This week’s devotion is from the Upper Room, and hopefully will allow you to reflect on being a productive part of a solution!
Part of the Solution

“It’s a shame people use the side of the road as their own personal trash can!” exclaimed a man coming toward me one morning when I was out for my daily walk. I voiced my agreement while he continued to wave his hands in annoyance at the discarded cans, paper cups, and plastic bottles that littered our road. He shook his head as we moved past each other and continued on our separate ways.

I noticed that he had nothing with him to pick up trash. Neither did I. In that moment, I realized I was not helping to solve the problem. As my daughter once so wisely stated, “Mom, unless you are ready to do something about the problem, quit complaining!” Today’s scripture also reminds me that I can either point a judgmental finger or I can get to work and be part of the solution, leading by example.

It is easy to complain, but solutions require action. I now carry a trash bag with me on all my daily walks. Our road is looking pretty tidy these days, and not just by my efforts alone.

Scripture

Matthew 7:1-5

 

What small action can I take to make the world a better place?

Father God, help us to love our neighbors not just with our words but also by taking positive steps to make the world a better place. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

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Putting It Together

Once upon a time, humans bought furniture at a store. They loaded the furniture into a truck or a van, perhaps even the back seat of the car. Upon arrival at home, the furniture was placed in the house somewhere.  Done.

These days FedEx drops two or three heavy cardboard boxes on your driveway. The driver leaves like a Summer Santa Claus…

With a knowing, smirk of a smile,

He’s waving goodbye,

As if to say,

“Merry assembly to all and to all

A heck of a frustrating night.”

On Monday, I unpacked more than a dozen wicker panels from two heavy cardboard boxes stacked in my driveway. These panels needed to be put together with about 100 bolts. The bolts were vacuum packed onto cardboard, and all looked the same—except there were three different lengths. All the chair panels looked the same, but hidden holes in the wicker needed to be found to differentiate them. The friendly furniture engineers included a disposable, ill-fitting hex key and a flat, weak bolt wrench. Okay, where are the instructions?

Hidden in the wicker folds of a panel I found the instructions. The instructions were in picture form. They were kind of like an adult version of Lego building instructions, but not at all fun. Walking barefoot on Legos would be more fun.

The instruction printing was terrible. I couldn’t make out the step-by-step pictures well. The exact panel and bolts needed for each step was an educated guessing game. To make my adventure interesting, the panels and bolts were not labeled. For example, step 1 calls for bolt size A3 to join together panels D1 and D2. I’m looking at a salad of bolts in front of me and nothing indicates which ones are A3 or A1 or A2. Furthermore, none of the panels has a label. I try to interpret which panel they call for in the steps, and ALL THE PANELS LOOK THE SAME! If I attach the wrong panel, I get to redo all my work…which I did a few times.

I finished with aching fingers, bruised hands, and a few new donations to the cuss jar. The set looks great! Come over and see it sometime.

The instructions may have worked better if someone took the time to clearly write and print the steps. The assembly would have been easier if the panels and hardware were labeled. There would be no guesswork. All would work together smoothly.

I find this project to be a little bit like our Christian faith. Christians have instructions for life (the Bible), but parts of our life don’t seem to match. We hold the Bible to be the cornerstone of our faith, but sometimes we find that scripture is fuzzy on things we encounter. The step-by-step instructions of scripture don’t seem to connect with our lives in a clear way. After all, the Bible is from a place and a time far away from us. In our frustration, we may just put the Bible on the shelf or, worse, we may just give up on God’s words for our lives.

Disciple Fast Track Bible study can help. I’ll be leading an in-depth,12-week journey through the Old Testament this Fall to help us understand where the Bible fits within our modern lives. If you feel like you don’t know much about scripture, this class is for you. If you’ve been a lifelong Bible scholar, this class is for you. Fast Track will help us read and understand the basic stories of scripture and help us apply their principles to our modern lives. I think you’ll really enjoy this study.

