shines in every darkness. You, Dear Lord Jesus, are the radiance by which we see, the source and enabling of our vision. And we are your human children -- the glory and shame of the universe. We bring glory through triumphant song, in resplendent praise, in anthem and hymn, in laughter and in fervent prayer. We bring glory to you in the continual service given to your hurting children near and around the globe. We give you glory.

And we give you shame, Dear Lord Jesus, in the vapidity of our faith, the weak condescension to worldly activities and values. We are shame because we care, but hardly enough; we believe, but not too deeply. We sit around and wait for something to happen, and let the days slip by, moment by moment, losing our chances to serve you. We fail to tell others of your good news. We ask forgiveness and fail to forgive. We miss much of the joy of your creation in our ceaseless quest for stuff. We break your Sabbath for the sake of our children but expect you to bless them. We are shame. We know more about the TV sitcom characters than the people next door.

Dear Lord Jesus, forgive us again, your glory and shame, and start us on the road once more. Fill us with a fiery faith that will not falter in the long race of life. Show us the path. Strengthen us to endure. Keep us humble and in good humor.

Bless all who call your name this day and hear every prayer, especially, we pray, these holy words we send to you... Pray the Lord's Prayer.

Dear Lord Jesus, we thank you for Bittersweet and pyrocantha, for Burning Bush and Sumac, for yellow hickories and red maples. For all the clear signs of fall in the hills and throughout the land, we give you thanks. We thank you for the soft days at the end of a season of change, the warmth of the waning sun, the clear blue of the firmament. Before the winter is upon us we pause and offer our prayer of thanks. For all your blessings we are grateful.

There are interruptions in a soft season: moments of sudden, fiery death. They remind us of the brevity of life and the importance of using it well. Be with those who mourn the loss of loved ones. Speak to us again the words of life: whosoever believes in you shall not perish but have everlasting life. We believe and affirm this faith for all our partings.

We remember before you all those who have gone through surgery recently: speed their recoveries. We pray for those who have broken bones: may they knit quickly and strongly. We ask for courage for all who need it today; life can be very scary, and change, even needed change, is difficult. We ask for hope for the despairing -- Lord we need a vision of meaning for the days to come. Let us not just go through life with no sense of purpose, no destination. Show us again your mercy this day. You have already done that just by calling us to come before you this moment. Be yourself to us. Call us by name. Tell us you will not forsake us, and bring us all, at the last, to the portals of your everlasting Kingdom, we ask in the sweet name of Jesus, our Savior and Lord, who gave us soft words of prayer…..Pray the Lord's Prayer.

A Prayer For All the Saints

For all the saints, who from their labors rest, who Thee, by faith, before the world confessed -- Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blessed. Alleluia. Alleluia. We sing the ancient songs, Dear Lord Jesus, lifting word and melody to you this day, for you are the theme of all our singing. We remember the great cloud of witnesses surrounding your throne, countless hosts who, throughout the ages, have served you well, and witnessed in the face of hostile armies, godless empires, before thrones and principalities and all the powers of darkness. We thank you for their memory. It gives us courage to stand strongly in our day -- to stand for you.

Dear Lord Jesus, we remember those faithful in recent times, who bore the cross, prayed the prayers, led the revivals, gave up home and lands for a mission field unknown to them. Like Abraham, the missionaries went to a land of which they knew little, they endured great hardships, and often died young. We remember their great faith.

Dear Lord Jesus, we thank you for family and friends who have set examples of faith before our eyes -- fathers, mothers, grandparents, relatives, friends, teachers, Sunday School Superintendents, pastors, musicians, and many others. They have made real the gospel to us.

Help us, Dear Lord Jesus, to be faithful in this our day. Help us to be witnesses worthy of your sacrifice, filled with your spirit, little lights in the present darkness. We remember the past, and we journey with you into the future. To you we offer every prayer, especially these sacred words…Pray the Lord's Prayer.

Daily Devotion for October 23 - Jeremiah 26:20-23

This passage is a sad aside in the middle of a chapter full of trouble. Jeremiah had been seized by the priests, prophets,
and other leaders of the land. His life was in danger. In the middle of telling this tale, the story stops while the writer tells
a second story, of the death of the Prophet Uriah. Hardly anything is known about this obscure prophet. He spoke in
the name of the Lord. He said the same things that Jeremiah was saying. When the king sought to kill him he fled into
Egypt. (Any New Testament bells ringing?) But in this case the king's thug, Elnathan, found the prophet, and brought
him back. The king had Uriah killed with a sword. His body was buried with the "common people," that is, in an
unmarked grave. Such events are a part of the history of Israel of which we are not proud. They are recorded as a
reminder of a time when the people of God forgot to worship the Almighty. It is a warning to us about the terrible
things which can happen in a culture where God is forgotten, edged out by secular thought. Think about it.

Other daily devotions, for every day of the year, can be found at http://home.earthlink.net/~willardspencer/singjoy.html

A Prayer for Continued Learning

Dear Lord Jesus, The days hasten on, week by week, toward a known destination. We rejoice that you have revealed to us the direction of life, and we thank you that all our daily journeys take us closer home. You are the Lord of life and death. You are the light that shines in the darkness. You are welcome to the traveler and you are rest for the weary. We praise your holy name and ask your blessing as we bow before you this day.

We stop here on the journey of life because in this place there are showers of blessing. Here is an oasis of living water, a place where hope abounds. Open our eyes to see your delights and open our hands to receive them. Fill our hearts with your uplifting sounds. Feed our souls on heavenly bread.

Help us to help others this day. We remember before you those who have suffered from vicious violence brought to our doorsteps. We remember them with prayer and deep breaths, sighs of sorrow and longing. Lift up their memory so that we might not forget.

Dear Lord Jesus, we pray for this land, a land of freedom and liberty. May we use our strength for justice and hope for all peoples. Unite us in our common humanity -- the fact that you have created all of us and love all of us. Let us hear the cries of the poor, the dispossessed, the homeless.

Be with all your children this day. Lighten their burdens. Heal their diseases. Bring new thoughts, new learning, and new approaches to sustain us on our journey this day. Keep us ever learning from you. We pray in your strong name, and offer the words of your sacred prayer….Pray the Lord's Prayer.

