Pastor's Blog

Blessings

  [Pastor's Blog]
02/01/2012 9:54 am
By Admin, Admin

The reflections below seem to revolve around the word "blessing." What does blessing mean for you in receiving it? (giving it). The very last reflection is a very simple checklist that can go a long way in our desire to faithfully follow the way of Christ. May God's abundant grace surprise you, embrace you and provide you everything you need to be Christ's light and joy to others around you.

COMPASSIONATE GOD,
help me not to walk behind others
or to walk in front of them
but to walk beside them with kindness. Amen.
- Richard Morgan
Settling In
May I walk this day
in the realm of grace,
walking with You
my feet firmly on your earth-path,
my heart loving all as kindred,
my words and deeds alive with justice.
May I walk as blessing,
meeting blessing at every turn
in every challenge, blessing,
in all opposition, blessing,
in harm’s way, blessing.
May I walk each step in this moment of grace,
alert to hear You
and awake enough to say
a simple Yes.
- Robert Corin Morris
Wrestling with Grace

MOTHER TERESA said that the secret to life is prayer. We, as pilgrims, see prayer as the heart of our journey. The business of every Christian is prayer, says Brother Lawrence, an eleventh-century lay brother who “practiced the presence of God” as he resoled shoes and prepared meals in the monastery kitchen. Prayer is what pilgrims practice. Prayer is more than the words we offer; it becomes a place where we go inside to hang out with God. Prayer is the secret to living life as a pilgrim people.
-Prayer: Heart of the Pilgrimage

1. Start the day with prayer and praise. Before you get up each day, take a moment to praise God and ask for God’s help in seeing the good in the day ahead.
2. Smile! You don’t necessarily need to pretend to be cheerful when you’re not, but sometimes just smiling can help you feel better.
3. Count your blessings. When your problems look bigger than your blessings, it’s time to focus on those blessings. There are probably more than you think.
4. Expect the best from God. Remember that God loves you and cares for you, even when you can’t see it. And remember that God is with you no matter what’s going on.
5. Choose an encouraging scripture for the day or week. Write it down and keep it with you or memorize it.
6. Speak positively. When everyone around you is complaining and looking at the worst in people and situations, try to say something positive.
7. Trust God. When everything seems to be going wrong, that’s the moment to trust God. Pray. Ask God to guide you through the rough parts of your day.
8. Try not to worry. Worry rarely helps, and most of the things we worry about either won’t happen or won’t be as bad as we think. When you feel worried, turn your thoughts to God’s love and care for you.
9. Make the best of even the worst days. Ask God to show you something good even on the worst day. And remember that even a terrible day is just one day.
10. End the day with prayer and praise. Thank God even on the worst days. Ask God to help make the next day a better one.
-Pockets, Jan/Feb 2012

How is God calling you?

  [Pastor's Blog]
01/20/2012 12:30 pm
By Admin, Admin

I hope the reflections below will provide you some spiritual food for thought and reflection. In the New Testament, Mark 1:14-20,  Jesus is calling his deisciples. 
Before Jesus calls them, he proclaims the following: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." If indeed the fullness of God's kingdom and rule is near, should we not consider our commitment to follow Jesus with a greater sense of urgency. Where do you sense this urgency from God in your life? Perhaps, you can renew your commitment to address those urgent matters of the spirit sooner or later? Is there a person in need you have meant to contact or spend time with, but have been putting off? Where is God moving you to serve? Time and timing is more about the opportunities that God places before us, then the seconds that are ticking on our watches.
May you have a blessed and insightful week in the Lord.--- Pastor Dave

Your Timing
Ted Loder

Oh God, grant us a sense of your timing.
In this season of short days and long nights,
of grey and white and cold,
teach us the lessons of beginnings;
that such waitings and endings may be the starting place,
a planting of seeds which bring to birth what is ready to be born--
something right and just and different,
a new song, a deeper relationship, a fuller love--
in the fullness of your time.
O God, grant us the sense of your timing.


IT IS GOOD TO RENEW ourselves from time to time by closely examining the state of our souls, as if we had never done it before. For nothing tends more to the full assurance of faith than to keep ourselves by this means in humility and the exercise of all good works.
&3151; John Wesley
- Keith Beasley-Topliffe
A Longing for Holiness: Selected Writings of John Wesley

THE REAL STATE of our spiritual life is best revealed late on some Tuesday or Thursday afternoon, after a rough day. Mountaintop raptures are all well and good, even necessary, but what happens in the valley has long-lasting results in our lives and the lives of those we meet.
- Robert Corin Morris
Wrestling with Grace

THE WORK OF LOVING and being loved can at times feel like accepting a wrestling match with God. The idea of loving someone or being loved by someone is so easy to sentimentalize. But anyone who’s ever been in a deeply mutual loving relationship, platonic or romantic, knows that love is often more challenging than effortless. It often requires the willingness to push through and tackle head-on the intricacies of embracing another person in the fullness of their story and complexity. …
The work of loving is tiring, risky, and sometimes dangerous. It can seem to require super-human strength, and calls us to persist when we would rather give up. But no one ever walks away from a loving relationship without being transformed in some way that marks us as having encountered God.
- Weavings, Aug/Sept/Oct 2011

FAITH SAYS THAT THE NEW is possible. We have it on good authority (Isaiah 65:17-25) that the order of this world is about to undergo a dramatic reversal. Hope then becomes more than just wishing it were so and sooner than later. Hope takes that promise of newness and applies it to the present conduct of our lives. Hope insists that justice is more than pie in the sky: it is the purpose of God for life lived now in anticipation of its fulfillment. Hope does not usurp the responsibility to establish justice from the hands of God. But neither does hope abdicate our responsibility as those called of God to live in concert with what faith reveals as God’s future.
- John Indermark
Hope: Our Longing for Home

