What Moves You?

 I do, I suppose, a decent amount of looking at videos on YouTube.  My viewing ranges from train videos to classical performances by various groups, and everything in between.  I enjoy seeing people receiving life-changing gifts by television “surprise squads” as well as what one might classify as “good news” stories that seldom make the national news, but someone has put on YouTube.  It just depends on my mood at the time and what pops up as suggestions for me to watch, based on my preferences over time.

 I don’t like to take in anything on television or on my computer or phone that might pass for what some would call “real life.”  I don’t care for police TV shows, many of the dramatic shows and movies, or other entertainment that presents what some might like to dish out as real life scenarios.  That may be one reason why I generally won’t go to a theater to see a movie, and many times won’t watch one on the television unless it is an older one on TCM.

 I care nothing for what is advertised on streaming video channels, and seldom watch any television that isn’t a sporting event, an old time TV show such as the Carol Burnett show or reruns of The Honeymooners, or a news or current event report.  Nothing else draws my interest.

 Of course, the advertisers and networks don’t care about me and my preferences.  After all, I’m an old geezer over 65 and not interested in many of the products and services hawked in advertisements anyway.  I don’t care if I have gray hair, wrinkles, or other cosmetic imperfections.  I wear blue jeans most days.  My shirts are usually either nondescript pullovers or tee shirts I’ve purchased at some point of interest on a vacation.  My medical provider knows what medications I need and prescribes them for me.  She doesn’t need the pharmaceutical ads and I don’t either.

 My 1998 Ford Ranger regular cab stick on the floor pickup works well for me and is cheap to operate.  I’m happy with regular Medicare and have no interest in moving to an Advantage plan from someone I know nothing about.  If I need a lawyer, I’ll ask my friends for references…not choose one based on their television ads.  We shop for groceries where we get the best service, not necessarily at the places that offer “fresher than fresh.”.  Our favorite restaurant list is pretty much fixed.

 We don’t buy beer, pricey water, or other things like that which are dangled in our faces regularly in the media.  If we want to get a new ride for the wife, we already have a dealer chosen…one we’ve used for years…and who serves us well.  As for insurance, we’ve used the same company for almost 30 years…and we’re quite happy with them.  I have no plans to buy an Apple watch, switch to I Phone, or change my cell phone carrier or Internet provider.  Hulu, Netflix, and Disney streaming hold no fascination for me.

 Well, I’ve kind of gone off on a big tangent in this Thursday Thought, but you get the idea.  Getting back, now, to what I watch on television and social media, I believe I’m rather particular in what I see and how I operate in life.  I’ve often said that I get enough “real life” in my work at the church, my interactions with my family and friends, and in life in general.  I don’t need to have my emotions ginned up by the latest police show or the newest motion picture drama.  Watching people as their lives fall apart around them and as they try to put them back together somehow is something I see and work with regularly.  I’m grateful for the peace and civility that come over me when I see a good deed being done, a wrong made right, a gesture of kindness and love, or some other piece of goodness and generosity.  I bask in the pleasure of well-performed music, whether the classics, southern gospel, or popular.  And music such as Handel’s Messiah move me in ways that I can’t describe…only experience a well-done performance.

 What moves you?  What are you taking into your life?  You know the now-old saying, “Garbage in, Garbage out.”  That also applies, by the way, to people.  Paul, that great apostle and New Testament writer, had something to say about this.  “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”

 Blessings,

A Christmas Thought

 Good morning !

 During the holiday season, I have a tough time knowing what to say in my Thursday Thought forum.  On the one hand, I should say something about the happiness of the holiday…something about the true meaning of Christmas, the gathering of families, and the generally festive atmosphere.  And it is a great time of the year to renew friendships, foster family relationships, and demonstrate care and concern for others.  We buy gifts for one-another.  Donations to non-profit organizations increase and many people are more in tune with the needs of others during this time.

On the other hand, there is a darker side that tends to come to more to the forefront during this time.  Homelessness is part of that darker side for the lower classes, as is hunger, poverty, lack of medical accessibility…and in the more upper classes, greed, self-centeredness, and lust for power seem to be the thing.  If I talk of the happy things in my post, it seems like I’m ignoring the reality that all isn’t joy and love in the world.  If I talk of the darker things, it seems like I’m ignoring the reality that there is indeed joy and love in the world.