So join us this Fall to put the pieces of our lives back together with the God’s instruction book.

Peace,

zack@madisonfumc.com

The Handbook

School starts next week, and Leigh and I are thrilled. I’m sure you are, too. My kids say they never even had a break, conveniently forgetting the grandparent cruise, weeks at Camp Glisson, spend the night parties, and the dozens of days they slept until lunchtime. Anticipating the arrival of her students, Mrs. Sigler, the High School Principal, sent parents a Welcome Back letter last week. It was great letter!

Mrs. Sigler reminded us about attendance, computers, and health requirements. She dedicated the remainder of the short letter to highlight a few rules from the Student Handbook. I can fairly summarize them as the “3 C’s”: Cell phones, Clothing, and Contraband (i.e. vape cartridges, alcohol, drugs). There are other rules about cheating, fighting, and infamous “PDA’s” (Public Displays of Affection) in the handbook but the principal wanted to emphasize the “3 C’s”.

This got me thinking. We all live by a handbook, of sorts, in life. Biblical laws, church doctrines and practices, secular state and national laws, and common-sense wisdom. We literally live by 1000’s of laws, rules, and regulations. It’s our personal student handbook. If you had to write a letter to our community, which ones would you pick to emphasize in your letter.

You might choose one of three lists of the 10 commandments in the Old Testament. Take a moment to read and study the similarities and differences between these lists. (Exodus 20; Exodus 34; or Deuteronomy 5). Even the Biblical writers had a difficult time summarizing the most important 10 commandments of ancient Israel.

If I wrote a letter to the community, I think I would start with the Exodus 20 commandments. The first four commandments are more subjective, so I would probably summarize and focus on the last 5 commandments:

• Honor your parents: Honoring parents and being an honorable parent is important. Functionally, teachers become an extension of parenting and need to be honored, too.
• Don’t murder: Well, bluntly put we need to avoid the language, hatred, and violence that leads to someone to even conceive of murder.
• Don’t cheat on your boy/girlfriend: Yes, I expanded adultery to cheating on the promises in teenage romances. Besides, cheating leads to all kinds of violence and drama.
• Don’t steal: If it’s not yours don’t touch it! This applies to each other’s bodies as well our material things.
• Don’t lie: Integrity and honesty create a trustworthy environment. Also, doing our own work and not cheating helps the teachers help students where they are weak.
• Don’t covet: If it’s not yours, don’t think greedy and lustful thoughts for it. (See the adultery commandment)

Jesus was once asked by a lawyer, “Which commandment is greatest in the law?” Jesus responded, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind…and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:26-27) The details of how to do these greatest commandments is where we get bogged down.

What would your letter to the community summarize from your personal student handbook. Give it some thought and let me know.

Peace,

Zack@madisonfumc.com

Food for Thought

When Jesus talks about food in the Gospels, he usually makes points about grace, love, and hope in the kingdom of God to come.  When I read those food stories, think about the biggest buffets I can imagine. Plenty of food, drink, and perhaps entertainment to take care of all the people who come to the Father’s feast. I imagine…a Cruise Ship vacation!

As you may know, Leigh and I just returned from an amazing 10 day Mediterranean Cruise. We celebrated 20 years of marriage by seeing many ancient wonders of Italy and Greece. It was a memorable and educational trip.

Cruises are well known for being decadent, and the cruise we were on delivered that experience. We ate at all-you-can-eat breakfast buffets in the morning. We enjoyed specialty evening dining at a on-board French restaurant and a Brazilian steakhouse. Pub-style food was available 24/7. We also enjoyed amenities such as pools, spas, dance parties, dueling pianos, and other fun activities. There are always a lot of good things to do on a cruise. Could there be too much of a good thing?

Yes, there can be too much of a good thing. Ten days is a long cruise. On the first days, the breakfast buffet and surf and turf dinners were delicious. However, after about five days, the omelets were underwhelming, the burgers were bland, and the steak dinners were just juicy protein chomping. It’s an ungrateful and entitled thing to say, but I was getting too much of a good thing. The saying is true: “If you eat too much lobster, it will all begin to taste like soap.”

