October 5, 2009
GOD IS WAITING TO BE FOUND
You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
Jeremiah 29:13
This is the third verse of our 2009 Stewardship theme - God's Plan - Our Hope based on Jeremiah 29:11-13. The God who has a plan to prosper and not harm us with a future and a HOPE, who promises to listen is not far, not hiding. No. We are the ones who hide, like those first humans whose eyes were opened by disobedience. Suddenly ashamed by their nakedness, they hid in the bushes because the footsteps of God that had once been familiar and welcome filled them with fear. It's precisely because of our propensity for hiding that God invites us to seek, to come out from behind the bushes of worry or fear or sorrow or guilt, or the places of sin and shame, trusting that we will find God waiting to help and heal. Come out of hiding. God is waiting to be found.
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October 6, 2009

Backslider is not generally applied to Lutherans, maybe because it indicates movement. You have to have been somewhere to backslide. We operate from the perspective that God loves us no matter what, so backsliding is not such a big deal. That is true, of course. Not the backsliding bit, but the God loving no matter what. When it comes to the experience of God in our life how we live and what we do and think and say is a very big deal. The experience of God as a one night stand in times of trouble has everything to do with the sin that testifies against us. We are comfortable with God as a visitor. Seeking God with our whole heart requires some effort, some movement on our part. And when through prayer or reading the Bible or acts of service or sacrificial giving we slide forward if you will, we'll find out that it was not God who was a stranger in the land -- it was us. God was just waiting for us to come home. Seek God today. Slide forward.
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October 7, 2009

I am writing this from the Apron String's Cafe in Springfield Village, Vermont. I'd like to tell you that the sun is shining on a bright, crisp morning and the fall colors are spectacular but the truth is it's a chilly, rainy, grey day in the Green Mountains. This morning I got up early to find a spot with Wi-Fi and coffee. I met four friendly people in four different villages who in trying to be helpful directed me to four different places none of which had what I was seeking. And then sitting at a stop light having been detoured through Springfield Village I looked to the right and there was the Apron String's Cafe. Coffee and a connection to the World Wide Web and the day doesn't seem quite so gray.

Seeking the Lord and waiting patiently is a lot like that. On the less than sunny days of our lives we are often comforted and cheered by helpful people even though they are no closer to finding an answer for the twists and turns and dead ends of life than we are. And then just when we have grown weary of the seeking and patience has run thin a chance encounter, a vision perhaps, a still small voice in the darkness of the night, or a memory of God's faithfulness in the past encourages, strengthens and connects us to the One we have been seeking all along. So be of good courage and wait patiently, sometimes God is only found like my elusive hot spot-- on a detour at stop light.
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October 8, 2009

I've returned to the Apron String's Cafe in Springfield, Vermont with the help of a GPS generated female voice who tells me where and when to turn until she sweetly announces you have reached your destination. Granted the end of my destination and hers are not always the same unless I really did want to end up in the middle of nowhere, but all in all she is quite helpful even if she never says please when instructing me to turn.

The scriptures are like that, the voice of people of the past struggling with the same things we struggle with, waiting for the One we wait for, getting it wrong on more than one occasion but always trusting that somehow God would make it right. And so with every wrong turn, with every willful act of disobedience, in moments of despair and failing faith, when we have lost our way and cry out to be found God speaks through ancient words to direct us back to the path of hope. We trust that one day we will reach our destination and that God, unlike GPS girl, would never mistake an empty field for a town center.
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October 9, 2009

The sun came out yesterday and I spent the morning and early afternoon following GPS girls directions from one village to the next through mountains ablaze with color. Despite occasionally mistaking a field for a town center I had come to trust her sweet voice so when she told me to turn off a perfectly good road for an unpaved one I complied. I continued to follow her directions up the mountain even though the dirt road was now more of a wide path. It was only when the path became two ruts through a mountain meadow that I began to question her navigational skills. She continued to assure me a turn was just around the corner but when the two ruts ended in a broken down barn I turned her off and myself around.

Vain hope is like that. It looks for security or fulfillment in wealth or abilities or possessions. It is not that these things are inherently untrustworthy but that they are limited and like GPS girl will eventually lead us to a dead end. The good news is even when we stop seeking God to follow vain hope God is always seeking us and when we reach a dead end God is waiting to turn us around with unfailing love and peace and joy
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