Yes, I know, it’s a conundrum that I’ve sort of created for myself.  I could just choose to ignore one or the other of the realities I mentioned and concentrate on the other.  Many people do that, in fact.  Many choose to be ignorant of the great basic needs of others and try to be in a happy place continually, oblivious to the hurt and pain of the needy.  They’ll party on, continually grabbing at more power, prestige, and wealth with no thought for those in the margins.

Others, however, will concentrate on the ills of society and the plight of the needy.  They will choose to not be part of the happiness that is available…fixating instead on the darker side of things, with a sort of doom and gloom mentality which says that all of society is going into the dumpster unless these issues are fixed.

So, let’s do this.  Instead of either one of those extremes, I’ll concentrate on what I should be concentrating on most of all this time of the year.  That is, of course, the incarnation and birth of Jesus, the Christ of God.

Many call this whole Jesus the Son of God thing fanciful and fake.  Oh, they recognize that Jesus was a real person who lived in the Jewish part of the Roman Empire in the first century; that he was a great teacher and rabbi.  But as far as being God incarnate goes, well, that just goes too far.  A virginal conception is just impossible.  The life and crucifixion of Jesus was a matter of historical fact, but his resurrection…no way.

However, many others have encountered the risen Christ in their lives.  People throughout the centuries have not only acknowledged Jesus as Lord and God, but have placed their faith and trust in him, changing their lives in the process and changing the lives of countless others through their service and love for whom Jesus calls their neighbor.

I don’t know where you fall in all of this.  But I say to you who might not believe the Jesus story.  What if it’s true?  What if it really happened as has been told in not only the Biblical accounts, but also in secular historical accounts?  What if this Jesus really was and is God incarnate?

I know there are many who have relegated that old question, “What will you do with Jesus?” to the trash bin.  But it remains, regardless of your or anyone else’s opinion, one of the seminal questions of all time.  And I continue to believe, even though others do not, that there are but three answers to the question.  That Jesus is an historical figure in the Jewish Roman Empire of the first century is beyond question and established fact.  The same goes for his life of teaching and his crucifixion by the Romans.

So, the answers to, “What will you do with Jesus?” which remain must be those that C. S. Lewis gave to that question in his book “Mere Christianity.”  And I quote Lewis here.

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [that is, Christ]: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’  That is the one thing we must not say.  A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell.

You must make your choice.  Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse….  You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.  But let us not come up with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

 

May your Christmas day be blessed.

Try It...You'll Like It

Good morning and welcome to another edition of Thursday Thought.

 In the last couple of weeks, it has been brought home to me yet again that life is fluid.  Things change.  Circumstances change.  Friends and friendships change.  People change.  Things and people come and go, into and out of one’s life.  Just when I am beginning to feel somewhat comfortable with things the way they are, something happens to upset that comfort, and I have to get used to a new normal of some kind.

 You know what I’m talking about.  The grand daughter who was five years old just a few weeks ago is now sixteen going on twenty five.  Your best friends from high school days not that long ago are gone, having passed away at relatively young ages.  Someone dear to you in your church family has developed an aggressive form of cancer and is undergoing treatment that may well not work.  That young couple you know who married what seems just a few days ago…that young couple is in the middle of shepherding kids through the teen years.  The once-in-a-lifetime trip you went on with your spouse is now a distant, albeit pleasant memory.  Your next door neighbor…the one you have been sort of looking after due to his advanced age and precarious medical condition…he has died and someone else is living in the house now.

 And even yourself…you have changed.  You may be taking medication now for things you didn’t even think about years ago.  You have more specialist physicians in your stable of health care people than you used to have.  You may now have a cardiologist, a nephrologist, a dermatologist, pulmonologist, neurologist, or some other “ologist” specialty that you see regularly now, besides your primary provider.  It’s to the point that you have to use your phone’s calendar to keep track of all the appointments.

 And that calendar is handy for things besides medical appointments.  Because you now can’t rely on your brain to recall other appointments and things you need to do.  So now you put those things in your calendar, with reminders popping up on your screen, in your email, and in your texts.

 And when you look in the mirror in the morning, you see someone you haven’t seen before.  This person is older than I remember.  There’s a double chin right there.  And rogue eyebrow hairs are sprouting in helter-skelter fashion.  It’s a double blow when, as you’re looking in the mirror you note that you’ll never be any younger than you are now.