A Prayer Remembering Jesus' Power to Change Things

Dear Lord Jesus, You are the life of world, the vibrant force of growth and breath. You are the power whose very voice brings forth the dawn, whose word shapes formless chaos into light and darkness, sunlight and moonlight, dry land and seas. It is at your call that human beings find that wonderful awakening moment of breath, light filling our eyes with vision – so we greet our real birth day and every day of this earthly existence. You are the Word and the world was made through you. We praise you this day and bow before your throne, for you are enthroned forever as King of kings, Lord of lords.

In the unfolding of our days, we tend to forget your power. You walked on the waves of the sea before you commanded them to be quiet. You, Dear Lord Jesus, accepted the offering of a child, blessed the little loaves and small fishes and fed the multitude. You brought light into blind eyes and simply to touch the hem of your garment brought health to one whose strength had seeped away. You healed the sick. You raised the dead. And you, Dear Lord Jesus, faced the last enemy, death, and rose again in glory one Easter dawn. You made the mysterious journey through the grave and were glorified with life. We can forget your power to bring change. Remind us that our lives may and can be changed by your word. We bring them before you this day. Change our lives. Heal our diseases. Expiate our guilt. Remove from us the fear of failure, the fear of the unknown, and the fear of evil. Bring new vision to our old eyes and raise our sights. Show us the light of your glory, shading our eyes with your grace, that we may see what to do and choose to let you change us again. Be with all today who need your word, restore to health those who are ill, and hear us as we you’re your prayer together…. Pray the Lord's Prayer.

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Prayer for Forgiveness

Dear Lord Jesus, We thank you, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, for all your magnificent mercies. For the deep blue of an autumn sky, for the slight shift in hue of the oaks and the clear color of the maples, for the crisp air we breathe early in the morning, the sun just climbing over the hem of the sky, for all these mercies we give you thanks. You are the fount of mercies; every good and perfect gift comes from you.

In your mercy you have called us to forgiveness. You have washed us clean. You have removed the stain of our misdeeds and the deeper stain of our failed opportunities. You are the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. Our hearts leap with gladness and our heads bow in gratitude for your forgiving love. You accept us as we are and lean us in the direction in which we should grow next. Thank you, Dear Lord Jesus.

Help us, in this season both sere and green, to turn our attention toward others who need our forgiveness. Enable us not only to be on the receiving end of grace, but on the giving side of forgiveness. May we forgive ourselves for our own failures. And help us to forgive others as you have forgiven us.

Keep us hopeful and filled with confidence during these changing days of light and shadow, these swift-passing moments of life. May we reach out to others in peace and unity. May we see the caring moment just as it appears before our eyes. And may we always rejoice in you and your mercy. Be with all who need you this day, we ask in your name and offer these sacred words…. Pray the Lord's Prayer.

Prayer for Those Hurt on the Running Stream of Life

Dear Lord Jesus, the momentum of the day pulls us toward the distant shore. The earth tilts and the sun slips south, shortening the day, multiplying the night, and we flow down the swift river, through the riffles, past the sunken logs, gaining speed as we catch the full current of time. The days draw us onward, Dear Lord Jesus. We scan ahead, looking for river marks, pointers you have left us, little signposts of creation, icons of redemption. We cannot see beyond the bend. The river swings away, out of our earthly vision, but we know that you are there. You are the end. You are the goal. This entire journey through the days and years, this journey is toward you, to you, home.

We thank you for this immense journey. We thank you for your Spirit guide. We thank you for the companions of the long journey, and we thank you that you refresh us on the way.

Dear Lord, Jesus, we pray for those injured along the running stream of life, crushed on rocks or sunken logs, caught in the intruding debris of chaotic adversaries. Lift them with your caring strength, and heal them, and set them again on the river, or, if the hurt is beyond what breath can bear, beyond the beating of the heart, then swiftly take them home, Dear Lord Jesus. We commend them you your love and care.

And keep us in your sights, Dear Lord Jesus, as we negotiate the next turn in the river. Watch over us. Sustain us, and let us always remember your unfailing love, your unfading hope, and that when we finish the journey we will be home.

Hear us, Dear Lord Jesus. Hear our heart words to you, and hear the sacred words we now pray together….Pray the Lord's Prayer.

The Pharisee and the Tax Collector

Who said that if he had a long enough lever and a place to put the fulcrum he could move the world? I’ve been trying to remember all week and my old History of Philosophy text has been used as a Christmas tree stand. So who? (It was Archimedes of Syracuse, who lived around 250 B. C., a great mathematician, a designer of war engines, and the one who stated the theory of displacement that all of us learned in High School Physics -- the principle that states that any body completely or partially submerged in a fluid is acted upon by an upward force which is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the body. He was also the lever and fulcrum guy.) With the right tool he could move the world. That is an ancient word that seems to describe much of our own day.

We are Archimedes heirs. We tend to believe that if we have the right tools we can do anything. We can solve any problem. We can, in the words of the classic song, "Climb Every Mountain!" We can do anything. It is lodged in the ethos of our culture. At the heart of this belief is a faith in technology. The right technique will conquer all.

We have all benefited from this belief. In my own life experience, I have seen Smallpox eradicated in our land. It was a surprising revelation when someone told me that I no longer had to be vaccinated against Smallpox because it had been eradicated. Same with polio. And when a friend had an artificial vein implanted in his leg that functioned as a part of his circulatory system I thought it a miracle. We’ve gone from black and white snow to high definition TV. We have gone from erasing two or three sheets of typing paper with pieces of carbon paper in between to the simple delete key of our desktop computers. We have seen many benefits from the belief in technique. There is absolutely no doubt about the good brought to us by our faith in levers and fulcrums, steam engines and search engines, by pacemakers and organ transplants, by antibiotics and rocket engines. We have improved the world, but have we improved the people? 'Tooling' people is tougher. Remember when the cartoon character Charlie Brown said, "I love humanity, it's people I can't stand!" We can't seem to "tool" our way to better people. There is a story in the Bible about two men who tried that. They tried to engineer their lives to produce just what they wanted. They chose their different styles, crafted their self-image and created themselves two contrasting life-styles. They they both ended up in church on the same day -- so they both needed something. Their techniques for "tooling" their lives getting shabby.

Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up close and prayed, "God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get." The tax collector, standing afar off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying "God, be merciful to me a sinner."

I certainly like the Pharisee. He was bold. He was forthright. He evaluated his own actions and stated them clearly. He put his qualities on the table. Wouldn’t you want to be like that? He wasn’t an extortioner. He wasn’t an adulterer. He was not unjust -- here was a just man. He voluntarily fasted twice a week, though the law required only five times a year. He was a tither! He tithed of all he received in order to be certain that the tithe had been paid on all he owned. (Remember that the law required that the tithe had only to be paid once on goods – the Pharisee tithed to be certain that payment had been made on everything.) He was a giver. He was living above the moral standard of his day – and above the dominant morality of our day, which is encapsulated in the word "whatever!" He was a pretty good guy. You would be glad to have him on your committee, on your advisory board, on your board of directors. He was an exemplary person. So far, at least, wouldn’t you prefer the Pharisee? Pretty good image!

The tax collector, on the other hand, was a collaborationist with a foreign power. He extorted as much money as he could squeeze out of any subject. He was a low-life who shouldn’t have even been in the holy temple. And he was in a bind. If he repented of his sin, he not only has to stop serving Rome – can anyone ‘quit’ the mob? – but according to the law he must restore what he fraudulently took, plus an added 20%, to everyone, to all the people he had cheated. If he repented, he would have to give up his penthouse on Central Park, his limo, his driver, his night club, his season tickets to Yankees games – give up his cushy life and exchange it for living on the street with the style of the street people. No way! And if he proceeds with his repentance he has to bow his head, beat his hands on his chest, and utter an unthinkable word – "I am a sinner." Utter humiliation and degradation to admit being scum, a low-life with nowhere else to go!

Now you might say that it is as easy to be good as it is to be a sinner. Both are just techniques applied to human life. Both do something. Both have outcomes. Both engineered their self-images. Both a sinner and a Pharisee can be wealthy and live pretty good in terms of stuff; but the Pharisee is a good guy. Right? Not exactly.

At the end of the story, Jesus said a disturbing thing. He said that the Tax Collector went home justified rather than the Pharisee. Why did he say that? It would be so much easier on us if he had said that one was a good guy and the other was a scum-bag. Life is simpler that way. Good guys/bad guys! Like the Saturday afternoon matinees of the distant past. Why exonerate the bum?

Because the Tax Collector came to a change point. He admitted that his technique was a sham. It was hollow. It was a good life in terms of stuff and style and it was empty. That is a saving admission. Does that make him better than the Pharisee? No, he just got to repentance before the Pharisee did. The Tax Collector admitted before the Holy One that he was a sinner, living an empty life, and he was ashamed. He cried for mercy. He asked for what he (and you and I) need most in this technique-laden existence. We need mercy like the dry ground needs rain. Our image-making existence was made for mercy. O God! (That’s where to start!) Have mercy on us, sinners. We cannot live with our self-righteous techniques anymore. We cannot live with lots of stuff and tiny, impoverished souls.

When image defines us as people, we lose something. When technique stops being our "tool" and becomes our "god," hollowness takes over the human spirit. T. S. Eliot picked up that hollowness in his poetry and J. R. R. Tolkien in his trilogy. Technique is a good servant; a cruel master. What happens when we worship technique? We often end up image making. We become people whose lives are just pretty pictures, images of the good guy who is self-righteous or the bad guy who is cool.

Friends, when it comes to using techniques to cure cancer and AIDS let us go for it. Lets stand with Archimedes. But when it comes to using techniques to engineer a life let us flee that image-building like the plague. Our life, our hope, our salvation depends upon the mercy of the Living God who is just waiting for us to ask him for real life. He longs to give us the gift of everlasting life. Where are you today? Do you fit the image-builder categories? Have you come to a point of change?

Willard Spencer
Text: Luke 18:9-14

Prayer for the Presence of Jesus in our Troubled Lives
Dear Lord Jesus, We seek you this day with sound and silence, with praise and prayer. We reach out to you as a child reaches toward the safety of its parent’s hands. Our hearts are filled with anxiety and dread until we stand before your throne confessing our sins, seeking your mercy. Our lives are in turmoil until our hearts find rest in Thee. You cleanse us and refresh us. You save us from the restless round of meaningless rituals that make up most of our lives. You lift us from the deep waters and set our feet upon a rock. You, Dear Lord Jesus, place a sweet song on our lips, a song of praise to you, the Living God. You are more than we deserve. You are more than we can say in words seized from the silence of being. You are our hope when nothing else seems stable. You stay with us when all others flee away. You are the ground of our confidence in abundant life. Without you we are lost on a sea of change, surrounded by the waves of noise and violence, tempest tossed by the pride and the arrogance of the worldly storm in which we must live.

So, we reach out for you, Dear Lord Jesus, you are our perfect peace, our hiding place, our refuge, our fortress. O reach toward us in this holy hour. Touch us and teach us in this sacred space. Catch us and shake us and change us here and now. Sooth our fevered brows. Lighten our loads. Heal our diseases. Forgive our iniquities. And we will live in your presence, lean toward you all our moments and years. We will speak your name to those who have not heard or need to hear again your precious promise of wholeness and health. We bow before you and wait your answer, offering only the sacred words you have given us to pray….Pray the Lord's Prayer

A Prayer for the Laborers in the Vineyard

Dear Lord Jesus, We eagerly embrace the journey you give us. We set forth singing your praise. We rejoice in the long days journey into your everlasting sunrise. You are the Lord of the days and years, and you are the goal of our thoughts and actions. We thank you that you are the Alpha, the source of every good dream, of our dearest hopes, and our everyday action. We thank you that you are the Omega -- the end point toward which we journey. You are our guide on this transient passage and you are our eternal home. We thank you this day, this warm Sabbath day at the end of summer.

