A few years ago a group of salesmen went to a regional sales convention in Chicago . They had assured their wives that they would be home in plenty of time for Friday night’s dinner. In their rush, with tickets and briefcases, one of these salesmen inadvertently kicked over a table which held a display of apples. Apples flew everywhere. Without stopping or looking back, they all managed to reach the plane in time for their nearly missed boarding…
ALL BUT ONE !!!
He paused, took a deep breath, and experienced a twinge of compassion for the girl whose apple stand had been overturned.. He told his buddies to go on without him, waved good-bye, told one of them to call his wife when they arrived at their home destination and explain his taking a later flight. Then he returned to the terminal where the apples were all over the terminal floor. He was glad he did. The 16year old girl was totally blind! She was softly crying, tears running down her cheeks in frustration, and at the same time helplessly groping for her spilled produce as the crowd swirled about her, no one stopping and no one to care for her plight.
The salesman knelt on the floor with her, gathered up the apples, put them back on the table and helped organize her display. As he did this, he noticed that many of them had become battered and bruised; these he set aside in another basket. When he had finished, he pulled out his wallet and said to the girl, ‘Here, please take this $40 for the damage we did. Are you okay?’
She nodded through her tears. He continued on with, ‘I hope we didn’t spoil your day too badly.’
As the salesman started to walk away, the bewildered blind girl called out to him, ‘Mister…….’ He paused and turned to look back into those blind eyes.
She continued, ‘Are you Jesus?’
He stopped in mid-stride, and he wondered. Then slowly he made his way to catch the later flight with that question burning and bouncing about in his soul: ‘Are you Jesus?’
Do people mistake you for Jesus? That’s our Destiny, is it not? To be so much like Jesus that people cannot tell the difference as we live and interact with a world that is blind to His love, life and grace. If we claim to know Him, we should live, walk and act as He would. Knowing Him is more than simply quoting Scripture and going to church. It’s actually living the Word as life unfolds day to day. You are the apple of His eye even though we, too, have been bruised by a fall. He stopped what He was doing and picked you and me up on a hill called Calvary and paid in full for our damaged fruit.

Yes I know I set myself up for failure right there.  I had high expectations of my day. I had planned out what was going to happen and how many things would be done by lunch and how I would go and visit the hospitals after lunch and maybe get a walk in before hand bell and choir practice tonight…

Then the phone rang and someone wants to have a meeting…  Why didn’t someone tell me there would be all of these meetings that seemingly have nothing to do with ministry. Most meetings I’ve been to are ways to find ways to keep us from being with the people.  Do we not realize that ministry happens usually not in the walls of the church but when we are out in public with the people. At the gym, the Y, or McDonalds, or the library, or the local pub, or on the streets, in Wal-Mart, or the grocery store. Jesus spent his time at synagogue worshiping but then he spent the most of his time with the people, and not the people he went to church with. He spent his time outside of church with the people where they were in their environment, not asking them to change because he was there, but being there so he could bring God’s love and mercy and grace to them, where they are.

I wonder why we spend so much time in meetings trying to control things, and make everything the way we want it to be.  Why do we try to force our ideals and needs on everyone else around us.  We are not all created the same way, and God loves each of us the same. He gives us all the same grace, and NONE of us deserve it. We are all sinners and broken. And that is truly the wonder of it all, that God love a sinner like me, even though I do not deserve it, even though I let him down each and every day.

Thank you for the cross and for loving me. Help me to be som empowered that I will go and be with your creation where you created it and love it as you do unconditionally…

Happy Birthday Jesus!  Let us celebrate this day, not by wondering at all we have received this day, nor for all we have been given this day, not in the gifts under the tree, or the family gathered around us, but let us celebrate for the birth of our savior!  God stepped off His throne and descended to be among us, just like us, Emmanuel – God with us!  He gave up what was His to claim, and took on our likeness, and our form and came to be with us.  Celebrate this day the most wonderful gift you could have ever received a God who moves heaven and earth to be in a relationship with you!