Finding balance

  [Pastor's Blog]
01/03/2012 11:10 am
By Admin, Admin

I had a renewing time away from the office getting reenergized for this year we have just entered. The reflections below can help us to refocus and recommit our lives as God's children and as followers of His Son Jesus Christ.
My hope and prayer for all of us this year is that we can continue to learn to live balanced lives of work, play, spiritual devotion and faithful service in the joy of Christ.
Have a blessed week- Pastor Dave

IN THE PART OF THE WORLD where I live, at this time of year the daylight hours are very short. In fact, when I’m not traveling and find myself working from my office, the sun has set when I pull into my garage. .
Frankly, this isn’t my favorite time of year. I really enjoy being outdoors in the sunlight. …
And yet I know that this time of year is a part of God’s intended purpose. These days are necessary to create balance in my life, a rhythm that moves beyond the frenetic activity of long daylight hours into a hibernating time of darkness. “Then God said, ‘Let there be light.’ … And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.”
When God speaks, God’s voice balances the rhythm of our lives. Yes, the light is good. Times of activity and productivity form a vital part of making a life and a living. … However, the light is separate from the darkness. Just as music is a series of sounds and silence in rhythm, so our lives must be a series of light and darkness, activity and rest, work and sabbath.
Embrace this season of your life and God’s created daily work-and-rest rhythm. Such percussive movement is a part of our purpose and God’s plan.
-Disciplines 2012

GOD, IN THIS NEW YEAR, may I no longer be my own but yours. Put me to what you will; rank me with whom you will. Put me to doing; put me to suffering. Let me be employed for you or laid aside for you, exalted for you or brought low for you. Let me be full; let me be empty. Let me have all things; let me have nothing. I freely and heartily yield all things to your pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God — Creator, Redeemer, and Inspirer — you are mine, and I am yours. May this promise that I hereby make on earth be ratified in heaven. Amen.
[An adaptation by W. Paul Jones of Wesley's Watchnight vows.]
- W. Paul Jones
An Eclectic Almanac for the Faithful

Incarnation Into Littleness
Gustavo Gutierrez

Jesus was born in a particular place at a particular time.... He was born in Bethlehem, "one of the little clans of Judah" (Micah 5:2), where at his birth he was surrounded by shepherds and their flocks. His parents had come to a stable after vainly knocking at numerous doors in the town, as the Gospels tell us.... There, on the fringe of society, the Word became history, contingency, solidarity, and weakness; but we can say, too, that by this becoming, history itself, our history, became Word....
To the eyes of Christians the incarnation is the irruption of God into human history: an incarnation into littleness and service in the midst of overbearing power exercised by the mighty of this world; an irruption that smells of the stable.
The Son of God was born into a little people, a nation of little importance by comparison with the great powers of the time. Furthermore, he took flesh among the poor in a marginal area--namely, Galilee; he lived with the poor and emerged from among them to inaugurate a kingdom of love and justice. That is why many have trouble recognizing him.
Source: The God of Life

Receive God's gifts

  [Pastor's Blog]
12/15/2011 4:35 pm
By Admin, Admin

Dear Friends in Christ,

"Rejoice, Rejoice, Emmanuel, shall come to thee, O Israel"


As we near the joy of another Christmas, we are called to be ever more vigilant in our desire to allow God to come in our lives and bring us what we need to be His faithful people. I hope that the reflections below will assist you in your desire to receive the gifts of hope, peace, joy, and love this Christmas.
May you have a blessed and grace-filled week- Pastor Dave

“Shine in My Heart, Lord Jesus”— Kathleen Thomerson, 1966
This simple phrase represents both a deep-felt longing and an invitation to a way to live during Advent.
“Shine in my heart,” the place where I experience God, the heart where I experience the God-hunger. I long for the light of Christ to shine in my heart, nurturing and sustaining my spirit.
“Shine in my heart” — illuminate the dark places in my heart: the sadness, grief, anger. Illuminate the dark places in my mind: the resentments, the frustrations. Illuminate the dark places of my spirit: the depression, the anxiety, the fear. Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus, and lighten the heaviness that paralyzes my action. Heal the wounds and sins that keep me separated from God.
- Beth A. Richardson
Child of the Light: Walking through Advent and Christmas

OUR ENTIRE LIVES are a vigil, a keeping watch, for the fulfillment of this hope [for fullness, completion, being one with each other]. All creation holds vigil with us, as it has done since the beginning. All generations before us and those that come after us will hold it as well.
But it is especially in this season of the church year, during Advent and Christmas, the season of the Coming, that we rise up on tiptoe to dance. We open our throats to sing and to proclaim this vigil that we keep. ….
We wait for the fullness. We watch for the completion of the promise. We keep vigil for the coming of the unimaginable fruition of the seed growing from the beginning in the heart of God.
- Wendy M. Wright
The Vigil

“I AM WITH YOU,” God promises Mary through the angel Gabriel. … “I am with you,” God promises Joseph, Mary’s husband-to-be, in a dream. . . .
Promise by promise, the Advent story stretches out, like bands of cloth across a waiting manger. “I am with you,” God promises, through the words of prophets; in the songs of psalmists; from the lips of angels; by a fresh, tiny birth cry in the night. And intersecting each strand of promise made by God, another promise is placed: from the yes of a girl, by the trust of a man, through the hope of a people, in the flesh of humanity. From the beginning to the end, Jesus Christ embodies God’s promise to the world, for you and for me: “I am with you.”
-Pamela C. Hawkins
Behold!

Copyright 2011, Grand Avenue United Methodist Church
505 West Grand Avenue
Port Washington, WI 53074

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