We bring before you this day our lives, our hopes and dreams. Some of the journey has been pleasant. At times we gain many victories for you. Sometimes life is good and golden. Sometimes we suffer. Sometimes we fail. Dear Lord Jesus, sometimes along the way our dreams get lost, fading away like the mist on the river when the sun rises. But you know our dreams and you take them into your measure of the journey. We thank you for accepting us as we are, frail pilgrims passing through the land between the hither and the farther shore. You give us grace beyond our merit, wages for which we have not worked. So we take heart for the journey. If you love us we can love others and ourselves, we can continue to move toward the distant goal. Help us to renew our steps, to lighten our loads, to place a new song on our lips. We thank you, Dear Lord Jesus, that you love all of us, and each one of us.

Heal the discouraged today. Be light in a dark night for someone. Be peace in a troubled world, filled with violence. Be with those who work hard for a living. You give them their wages too. In your name we pray…Pray the Lord's Prayer.

How's Your Image?

Image is everything! In housing and real estate, it is "location, location, location!"; but in most everything else, it is "image." I had this fact brought home to me with great force a few years ago at a Cardinals baseball game. There was a concert by a local band after the game was over. The few thousand of us staying around, moved down to the area behind home plate to be in a position in front of the band -- which was located between home plate and the pitchers mound. We were into the concert when the insight came to me. I was watching the band, listening to the music, though it was a bit of a stretch to say I enjoyed it. Then I noticed that the people standing around me, including two of our children, were not looking at the band. I followed the line of sight and found that they were looking instead, at the large screen in right field, where an enlarged image of the band was being displayed. The band was right in front of us; but the folks I observed were looking at the screen. It was as if the screen that validated the reality. It was "more real" on the screen, or something like that. That was when I first realized the power of images in our culture. For years and years, it was the power of print that validated reality. It was "more real" if you read it in a book or a daily paper. But the culture had shifted from the page to the image.

Over the years since I have noted that same phenomena in the computer programs we use, the strong emphasis upon cable and satellite TV, and the growing use of large screens in public gatherings of all sorts. When I went to the million-man pray-in held in 1997 in Washington, D. C., there were ten or twelve large screens called "megatrons," that enabled all the massive group to watch and listen to the same preaching, music, prayer.

Even in worship, the post-modern movement is to screens in the worship service. One of the Deans in one of our seminaries, a prolific writer, and a guru of the post-modern church, gives us an acronym pointing in the direction I am trying to illustrate. Leonard Sweet says that worship today should be EPIC. Years ago that acronym might have been evangelistic, prophetic, inspiring, and caring. But today the acronym takes on the following meaning: engaging, participatory, interactive, and connective. Church after church after church install projectors and use walls for screens. We are learning to use the "image" to validate reality even in our worship. It is the "cutting edge" of worship teaching today. When we gather joys and concerns, and greet each other, we are being participatory and interactive. It is a reality of our own worship space.

So, the image is the thing. We have moved rapidly over the years from the old round black and white TV image, with a liberal smattering of what we used to call "snow." To the use of computer screens for typing – images of words replacing the old typed characters from Remingtons, Underwoods, Royals and other typewriters of the past. The spell-check on my word processing software doesn’t recognize most of the old typewriter names. Even our printing, and part of our reading, is done from the screen image. In most church offices the computer on which the secretary works is connected to the printing/copying machine so that what is on the screen can be printed onto the page. In our church office, we have printed at least one Sunday bulletin with a picture in full color – portraying the image of the theme for the day.

And I haven’t even mentioned the Web – that vast resource rich wasteland through which the hunters and gathers of the information age forage for sustenance. It is probably enough to say that one of the major search devices for the Internet claims that when you enter a search into its fields, it searches 1.39 billion websites for your inquiry. What an image-laden day we live in!

The first chapters of the Bible are filled with images – images of light and darkness, dry land and seas, flying things and swimming things – of a great voice echoing over it all at the close of each day, a voice of judgment and pleasure. "It is good."

At the heart of these images is "the" image in which we all stand. In Chapter 1, verse 26-27, we find the words that people were created in an image. We are built upon a prototype image, a built-in image. It is the image of the Living God.

What does that have to do with the fleeting days in which we live? Is there any message from that fact that is given to you and me, standing in the middle of electronic rivers, surrounded with the flow of flickering images, dazzled with the high definition of ever changing pictures of reality? What does the image of God mean today?

It means, dear ones, what it always has meant, that people are important for one reason only. The reason is not that we have somehow appeared in the long chain of molecules and have somehow become reflective of the process. We are not significant just because we have found an appearance of power in possessions or positions. We are not of value because of where we live or what our lineage is, except that our lineage goes back to the primal creation in the Imago Dei, the image of God.

We are unique – not because we have a basic human need to be significant in our own eyes, that is the skeptic’s argument. It is the reverse. Our human quest for meaning is a basic need because it is true – that we are unique, created in the image of the Living God. We are not just grains of sand on an island surrounded by a silent sea. We are not just "animated" grains of sand. We are creations of the Holy One who is personal. Our personal significance comes from the personal God who created us in God’s own image.

Yes, we have bent the image out of shape. Yes, we have forgotten it, perverted it, stained it; but it is still there. We are not nothing. This fact is riveted home by the incarnation. When Jesus came into human life, it was not into a totally alien existence. It was into an existence that had been created by God. When Jesus became one with us it was not just a moral example, a condescension to a lesser being. Jesus hallowed this flesh by coming among us with an acceptance that is still a mystery. We are accepted in the flesh by a Loving God who had created us for himself. There is our meaning and significance in this flittering flow of vibrant images we call the post-modern age. It is not in the images on the web; but it is from the image of God in our hearts and souls. If we remember that, as we become more and more immersed in the images we build with PowerPoint and Front Page and all the devices of this fleeting world, if we remember that – we will not drown in the electronic river in which we all stand. We will not be overwhelmed by the waves of temporary images that appear today and disappear tomorrow. Let us stand on the rock of the faith – where images endure, where time itself is relative, and where the eternal sustains us all.

