Author: marettej

I am at a horse show. When you help with volunteer organizations you are expected to volunteer! So today I am sitting on my Throne high above the arena floor in the tabulation booth. It’s an interesting way to spend a Sunday. Enter numbers, save and tabulate but the coolest thing I get to do is start the class and end the class. I push the button to begin and push the button to end. Of course I pushed it at the wrong time. It’s useless because nothing happened. What makes the show exciting is what happens in the middle. You can’t place a class if you start and finish it in the same second; which is what I mistakenly did! Of course they don’t fire volunteers. So when we start life and God pushes the button, the part of life that makes us smile is the stuff between the start and finish. Anticipate, get excited but don’t rush it. Take it one horse at a time! And enjoy the ride! It may not be the most beautiful or exciting but it’s your ride. God gave you this time so ride it you stole it (a phrase from the horse world) . That’s means simply give it all you have until your ride has ended!

Several have asked about the most recent communion meditation I shared when I led worship. Here it is. The songs we sang leading up to Communion was “You’re a good, good Father”, and “God is so good”.

“You’re a good, good father. God you’re so good.”  Good- a word used a lot when I was a kid. When we would leave home, our parents would say, “be good”. According to Webster, good means to be desired or approved of.  To have a favorable character or tendency.  Our parents wanted us to reflect them- good parents- good children.  So, what does our good good father expect of his son?

John 13 tells us that the evening meal was in progress; the devil had already invaded Judas heart and what did Jesus do? “³ Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; ⁴ so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. “

I want to look back at the part where “The father had put all things under his power.”  Power is an interesting thing. Our human nature tends to take power and use it as leverage against others.  The mere definition of power is the capability of doing or accomplishing something. So often we tend to see power as a way of controlling situations or making the result benefit us. We have control, we have the power to make things happen.

There is a saying, “Nearly all men can stand adversity but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

So a good good father, who imparted his goodness into his son, and the son after having all things put under his power, got up and picked up a towel.

Here we are at the Lord’s supper. The same supper that the evening meal was in progress from John 13. We remember what Christ did for us at the cross. He had the power to call the angels. He had the power to call off the cross. He had the power, but he chose to pick up a towel and serve.

We take the bread; the cup and we get up from the table. The question is, will we pick up the towel to serve?

Several have asked me about the last couple Communion meditations I shared while leading worship. So here they are.

Eating Supper:We sat eating supper the other night. It had been a bad week. Life, people and circumstances have beaten my heart to a bloody pulp. Our small group sat eating BBQ and Potato salad while passing the cornbread and honey intermittently with the large jug of Iced tea. As we ate, the burdens of the week lifted. As we talked and prayed, the heaviness of my beaten heart slowly eased. It didn’t change the problem. It wouldn’t affect tomorrow morning, but for today, God was allowing my Spirit to be lifted and encouraged. That’s what the church is all about. It’s not about the building, what’s in the bulletin or who is working in the nursery this week although those things are important. It’s what happens between the hearts of the people who make up the church.

A time of gathering to share the Lord’s supper is equally important. It’s not BBQ, potato salad and cornbread but it’s nourishing especially for a wounded battered heart. From a reading of ‘Valley of Vision’ a devotional prayer book,

“In the Lord’s supper I remember his eternal love, boundless grace, infinite compassion, agony, cross, redemption and receive assurance of pardon, adoption, life and glory. As the outward elements nourish my body, so may thy indwelling Spirit invigorate my soul.

Until that day when I hunger and thirst no more and sit with Jesus at his heavenly Feast.

The signs are everywhere right now. “Put down your phones and drive. Don’t drive and text. August 1, hands free.  Hands free and live.”

For a total stranger coming from another world this would make no sense.  In a foreign country where they don’t drive as we do, it would make no sense.  They don’t have phones, they don’t see people walking into poles while texting and hurting others because they had their phone in their hand while driving.  There is no previous experience to solidify in their hearts and minds what it means. That’s what we call pretext. The content of the statement without understanding the background means there is no understanding.

We as people, humans, adults, seemingly intelligent people, jump into the lake before we reach the waters edge. We read. read into or think we know and so we share with the world our ignorance. Had we stopped, before our emotions were off the wall, and said, “Hmmm, this doesn’t make sense. Perhaps there is something I don’t know and could understand before I get all heated up and out of control demanding things of people,”

However, we are people and we jump. We jump to conclusions, we jump to make statements and we jump to accuse before we have the pretext as to what is happening. It’s so much easier to keep a train from rolling when it’s stopped and the brakes are on.  It’s like that in our minds. Once we begin running down the rabbit trail of think or assume, it’s really hard to come back to the path and just keep walking.

I judged a fair yesterday in Freeborn County, which is about an hour from home.  Most of the kids who presented their projects knew what was happening and how things went. One little cute girl had done a  very good project on Spruce Trees. She had her pictures of the spruce trees surrounding her house as a windbreak, had the cutting of the tree, had pine cones, had facts. As we talked I casually asked her what the pine cones are for. She didn’t know. She kind of began making things up on the spot! So Human. If we don’t know we begin to pretend we know and before long we have created a whole new species of tree because we didn’t know the pretext… didn’t know what came first.
I did what any good judge would do. I said, “let’s google it.” I let her read that pine cones are where the seeds are for the tree. The Pine cone protects the seed.

She went on her way feeling very smart. I went on with the judging glad we had stopped a potential train from running down hill. When we don’t understand things we begin making up answers to the questions that were never asked!

So, if you don’t understand what someone says, there could be a pretext waiting for you to discover. Once you have the pretext, the context will probably make a lot more sense!

Why did you do that Lord? Why did you choose the water to be blue and the trees to be green. Why did you choose the glorious yellows, reds and pinks to be what creates a stunning sunset? Why did you make fresh mown grass to smell so sweet and after the rain the air is beyond delicious. Why did you make puppies to be adorable and babies unresistably kissable? Why did you make the dew in the morning grass wet and the sap from a tree so sticky? Why did you create chemicals that linked together would be a beautiful array of color in the sky that pulls the oohs and ahs from all who look into the dark night sky? Why? Why do I cry? Why do I laugh? And why sometimes at things that seem so foolish to my heart? Why is there peace in my world and raging wars in another’s? Why me? Why them? Why? Why not? How come? Who’s fault? What now? Why here? When if not now? I have questions. I know God has answers but the answer without understanding are just words on a page. My prayer focus for the day says, ” thou art worthy of an adoration greater than my dull heart can yield. ” Why? Why can’t my worship be so incredible that we both take a step back? Why can’t I understand when you say ‘not now’ and say, ” I get it Lord” And I will sit here a spell till it’s time. I want to have worship worthy of the incredible beauty I see around me. I want to get it. I want to sense the answer as I ask the question not years later finally go “duh”. But till then my whys and feeble attempts to worship will be encircled by the beauty of God everywhere I look. And why did God allow men to create saws and wood and windows that combined together make an awesome sunroom that I can be in the midst of so I don’t get bit by mosquitos while I ponder Gods creation… and why God? Why mosquitos?