By the end of the cruise, I found myself not even wanting to look at a steak, or a lobster, or a buffet. Too much of a good thing isn’t a good thing.

Maybe this is how people felt when they refused the invitation to the wedding feast in Matthew 22. Maybe after the feeding of the 5000 story, the people just feel fat and lazy, and they were not interested in anything more. Did wedding guests in Cana just saddle-up to the water-to-wine bar and not care what they were drinking? When it’s about food…or rest…or leisure…or really most anything, we can have too much of a good thing. 

Of course, feasts and food in the Gospel stories are metaphors for God’s grace, Jesus’ love, and the Holy Spirit’s provision for us. We will get bored with sumptuous feasts, but the food in the Gospel stories points to something deeper. We can never have too much faith, hope, and love. We will grow tired of too much of a good thing like food but, we will never grow tired of the eternal things like faith, hope, and love. Pray for these spiritual gifts today! (and explore moderation in all things!)

Peace,

zack@madisonfumc.com

Wow!  The dog days of summer have arrived. The last week of June is upon us, summer activities are in full swing, and it is 100° in Madison.  Yet, I walked into a home store in Athens yesterday and saw decorations out for Halloween.  Halloween? That is still more than four months away. HOW can anybody be thinking about fall when we’ve barely begun summer?

Inevitably, seasons will come, and seasons will go. No matter how much we try to hold on to them or wish them away, we eventually learn that nothing stays the same except our God.   Genesis 8:22 tells us that “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” In this constantly changing and often chaotic world, I try to remember these things:

God is present in THIS season, and in this moment.  He wants us to embrace the season that we are in.   There are seasons in life that we love and welcome – sweet chapters with loved ones and peaceful circumstances that we don’t want to pass by.  But even in those good times, we can get ahead of ourselves and spend so much time worrying about the next season that we miss out on the joys of this current and fleeting moment in time.   Or perhaps we find ourselves in a hard season that is so difficult that all that we can do is wait for it to end.  Whatever our situation, we can know that God walks with us, and He will never forsake us.  We trust that God can use even the hard things for good, perhaps in ways we cannot see this side of heaven.  God wants us to find the joy in the season we are in, because true and lasting joy comes from Him, not from our momentary circumstances.

There is a beautiful passage beginning in Luke 5:33 that relates to this. Jesus is having dinner at Matthew the Tax Collector’s house and Pharisees are giving Him grief about all manner of things.  They question him about why his disciples are celebrating instead of piously fasting like John’s disciples. Jesus responds with the beautiful illustration of feasting with the bridegroom while He is present. What Jesus is telling them is this: “ I am here with you right here, right now.  Whatever you circumstance, I am with you, and I am all you need. Now is the time to celebrate.  Now is the time to feast. ” 

A Season does not define us. Regret steals our joy.  God doesn’t want us to hold onto regret about past seasons.  Yes, we should own our mistakes, ask for forgiveness and make amends, but once we have earnestly done that, we are forgiven.  God is in the redemption business.  When Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well in John Chapter 4, she was in a season of shame – she’d had five husbands and was an outcast in her world. There were so many reasons she was not worthy to give this man a drink of water.  Interestingly, the Bible doesn’t even give her a name.  Maybe that’s because we are all the woman at the well. Who of us that has lived long enough has not had a season of regret? A chapter that we wish we could do over?   Yes, we know the woman at the well. Most of us have felt her pain. Jesus already knew all about her, just as he knows all about you.    And he didn’t care about any of that.  He just loved her.  He just loves you.  Hear the beautiful words that Jesus spoke to her.  He speaks them to you too:  “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.”  If only you knew.  If only we knew the gift God has for us, our past seasons wouldn’t matter.  We would not be worrying about the next season.  We would be celebrating the presence of Jesus in the here and now. This, my friends, is the time to feast.