 OK.  Enough of the negativity.  You long ago have gotten the point about change.  Yes.  As long as there is the passage of time, there will be change.  It just comes with the territory.  But change can be a bright spot in an otherwise ordinary day.  After all, it’s change that blows away the clouds and allows the sun to shine after days of dreary, overcast skies.  It’s change that moves the youngest grandkid out of diapers and into continence.  It’s change that let’s you walk your daughter down the aisle as she marries her sweetie.  It’s change that prompts you to try that new restaurant across town.  It’s change that causes others to listen to your wisdom rather than dismiss you for your youth and inexperience.  And it’s change that mellows your heart, softening it to accept and eventually embrace the words of Jesus telling us to forgive others…to love our God and our neighbor and treat others as we would like to be treated.

 Aahh.  So maybe that’s the key.  Maybe that’s the thing that will let us embrace change instead of fearing it.  Maybe our attitudes toward God and others will color how we think of and deal with those inevitable changes which result in losing friends, needing brain reminders, and seeing an old person in the mirror in the morning.

 Loving God, loving those who for whatever reason and for however long or short of a time come into our lives, forgiving others and treating others as we would want to be treated…with dignity and respect…maybe it is these things which enable us to better accept and yes, even embrace the changing nature of life and living.

 So, as the waiter in the restaurant told the diner “Try it…you’ll like it” in the old Alka Seltzer commercial, what do you have to lose?  If you’re being weighed down by all of the change that is coming your way, make one more change…in your heart.  Loving God, loving your neighbor, and treating others with dignity and respect won’t change things overnight.  But you’ll be glad that you tried it…I think you’ll like what it does for you.

 Blessings,

Thursday Musings

Once in a while I like to stop for a few minutes and reflect on things I’ve experienced over the recent past, thinking about them, trying to put them in some sort of context in life.  It does me good to not only think about them, but sometimes to write about them as well.  This is one of those times when I am writing about things I’ve noticed…seen…heard…experienced…recently.  Some of them are what you might categorize as good; others may well be placed in the sad or possibly bad category.  However, that’s a normal thing, because as you know, our lives do not consist of only the good or only the sad or bad.  Life is complicated.  Life experiences are complex sometimes.  It does one good, I think, to reflect on them from time to time.

 In no particular order, here are some of my reflections.

 I’m noticing more women living on the street nowadays.  It used to be that one might see the occasional homeless woman…usually accompanied by a man…on the street, but it is becoming more common now, and women are walking the street unaccompanied more than I’ve seen before.

We also are getting more women who visit the office asking for assistance who are either already on the street, living in their vehicle, staying in a seedy South Broadway motel, or about to be forced to the street.  Men always have the Rescue Mission to go to if necessary.  Women don’t have that option.  Options for women, and especially women with children, are very limited, and those options which exist are usually full to overflowing.

 I’ve also noticed that the general tenor of the homeless population is growing more, shall we say, coarse over the past few years.  It used to be that even if one was homeless, he or she usually tried to keep clean as best as one could, pick up one’s own trash, and respect the property of others.  Now, theft among the homeless is more rampant than ever, vandalism and trashiness have increased, and in general those we see on the street seem to be of a rougher cut than what used to be.

 The Paxton’s Blessing Box, a wooden box we’ve set outside our building and fill with food and water from time to time, has the past few months been vandalized at least four times…each time the door to the box has been ripped off.  I’m told that this is happening in other areas of Wichita as well to the blessing boxes which have been placed there.  I have to wonder if this is the work of one or two individuals, or if there is something else going on with that kind of vandalism.

 There seems to be a kind of awakening among my church family regarding…how shall I say it…loving God and loving one’s neighbor.  Our fellowship traditionally has been one of adherence to Biblical commands and examples, especially when it comes to how to do worship.  We have always been careful, we say, to “speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where the Bible is silent.”  Of course, there is a lot of interpretation, personal preference, and societal norms that come into play when we decide what it is the Bible is saying to us.

However, we’ve been somewhat more lax when it comes to our responsibility to carry out one specific command found at the end of Matthew’s gospel where Jesus tells us all to make disciples, baptize and teach them as we are going about our daily lives.  We’ve sort of put that on the back burner in the last few decades, but gradually, almost imperceptibly, the command to love one’s neighbor and make disciples is coming out of the shadows and into the light.
Is this the start of a renaissance of sorts?  I don’t know, but I’d like to see where this goes and participate in it in some way.