Willard Spencer

Text: Genesis 1:26-27

A Prayer for A Renewal of the Image Within Us

Dear Lord Jesus, You are the Word who made all the worlds that are and all that ever will be. You are the Son, the only begotten one, living and reigning forever in the wholeness of the trinity. You stir every breeze that pleases. You nudge the stars and they sing together for joy. The whole of the created order kneels before you and gives you praise for what you are, who you are. You are the source and the conclusion of every harmony. Peace is your gift and light is your home. You save our very tears in a vessel. You are light and you shine in every darkness. Your word pierces the darkness, sending to flight the mists of error and of vice that pervade in this world. Your love is the smile that saves us from despair and death. We breathe a breath of thankfulness and dare to utter our gratitude this Sabbath day.

Dear Lord Jesus, someone has said that to be light you either have to be a light or reflect the light. You, Holy One, are the light. May we be bearers of your light! May we reflect your light! May we let your light shine through us in this our journey of days. Dear Lord Jesus, make us fit to reflect your light. Often the mirror in us is obscured by sorrow, by neglect, by despair, by sin. Cleanse us and polish us. Create us anew in your image that we may be true light bearers. Let us shine. Let us glow. Let us be little lights in the cosmic darkness. Dear Lord Jesus restore the shattered mirror within us.

And Dear Lord Jesus, we ask your light for those whose paths are obscure today, for those walking in darkness. Be light to the blind eyes, to the hurting eyes. Be vision to those who think that there is only darkness in this world. Shine the light. Send the beacon ray of hope to all your wandering children. Send light to us, here and now, in our places of deepest need. And we will give you the glory and praise. You are the ever shining One, the Morning Star. Hear our prayers and answer the words you gave us to pray...Pray the Lord's prayer.

The Business of Sunshine

The shadow has power to cause a brave heart to cringe and waver. Darkness wields a terrible weapon! Jagged and poisoned, it leaves wounds which heal only with the strongest remedy. Yet there are wounds of wonder. Awe and joy can inflict a pain as tangible and often weightier than the devices of the dark lord.

One character in Tolkien's novel puts forth these words: "Torment in the dark was the danger that I feared, and it did not hold me back. But I would not have come (on the Quest) had I known the danger of light and joy." (Lord of the Rings, vol. 1, p. 490) This character, whose name was Gimli, had come to know goodness and purity in the life of a great person. To part from this revelation was painful. To take to the road again was as a cruel wound.

I wonder if the pitiful Apostle Judas suffered from the wounds of light. He was in the very presence of light, but he tried to keep a dark place within his soul - a secluded spot where evil still held sway. In attempting to hold on to this, he was broken. Yes, he chose the night, seeking to weave his little threads into the whole fabric of darkness.

Light and joy can wound - but only if we seek to hold on to the shadow. Then healing love becomes judgment and pain. Such a wound should lead us to its own cure. Would you be healed? Seek then the light which cures the shadow. As a highland preacher once noted, "One shadow never yet banished another, for this is the business of sunshine."

The Great Surprise -- God still surprises us

Psalm 147

The reading of this scripture seems very ordinary. (As ordinary as the Holy writ can be.) The reading seems like a still life painting -- everything in proper place and perspective, but nothing alive. There is, at first glance, no power to catch and shake our souls. No wind to sway and, perhaps, to cleanse us! It could be called, 'ordinary.' I urge us to look again. "God, who covers the heaven with clouds." Nothing unusual there. That is commonplace for the rainy seasons we experience earlier and later in the year. Go on! "Who prepares rain for the earth." A bit pre-scientific! No rousing truth. It could be seen as an accepted metaphor. Continue to look! "Who makes grass to grow upon the mountains." There is an extraordinary statement nestled in with the everyday flow of the other quotes. "He makes the grass to grow on the mountains!" Nothing merely prosaic about that assertion! That is a powerful, unconventional statement, a mental tour-de-force, with the power of revelation.

You're not sure? Well, it reads easily enough to be singularly unexciting; but what is missing, and thus missing might muffle the thundering cataracts of this powerful word, is the tone. It is to be read as a shocker, a great surprise. Here is power held in check, a mighty sea held in silence. Let us loose it and see where the tides flow.

To find grass on the mountains is akin to finding springs of fresh water in the Sahara; like unto a Moses finding some longed for Elim after the bitterness of Marah. It is a surprise to find grass on the barren mountains. Grass is for valleys verdant, for prairies and well-watered plains. What a fantastic assertion -- The God of the Hills, the Almighty One, makes grass to flourish in barren places -- like finding violets in a ditch.

Here then is a fore-gleam of the Gospel, one lambent ray of Holy Light, like that which was never before seen on the earth -- like the light that waked some shepherds one winter night. Here, in other words, is a shining truth that God does surprising things.

It was a surprise to the Apostles, who, at least some of them, thought that they would spend their lives catching and cleaning, drying and salting fish. They would live by the little sea, with its many varieties of fish, and would mark the passing of the days and years by the seasons of sun and catch, of net and bait. (I almost said, "sushi.") They were established there. Some owned their boats. Some were part of a family business. They thought that they would end their days with leather-like skin from the drying of sun and wind, deep creased wrinkles accenting the squinted eyes from much work on hot days, that they would have dark tanned skin and backs bent from staring into the depths again and again. They were ready to follow that work into the grave; but another vocation awakened these fishermen. They were to continue to fish, as fishers of people! They did! And grass grew on the mountains.

It was a surprise to the blind man, whose eyes were lost in the "everduring dark". (Milton.) He had forgotten, if he ever knew, what the primrose looked like as it opened. He had forgotten the faces of friends and family. Yes, he had heightened senses to compensate for that loss; but it was a surprise beyond believing when a single ray of daylight pierced his nether night -- hurting, aching, blinding with sight eyes long accustomed to an endless dark. He was surprised to see again. The first sight greeting his restored vision was the face of Jesus, and grass grew on the mountains.

It was a surprise to the Mother who, with her faithful husband, had saved him from the cruel sword of the 'Fox,' that wicked Herod, who killed the infants in Bethlehem. The mother had cradled and taught and nurtured the childhood of the Son of man. The mother had faithfully kept the dreams alive, the dreams of his special destiny, the dreams of God's anointed One. I know…how could she not know the end? But we do not always see the end from the beginning. She was the one who cradled him in her arms after the cruel cross had done its worst. Yes, the mother was surprised by joy when the Easter message rolled through the believers' community. He had won, and grass grew on the mountains.

