Son of God

Well, forgot to post anything about the latest movie about Jesus which I saw earlier this week. I like any telling of the story of Jesus and that is what Son of God is, though not necessarily the best. It was a good movie but not a great movie. The simpler Jesus Film is as good or better and I've shown in on a bed sheet hanging from a tree in West Africa. And you can watch it online at Jesus Film Media in most languages.

But Son of God is worth seeing and targeted more to Americans.

The Great Divorce

Today I saw the superbly done stage drama of C.S. Lewis' little book The Great Divorce by the Fellowship for the Performing Arts in New York.  I first read this book while living in The Gambia after purchasing it and other Lewis books on a trip to London. It gave me the first image of Heaven that I could relate to and possibly the best image of Hell I had ever read. It is a creative or arty interpretation of Heaven and Hell with a tinge of purgatory which I was taught not to believe in - but it all makes since in this story! The traveling troupe was only here in Nashville for two days and three performances. Glad they came and glad I went with my friends the Hunters and her father Robert.

Simple & Honest!

I love it when I come across a powerful "one-liner" in the Bible, something that seems to summarize life or how I'm thinking about it at the time. This morning's reading had one of those in Zechariah 8:17 or the clincher statement concluding the 14-17 paragraph:

" . . . Keep your lives simple and honest.” Decree of God.

Grace - The Story of My Life

Titus 3:7
The Message (MSG)
3-8 It wasn’t so long ago that we ourselves were stupid and stubborn, dupes of sin, ordered every which way by our glands, going around with a chip on our shoulder, hated and hating back. But when God, our kind and loving Savior God, stepped in, he saved us from all that. It was all his doing; we had nothing to do with it. He gave us a good bath, and we came out of it new people, washed inside and out by the Holy Spirit. Our Savior Jesus poured out new life so generously. God’s gift has restored our relationship with him and given us back our lives. And there’s more life to come—an eternity of life! You can count on this.

Wow! No other translation says it quite like that! Yet it is what God's grace is. I'm working on the Volume 3 of my Scrapbook Biography and thinking of titling it "Grace" or something about grace. Volume 1, the first thirty years was really about growing up with exciting adventures, learning, becoming a self-centered young adult, loosing a lot of my innocence and naivete. Volume 2 tells the story of both grand adventures and failures in marriage and child-rearing, surviving it all through God's grace, though wounded and hurting in my second thirty years. Volume 3 is the happiest of the three stories as I find great joy and fulfillment in retirement, another example of God's grace, undeserved happiness that I credit to His Spirit! The story of my life.

This was one of the focus verses of today's sermon on grace by Frank Lewis. 

Some things only come through God's Spirit

“This is God’s Message to Zerubbabel: ‘You can’t force these things. They only come about through my Spirit,’ says God-of-the-Angel-Armies.

Zechariah 4:6 THE MESSAGE

I’m sticking around to see what God will do.

Micah 7:7

The Message (MSG)

7 But me, I’m not giving up.
    I’m sticking around to see what God will do.
I’m waiting for God to make things right.
    I’m counting on God to listen to me.

Every person I meet has to do with God.

I just started reading Zephaniah in my morning reads through THE MESSAGE translation by Eugene Peterson and as in most of his book introductions, he has a powerful message or book summary. Read this exert from his brilliant introduction to Zephaniah that I know I need to be reminded of daily: 

 Because the root of the solid spiritual life is embedded in a relationship between people and God, it is easy to develop the misunderstanding that my spiritual life is something personal between God and me – a private thing to be nurtured by prayers and singing, spiritual readings that comfort and inspire, and worship with like-minded friends. If we think this way for very long, we will assume that the way we treat people we don’t like or who don’t like us has nothing to do with God.

That’s when the prophets step in and interrupt us, insisting, “Everything you do or think or feel has to do with God. Every person you meet has to do with God.” We live in a vast world of interconnectedness, and the consequences have consequences, either in things or in people – and all the consequences come together in God. The biblical phrase for the coming together of the consequences is Judgment Day.

We can’t be reminded too often or too forcefully of this reckoning. Zephaniah’s voice in the choir of prophets sustains the intensity, the urgency.

After loving God, Jesus says the most important thing we do is love people. God help me to see you in everyone I meet today, even people who are not kind to me or whom I don't like.