Happy Birthday Jesus, thank you for coming and giving us your light, love, mercy and grace so that we might shine you to the world, and be in relationship with you, the Father and the Spirit! Thank you Jesus for the greatest gift we ever could have asked for or received, You!

Gracious and marvelous baby born to us this day, come and fill our lives with your love and mercy so we might shine your light to this world that so needs the relationship you came to bring us. Guide us and lead us to live in your light and love, and give us strength of your Spirit to be you in this place. Amen. 

Emmanuel – God with us.  The hope of the world comes to us this night as a baby born in a manger.  A meek beginning for the one who created all of us, and stepped off the throne to come and be as one of those whom he created, so that we might know His love and show forth that love to the world.

As you gather this day, remember the reason we gather with family and loved ones.  A great cloud of witnesses and bountiful love in a family here surrounds us, yet the reason we gather is to celebrate the birth of our savior! This is the night before the birth or Jesus. The birth of the one who saved you from your sins is the reason we gather this day.  This is the reason we have what we have also. God has given us everything in our lives, our families, our children, our parents, our provisions for living, are all gifts from God, and the greatest gift is the one we gather to celebrate this night!

So as we await His coming to us as a baby in the manger, remember and truly ponder that everything you have was given to you by God, and work on understanding that God calls you to work with Him, not as an advisor but as a fellow mission worker in the fields spreading His love.  Allow him to increase in your life, so that when others see you, they see Jesus, and the love and mercy that only He can give.

Gracious and loving savior, increase so in our lives that we are bubbling over with your mercy and grace, so that when people see us, they see You and are moved to be with you in relationship, so that everything you have given us will help to draw all of creation back to you.  Amen. 

Have you seemed to have lost focus on what this season on Advent is all about.  It is only 2 days before Christmas, and all of the plans are in full swing.  Gifts have been bought and wrapped, food lists are being put together and last minute preparations are being made.  We are so caught up in the details of the days ahead, we might have forgotten just exactly why we are doing all of this preparation in the first place.

What is this season about? Advent is the season of hope and expectation where we await the coming of our savior in the manger. The season we wait for Emmanuel, God who steps down off the high heavenly throne to be with us, to be exactly like us. He comes here to love us and show us how to love one another.  But in the hurried hectic days before the celebration we can easily lose sight of what we are celebrating and not show forth that love to our families or those around us. We get caught up in our own worlds, we forget that God was not caught up in the heavenly realm, and stepped out of heaven to be with us!

He will gather us all back together and shepherd His flock. Emmanuel, the baby born in the manger is the reason for the season, and the reason we celebrate!

Gracious lord, help us to remember the reason we celebrate this season, and why we are hurried now in the final days before your arrival.  Help us to not forget that this celebration is all about you! Amen.

The Galatians are relying on works of the law.  They have fallen back on keeping a code and doing a set of rules to make it to eternal life. Paul goes straight at the problem here, and calls them fools!  They were taught that it is by faith, and faith comes through hearing, not doing.  (Now yes faith without works is dead, but works don’t save us, faith does.)

Just as Abraham heard the promise that he would be the father of many nations and he believed! And that was reckoned to him as righteousness.  He was given faith and made righteous for what he believed not what he did! Grace comes to us in the Old Testament!

But how many of us want to say that this has to be done, or we can’t do that that way, because that’s not right.  That is setting up a code, a law by which we must be saved.  If we say anything has to be done a certain way then we are creating a code and not living by faith. God will not be put in a box to be controlled by us.

You fool! Who bewitched you? Did you receive the Spirit by doing works of the law or by believing what you’ve heard?

Remember that our faith comes through hearing and believing the promise to be true.  We can not earn our salvation, as it is a gift of Grace through Jesus Christ!

Wonderful brother who came and died so that I might have a relationship with our father, you alone give me grace, and the faith through which I join you and daddy in this loving relationship. Help me to remember that gift and to allow it to work in and through me so others will see it also. Amen.