Friends, God does wonderful things. This Psalm gives us a clue, an intimation of the real blessings of the Living God. He covers the heavens with clouds. God brings the rain in its season. And God makes the mountains fertile and filled with green grasses that ought not to be there at all. What a surprise!

And the believer is surprised as well. You and I are shaken awake by the creative love of the Living God. To know that God can taken the brokenness of our lives, the scattered pieces of failed living, the shards of pain and grief -- that God can find them and bring them once more into a living whole is a surprise beyond our understanding. That God could love us and care for us, that God heals our hearts and fills our spirits with hope for the future, is a surprise to which we can only respond to with praise. God will surprise you! God will take the fissures of faith shattered by doubts and fears, and bring them together into one living breathing new creation, You, made whole, healed of your iniquity (your moral dilemma) and saved from your finitude (your metaphysical dilemma) -- fulfilling your longing for completeness and lifting the heavy weight of the brevity of your years. He, Jesus, is your savior. Yours. He is your savior. And if you will accept Him this day grass will grow on the mountains again.

Willard Spencer

Text: Psalm 147

A Prayer for Doing God's Work

Dear Lord Jesus, The days hasten on, moving swiftly like a river, rushing through riffles, leaping over rocks, hurrying on to its appointed end. We find ourselves at the end of the sixth month of this year, the halfway point of this cycle of days. It hardly seems to have started and yet here we are, well on the journey, deep into summer. And at this juncture, the mid-point of the year, we recall Annie Coghills warning hymn:

Work for the night is coming,

Work through the sunny noon;

Fill brightest hours with labor,

Rest comes sure and soon.

Give every flying minute

Something to keep in store;

Work for the night is coming,

When one works no more.

Help us to labor for you while there is strength and time. Help us to work for the daylight flies, and quickly the evening gathers. Dear, Lord Jesus, may our work for you be focused and productive. Let us not linger too long in the pleasant fields of summer. Let us not over-work, pressing beyond your given goal, taking our own goals for yours and building towers to our own glory. Help us to know your goals and pursue them with diligence and with prudence.

Dear Lord Jesus, be with us this day and this week. Be with children swinging in the park and selling Kool-Aid on a summer day. Be with youth facing into the sun of a new day, feeling the discomfort of change. Be with all of us in the journey of days, and remind us at this mid-point of summer that the days fly swiftly. Bless your church today, and hear us as we join heart and voice in your prayer…pray the Lord's Prayer.

A Prayer for Pentecost 2001

Dear Lord Jesus, on each Sabbath day we turn aside from the work of the week to seek a place of grace. We seek a face we have known across the journey of days. For you, Dear Lord Jesus, we look for you -- not out of any compulsion, external or internal; but out of love we seek you. Your love constrains us to look for you this day. You have called us by name. You have graced us with forgiveness and acceptance. You love us with an infinite love. So we turn toward you this day, seeking your face. In your welcoming smile we find our hope for all days to come. You are the One, the maker of worlds, the conqueror of death and hell. You are the everlasting light. You shine in every darkness, sending fears and doubts to flight. We rest easy in your living grace.

We have asked this day for your Spirit to descend upon us. We have prayed for several young people that your Holy Fire would kindle the flame of faith within their lives, a small flame lasting the length of their days here, a light to go with them on their journey. Be pleased to hear us and grant them your living presence. Be a lamp unto their feet and a light unto their paths. Fill them with courage unfailing and steadfast hope unfading. Grant them power to achieve your dreams for their lives. Give them daily missions in this world of lostness. Let them find others to follow you. Send them to the hungry, the lame, the blind. Let them be light bearers for you.

Dear Lord Jesus, give unto all a new birth, a new beginning, a new blessing of your Spirit's power, in you and through you, and to you we bring our prayers… Pray the Lord's Prayer.

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a prayer for memorial day

Dear Lord Jesus, You are the bright and morning star. You are the sunrise on a cloudless day. You are the beginning and the end. You are our companion in between the beginning and the end. We praise your holy name this day, and give thanks for your mercy, ceaseless as waves of the deep, soothing at the gentle rain on the windowpane. To you we bring our words of praise, our words of need, our unspoken words -- the hopes and dreams of our days. We look up when we are here, at your calling. We lift our hearts before you. We feel our spirits grow light, taking flight, soaring on eagle's wings in the updrafts of your holy wind. Just be with us, and touch us in places of our deepest need, today, in this holy space. To you be praise and honor, power and glory, forever.

Dear Lord Jesus, we remember this day those who have died in wars, giving their lives in defense of their families and friends. We mark their sacrifice with our memories and remember them before you this hour.

Save us from the insidious enemy named despair. With all the reasons to be filled with hope, with all the Words of sacred writ before us, we still may fall before the adversary who tempts us to give up, to lose hope, to quit. Show us your sunlight that chases every shadow, every mist, and every gloom wrapped wraith of despair. Give us hope again.

We ask that you be near to those who suffer this day. Be peace to all whose lives are troubled. Be with families and individuals. Be with the children who dream about warm summer days. Be yourself to all of us, Dear Lord Jesus, and refresh our hearts again. In your name we speak, and in your name we pray your prayer together…Pray the Lord's Prayer.

A Prayer for Lives With Little Choice

Dear Lord Jesus, life seems to be a rotation of opposites -- youth and age, light and darkness, winter chill and summer heat, joy and sorrow, victory and defeat. We move through this your gift of days in the either/or of endless cycles, leading on the final cycle -- death and life. And while we are steadied by your love and boundless grace, we are constantly pulled by the nature of time, by the nature of years, in first this direction, then the other. Over much of life we have little choice. We are prisoners of the flow of the atoms. We are simply along for the ride.

Dear Lord Jesus, show us again the certain choices that you have given us, choices that are real options, open to us, effecting our lives. Show us the choices we may really make, the polarities of grace, that save us from the tyranny of time, that free us from the web of necessity. Give us again the choice of life or death, of grace or dis-grace, of hope or everlasting despair. Come to us this day, Dear Lord Jesus. Speak your gentle words of comfort and hope. Break the shackles of life's set patterns and give us a choice of accepting your freedom.