 And one final thing.  If one dwells too long on news reports and social media, one will come to believe that the world is going the way of the devil and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.  Now, that opinion may have merit since there have seemingly been a raft of mass  shootings, prolonged wars, famine, greed, and so on.

But there also is, if one will just look for it, a lot of good being done by people who are really trying to live out the command of Jesus to love one’s neighbor.  Whether or not these people believe Jesus to be the Son of God is immaterial.  They know, somehow, that loving one’s neighbor as one loves oneself is crucial for the general good of society and the world order, and they are doing what they can in their own corner of the creation to carry that out.  Good on them.

 Well, there you have it…a few of my thoughts of the day.  The Advent season is upon us, and the end of the year is near.  I trust your days ahead will be filled with peace and contentment as you ponder the true meaning of the season.

 Blessings.

The Hope

 

Today was the day that the Friends University Singing Quakers presented the program for the last chapel of the semester on campus.  This is an annual thing the Quakers do, and the public is invited to attend and take in the program.  I’ve been attending for several years, and did so today along with our lead minister, Curtis, and my wife, Pat.

This entire week as been one that has brought its share of bad news.  We have a one year old grand son who has been battling a respiratory illness all week.  The weather has not been very cooperative in terms of pleasant conditions.  Several of our church family members are fighting various illnesses, including long Covid, cancer, and other ailments.  One of my life long friends my age passed away late last week.  Another church family lost their mother last week.  Our office manager has been battling some kind of respiratory illness the past several days.  The list of bad news just seems to never end this week.

I caught a ride to the Singing Quakers program with Curtis.  On the way there, we talked a bit about the downer kind of week we both were having, and I said to  him, “So, where’s the good news this week?”  It seemed that all we had been hearing was the bad.

We didn’t say much more about it then, or later on as we came back to the church building.  And the chapel service, concentrating on Advent and the holiday, was uplifting and beneficial to our souls.  Later on, a small group of us gathered for a prayer time over the lunch hour as we do many Thursdays.  During the course of the conversation there, Curtis said something about the incredible blessings we have.  His thought was along the lines of both as participants in this society and as members of the family of God.  I didn’t say anything at that time, but it got me to thinking of our earlier conversation about the bad news of the last week or so.

Yes, we sometimes are hit, it seems, with nothing but bad news…either for ourselves or for those we love.  Yes, it seems that we endure more than our fair share of bad things happening either to us or to those we love.  Yes, it seems that even life itself sometimes isn’t fair.  Yes, we grow weary at times of the load that is placed upon us.  And, I suppose, we even at times despair of life itself, somewhat as the great Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian church about the times he and others were going through in the first century, “We were pressed beyond measure, beyond strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life.”

But if we step back a bit from the edge of the cliff, we can begin to see the truly remarkable blessings, both physical and spiritual, that are ours to enjoy.  I won’t take the time to try to enumerate them here…you know what those blessings are for you, whether it be family, friends, God’s presence, food and shelter, transportation, or any number of other blessings of this life.  And as we begin to think on those things, the worries and cares that have been pressing upon us seem to be shrinking in scope and size.  Oh, they are still there, but there is now an alternative thought process taking place…the process of thanksgiving for God’s providence and love.

And as we continue down that road, those things which we label as bad news become opportunities for service and sacrifice…we have the opportunity to demonstrate the love of God within us and our love for both God and our neighbor.  We are better able to sort through the issues of the day, work with God to formulate a plan, and find the strength and wisdom in Him to carry it out.  And the world, or at least our corner of it, becomes instead of a harbor of bad news, a place of hope and blessing.

No, we won’t ever create a perfect world…a perfect society…a perfectly healthy environment.  But as we partner with God, we can show the beauty of His handiwork to others and we can do the most important thing of all…introduce Jesus Christ to others in ways they may have never known.

So, at the beginning of this Advent season, we know that even though we may have to face those things we don’t like or want in our lives, we also know the hope of the coming of the Messiah and what that beyond-incredible blessing has done for us and for the world.  And we celebrate the hope that is found there.

 

Blessings,