Do not gossip, or fight with anyone, because this is not what Christ has called us to do. Because all of us do this naturally. It is self preservation, and we try to build ourselves up and to do this we have to tear someone else down.  But you see in Christ, He has emptied Himself and taken on our form and become obedient unto death, even death on a cross, so that we may have life abundantly!

Christ came and saved us, not because of anything that we have done, but inspite of everything we had done, was doing and will do. Jesus gave us grace, inspite of our inclination to be self preserving, and not look out for the last, lost, little, or least.  The Holy Spirit was poured into our lives because Christ was willing to come here and die for you.  You did not deserve the rich and wonderful gift that God has given you in claiming you as His child through the rebirth in water and the Holy Spirit, yet Christ still did it for you.  So that we might know the saving grace of God the Father and thus treat people as He treated us.  Loving them, not because they deserve our love. But loving them because they were created just like us by God, and are therefore loved by God and deserve our respect and love.

Fight your inner urge to judge others, but love and allow God to judge.  We will all stand before the throne and answer for our own sins and failings.  We will answer for what we have done and not done.  Love your neighbors and speak evil of no one, and thus show forth the grace that God has given to you to others.

Gracious lord, help me to not speak evil of others and to love them as you loved me.  Give me your grace and pour the Holy Spirit in my life so it may be a beacon of hope shining your light so people are drawn to you. Amen.

We are all familiar with this story. Gabriel comes to Mary and tells her that she is going to have a child, and the child will be the Son of God.  Her response is “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”  Now if Gabriel would come to me and say I would have a child (beyond that being a HUGE miracle!) I do not believe I would react the same way.  If Gabriel came and told me anything I think my reaction would be to run and hide. Not to calmly say Here am I…

But that is what is interesting… Mary said here am I.  She did not say here I am.  She was not telling Gabriel where she was, or giving her location.  She was giving herself, as an offering to the most high God, who has chosen to work out His plan of salvation for the entire world through a virgin named Mary.  It is the difference between saying I’m here, and stepping into an offering plate, Here am I, an offering to the Lord. Use me as you see fit Jesus…

Isn’t that what God wants each of us to say? Isn’t that how God wants each of us to come to Him? In fear and trembling we approach the throne of God and say “Here am I, use me as you see fit. Use me as you created me to be used.”

That is what Mary did in her response to Gabriel.  She noticed that God wanted to use her and she knew that He would not let her down, and that He would be her shade and her shelter, and protect her in the storm.  God will not let us down.  We just need to hand Him our lives and let Him be in control.

Daddy God, help me to say Here am I, and give you control over the life you created. Guide us to give our lives over to you and to rest in your shelter, strength and sustenance. Amen. 

Here Paul is talking to Titus about the Jewish people who are saying that Christians must be circumcised before they can be Christians. That old ways and things once thought to be important need to be upheld and brought to the for front.  This isn’t happening today anymore…

We all know that is not true.  All of us, me included get stuck in the way things use to be and want things to be that way always and forever.  But here are some things we need to think about…

The organ was once the instrument of the devil and now a lot of people would say that if you don’t have an organ you are not worshiping.

Many of the hymns Martin Luther wrote were set to tunes of songs sung in taverns. (they were tunes the people knew).

What we know as traditional worship was once the radical new thing that should not be replacing what is tried and true.

Paul tells Titus “To the pure all things are pure, but to the corrupt and unbelieving nothing is pure. Their very minds and consciences are corrupted.”  Everything is pure to those who believe and have faith in their lives and live in that faith which God has given them, but to those who cling to traditions and ways of old, they are hoping in those things to save them and not faith in God.

Allow God to be who He is and use all things created for the glorifying of His name.  Do not cling to past traditions for salvation, but base your life on past traditions to build a glorious way of life in Jesus.

Gracious creator, help me to know that everything you created is good and can and will be used by you.  Help me to not be stuck in tradition but to use tradition as a foundation for a life based in your faith and grace given to me. Amen.