So, Dear Lord Jesus, may we choose you again this hour. May we walk in your everlasting day. May we find freedom in your smile. May we add our choice to yours -- for life and hope and truth and justice. May we decide again to follow you with heart and soul and mind and strength. May we choose to worship and serve -- worshiping you, O Lamb alive, and serving in your church in your new day. Hear our prayers, Dear Lord Jesus, and hear our prayer together…Pray the Lord's Prayer.

Loaves and Fishes

There are multiple layers of meaning in the scripture before us this day. Were we to look at all of them we would be here most of the day and part of the night. It would be a profitable task that someday we must do – here or on a distant shore. But for this given day, this given hour, let us look at only four of the multiple meanings, and a blessing will be given us for hearing and doing the truth.

The first layer of meaning is the miracle itself – the occurrence and the joy surrounding it. Let us approach this first point by listening to a conversation that could have occurred. Surely, something like this was said:

"We did it! We did it!" shouted the young boy, bounding into his small home near the shores of the Galilean Sea. His eyes blazed with heavenly fire. And on his soul was emblazoned the utter joy of that day.

"Did what, son? What happened?" asked a perplexed father.

"Father, there were thousands of people gathered on the edge of the mountain to see and hear the new teacher from Nazareth. He taught them of his God’s love and of a new kingdom of peace that is now beginning. At the time of the meal, he wanted to feed the crowd; but they had nothing to cook for so large a group. That’s when it happened."

"Son, you talk in riddles. What happened?"

"Father, I offered my food, the five barley cakes and two salted fishes I had in my basket. And he took them in his hands and that is when it happened."

The father sighed. He looked at his son, a handsome lad of eleven, almost to the age of manhood, and he thought, "He is like his mother’s brother Samuel. He talks in circles – around and around until he reaches his destination." He gently placed his hand on his son’s shoulder, looked in his eyes, and said, "Son, tell me exactly what took place."

Their eyes met. Jacob, the young one, smiled, laughter crinkling the corners of his eyes, wrinkling his nose, and said. "It was a miracle. He took my five loaves and two fishes, blessed them, broke them, and fed the whole crowd with them. They all ate and there was food left over. It was a miracle, father. One of the men said, after it was over, that if I had not given my food it would not have happened."

Ari looked down on his son. His old eyes filled with tears that filled his wrinkled skin with little rivulets of water, rushing down his cheeks. He simply smiled at his son and embraced him – a thing he did not often do.

And that is the first layer of meaning. The miracle itself! The sheer joy of one life, giving all, and rejoicing! The boy would never forget, and faithful followers throughout millennia would always remember that sun sparkled day when Jesus sat people down on the green grass and taught them the Words of Life, and fed them the bread of heaven.

This story leads into the dialogue about eating Jesus’ flesh and blood, given for the world. So each time we receive the bread and wine we receive food for eternal life. It is not lost in history; but remembered in every gathering of the faithful – in churches crowded with believers, or in crowded huts where churches, hidden from the authorities, still break the bread of heaven. In lands of ice and snow, in withering tropic sun, in lands where the seasons come and go the miracle is remembered and renewed.

"We did it! We did it!" he shouted. And we catch that childlike joy and smile, we remember and are blessed at the miracle itself. God is always sending life into the wheat and pouring life into the vine. It is a miracle of life when it comes to us, each time. But I wonder if it would happen at all if we did not give ourselves first.

Next, we note the layer of meaning suggested above – that Jesus is the bread of heaven. "I am the bread of life," he said. It is as if he said, "In my person I sustain life, nourish it, feed it. I am the bread, and the bread which I give is my flesh, given for the life of the world."

The one true food that feeds our feelings and understandings, our yearnings and sensitivities is the great sacrifice that Jesus gave on the cross. Christ is our Passover. He sacrificed for us, and you may feed on him in your heart by faith. He will bring cleansing. He will be love. He will bring wholeness. He will be truth. He will be life to you. Feed on the true bread and your soul shall live.

Another layer of meaning is found in the results of that day’s miracle. They all did eat. Let me say it again: they ALL did eat – men, women, children, all ages, all classes! All found the food they needed in the bread that came from Christ’s hands. There are no barriers to the heavenly bread, no walls to keep out the poor, the lame, the blind. No one is excluded from the table of the Lamb. There are no barriers – unless you put one up in your heart. When you absent yourself from the table you are excluding yourself.

And the last layer of meaning is this. It cannot be used up. It cannot be exhausted. Do any of you remember Andee Krueger? He was a member of our church. I held his funeral a couple years ago in this very place. One of his daughters, Rebecca, is the owner of a candy store in San Diego. She and her crew make some of the best chocolate in the world. I order some for my valentine each year. But this Christmas, Rebecca sent us a box of her Meltaway Chocolates, which describes their nature and their end. They melt in your mouth and soon the box is empty. Alas, even the wonderful chocolates leave an empty box. But the bread of heaven cannot be exhausted. It is always replenished. There is enough and more. They all ate and were filled and twelve baskets of leftovers were gathered. Some foods perish with use; but the food, which Jesus gives, multiplies. There is enough for you, always. There is more than enough. And there will be more at the end than at the beginning.

I urge you, though my words are like barley cakes and little fishes, little to offer this gathering of faithful people, feed on Christ, the bread of heaven. Eat and you shall live. He spreads a banquet for you in your wilderness, by your mountains, and feeds you all the days of your journey, and at the last, he takes you to his table in his kingdom, to be with him forever.

Willard Spencer

Text: John 6:1-14

The Leaping Lame Man

No, not from a building, nor even over tall buildings, but he leaps from the ground to a standing position, then walks, runs, and jumps –a leaping lame man. He ran around trees, pausing only to hug them. The small steps up the porticoes he took in bounds of three steps at a time. He stood up on benches, chasing away passive "sitters," with his heavy, hearty laughter. The man, the lame man, cried out loud, reached for the sun, picked flowers and tossed them into the air. He danced and kicked and spun around until those around were certain that he must be daft or drunk. But he was neither; he was free. If there had been "Razor" scooters around in ancient Jerusalem he would have found one a sailed down the steep eastern hill, down into the Kidron Valley, running up the opposite hill called the Mt. of Olives, and then he would have turned around and done the same thing in reverse. Here was a lame man leaping, laughing for sheer joy, and freed from his infirmity, his old earth-anchor. How long had it been? Years? Yes, he was getting older, but time was erased for an hour. He was young again. He could walk. He could leap. And it made them furious.

It was a great affront that anyone should act so frivolous on the Sabbath day. How could any son of Abraham think so little of the Torah that he would flaunt the stated rules? He was going too far, too fast, carrying that…what was it…a mat of some kind? Someone had to stop him, this madman, this fool, leaping and laughing on the sacred day, on the sacred mount. So they stopped him.

Don’t you know the law? Calm down this minute. One more outburst like that and we will have you put in custody. He stopped immediately. The ones who spoke to him were not the ordinary people, with whom he identified himself, not the bakers and binders, the shepherds or the vineyard workers. These loud ones, speaking with authority, were not even the educated ones among the masses; you could tell from their dress, their attitude. They were the elite troops of the culture, the guardians of values, those who set and had the many rules enforced. They were Pharisees and Scribes – theologians and lawyers, a mixture of holiness and power. So he stopped his joyous celebration.

During his interrogation he kept telling them about his previous condition. Yes, he had been lame. Yes, he had been carried daily to the Pool of Healing, where he waited for someone to slide him into the waters when they were "troubled." But there was no one to help. Yes, he had been crippled for thirty-eight years. They hardly knew his face. No one looks at a cripple.

"We will be watching you!" "See that you stay out of trouble!" "If we ever catch you doing this again…" These were the words they said; the words the powerful always say when they are bored and want to resume their façade of authority and power. They are the words a lowly man or woman learns early in life. They are barrier words that mean: "Get back there behind the barrier so we don’t have to deal with you any more." They turned and left, the tassels of their robes sweeping the dusty road, leaving little lines in the dust, lines like miniature walls, dividing the common and preferred of that or any day.

For the first time since it had happened he sat down. In the shade of an old olive tree he rested and let the new born muscles relax…though they quivered with an aching tension, ready to run again. What had happened to him?

It had been another in the interminable stretch of hot days. He was waiting by the pool called Bethesda, watching for the angel to come and stir the waters. Perhaps, he remembered thinking, perhaps this time he would make it to the waters before someone else stepped in before him. But the waters had been silent. He remembered the desert sun glistening on the still surface, no breeze, no stirring of the hot air. The wind he felt did not move the skin of the water, still and torpid in the summer heat. There was something like a breeze that made him look up. And there he was.

(first person)
It was the eyes I first beheld. Those eyes, piercing like a sword pierces bone and marrow, looked upon me, looked into me. I was laid bare before his gaze. He did not ask my name. He did not ask my hometown or education. He asked the one true question of my heart, the question that tortured my days, haunted my nights. He didn’t appear to draw a breath before he spoke clearly to my pain. "Do you want to be made well?" Do I want to be well? What a question. Thirty-eight years without a leap, without a joyful step, and he asks that. I thought about saying something like, "Does the earth long for water?" Or I could have said something like: does the one lost in the dark long for dawn? But I caught my words as I gazed at him. A flip answer would not do. I lifted my head up, as straight as I could hold it, and said, without snapping or rancor: "Sir I have no one to put me into the healing pool. Someone else always is ahead of me." At that he smiled a smile that dimmed the sun in its radiance. He smiled like one who had suffered much and had found relief from the twisting pain. He smiled like he was glad I knew what I needed most, like he was really going to help me. Then he looked down at me and said, simply, the unforgettable words: "Get up! Take up your mat and walk." What struck me into believing them was that they were not words of pity; they were words that stunned the weakness of my distress, that stirred the warmth of life in my weak and trembling limbs. They words were a command. I obeyed.

And so it is that I find myself under this shady old olive tree, whose gnarled branches sketch the shape of my old limbs. I look at my legs now. They look like the legs I remember from my youth. Can it be real? Can this be me? My tears and my prayers mingled on that holy mountain. I give thanks for the change in my life worked by the one who is called Messiah, Jeshua, the one who saves. I must find him again and be ready for his word of command.

And you, friend, are you walking and running? Do you walk and laugh like one set free from earthboundness? Is your heart light, is your smile full and joyful because you have seen and obeyed? Have you been set free? Not every paralysis is of the limbs. You can be crippled in spirit, in heart and soul. I will pray that he come to you and look into your heart and give you his smile and his command. You must obey, and then you will run like an eagle, you will run and not be weary, you will walk and not faint. The power of new life will flow into every part of your being, lifting your days to new glories, opening the future to new joys. My friend, do not miss the joy of it. There is no greater joy than to walk the journey of the years with Jeshua, the savior. He is the one who moves you from death to life. Look for him. Listen to him. And run free in the sunlight of his new day.

Will Spencer
Text: John 5:1-18

A Prayer for Easter

Dear Lord Jesus, we come again to your great day, Easter. This day is the direct outcome of the eucatastrophe of the cross. The forsakenness, the pain, the failing breath led through the darkness to the edges of a new day -- light edging over the hills, chasing mist and gloom. The stone rolled away by the power of the angelic host. And you left the darkened tomb and walked again in the light of day. It was just as you said -- three days in the darkness and then again into the light, on the third day. So, it is your great day! It was the beginning of the everlasting existence that you still enjoy this moment. the early ones did not know what to make of it -- and neither do we, at times. How could someone pierce the darkness and walk again in full, glorious, everlasting life? It stretches our reason; but it is a small leap for our faith. For we have walked in darkness and sin and error until your grace brought us again into the light of life. You resurrected us from sin, from despair, from pride and arrogance, from broken lives and broken dreams. So we know you did what you said, Dear Lord Jesus. You really did. You have been raised from the tome and are alive today -- more alive than any of us. And today, we celebrate your great day! It is our great day too.

Dear Lord Jesus, help us not be distracted by the pretty pastels of this secular world. Save us from competing messages that talk about Easter as if it were something other than what it really is -- your great day. Today let us be glad for the sole reason that you are alive. And we thank you for giving us that victory. Dear Lord Jesus, we respond to your love with your own words...Pray the Lord's Prayer.