It will only happen after you've died.

What on earth is the good of that to me? No, Abram never said that. But did you? As you read about God’s promise to Abraham that he would be the father of nations and kings, did you wonder what use that promise was to Abraham? He would be dead and gone before the birth of his grandchildren, perhaps he never knew about the birth of Isaac's twins and certainly he did not see his twelve great grandchildren who were to become the twelve tribes. What use is a promise about what will happen on this earth if you are dead and gone before it happens?

If it had been you to whom the promise was made, would you have wondered what earthly use was a promise of a future you would not see? The question is important because in a way it is to you that the promise is made. Spiritually or physically you are part of the story and some of the innumerable descendants of Abram are coming through you. Would you have been grateful for a promise that something wonderful would happen after you were dead? Was I? No, I wasn’t, I rushed past the question and concentrated on grasping every opportunity to do good or receive good while I live. Just live the religious life to the full was my thinking.

I guess King Hezekiah was one person who wondered what the use of God’s promise to Abraham was. In King Hezekiah’s lifetime a prophet told him that after he died the nation he had ruled would be defeated in battle, his descendants would be made captive and terrible things would happen to them. His only response was that at least there would be peace in his lifetime.

There is a tendency to concentrate so strongly on the heavenly aspect of our relationship with God that we loose the earthly. All who believe God’s Word have a future in heaven, but what about this earth, these people who are coming and will come? Because we will never see them does it mean that we are to live as though the earth ends when we die? Perhaps it’s a pity that we ignore the earthly because of the spiritual. Maybe there is a great joy in knowing that the goodness of God will reach our descendents long after we are gone. Maybe the anticipation of that is sufficient to give us a new future when we lack the strength to build our own.

It is true that Abraham did not see his twelve great grandchildren. But he saw something else; Jesus said, “Your Father Abraham saw my day and rejoiced.” Perhaps one answer to the puzzle is that we should make less of a hard line between our spiritual future and the earthly future, maybe we should blur the division a little. Blessings flow from God into this earth and into this time, and we are part of the now but also part of the future. Maybe anticipation of the goodness and mercy of God is sufficient reason to give us a future we can see and rejoice about.

About the long interval

Death and taxation come to all people. What does not come is the preparation for the taxation. My disinclination to search for proof of expenditure was in disproportion to my previous inclination to spend.

What does not come to all people is remodeling. The happy news that I was to have central heat and air installed was the cause of much disruption. I rose earlier than usual to be prepared for the contractor who usually arrived long after my normal getting-up time. I don’t much care to cook anymore so a ladder in the kitchen would be appropriate but no, the only logical place to put a ladder was by the side of my bed roughly opposite the door to the bathroom. I solved some of the disorganization by going out of town for a couple of days. Alas so did the contractor. Central air will be wonderful; I only got through last summer by sleeping in the heat and working in the cool of the day which never came until nightfall.

The blog is back, so is my resolve, From now on three blogs a week, and the other days partly spent helping a delightful one year old to practice walking and empty every space which has a lid or a door.

Sarah and Hagar and Church confilcts

A responder to this blog asks if there is any connection between Sarah and Hagar’s battles and Church conflicts. I would say, ‘You bet there is.’
I know the respondent and feel very close to that person because we both suffered in the same situation at the same time – that makes some pretty strong emotional bonds.

In the basement of my house there is a very large box: - the contents would fill two filing cabinet drawers, if I ever took them out. They are my prayer journals, started when I first became solo pastor, and continuing through to almost the last church I pastored; that church broke my heart and my will, and drove me into an unpaid sabbatical, selling real-estate. Those journals are full of written prayer-conversations about the quarrels and tensions in the churches I pastored.

Two things happen when the church quarrels: shame and fear. Shame because people have the unbiblical notion that the church shouldn’t experience conflict. Fear because trying to make peace between conflicting parties is like picking up an un-exploded bomb. After it has gone off in your face and you are all burnt and bleeding, ‘wise’ pastors visit you and tell you it was all your own fault, you mishandled the bomb.

I can write this with some authority, 5 years of working with the local committee of our denomination that handled pastor-congregation conflict gave me a ring-side seat into other pastor’s problems. I learnt there, that the pastors who seemed successful and who led stable congregations for many years had sometimes suppressed conflicts in ways that exploded after they had left the church. I began to feel less embarrassed about the conflicts in my own congregations as I heard about other people’s. Occasionally I drove home saying to myself, “Now there’s a mishandled bomb, I would never have handled it that way. Those car conversations were cheap therapy but they also salvaged a lot of my self-respect. .

The written-prayer journals helped a lot. I was able to channel all my hurt and indignation into prayers knowing that The Listener kept confidences. I was thankful that I had an example in the book of Psalms and could express myself anyhow I needed to, without fear of offending God. Because the churches that I pastored were, almost always, declining churches with a history of church fights, often situated in deteriorating neighborhoods with massive social problems I had enough material to fill all those prayer journals.

I began to teach that conflicts, even bitter quarrels, are opportunities. The Church should consider itself a safe environment where conflict can be examined without anger and policies that promote peace can be powerfully practiced. I never had any takers! But I have noticed that happy, confident, children come from homes that do just this; explore the conflict in a safe environment and develop peaceful procedures for living together.

One reason I stay in my present denomination despite the changes that caused so much conflict amongst us, is that I think we’ve a pretty good history of examining conflicting and devising peaceable policies. But the machinery to do this is so time consuming that it does not happen in individual congregations. Local psycho-therapists seem more adapt dealing with inner personal conflict that inter-personal conflict, the only one who visited my congregation suggested that all their problems stemmed from being in ‘survival mode’ and left the church in an undignified hurry when my religious-minded congregation mobbed her with yells of outrage.

Are we missing an opportunity to be redemptive to the world beyond the church walls? At a time when large corporations are becoming more powerful than political bodies, do we have anything to offer the members of those corporations when conflict threatens their jobs and their health? When we meet with other people who worship the same God we do, but do so without the New Testament, do we have any way to respect these God fearing people without conflict? If I were in a church that agreed with me, I would not teach people how to ask someone about going to heaven when they die but about how to live in the Kingdom of Heaven while they are on earth.

Acts chapter 21 verse 17-28 Was the bomb miss-handled? Was there perhaps a conspiracy? Where would Paul have been if he’d left Jerusalem a little earlier?

Laughing With Sarah

I started preaching when I was 9, it didn’t matter that no one was listening; I lined up several empty chairs, stood in front of them and began my first sermon.

The first time I actually had an audience was when I was 14, the young peoples’ group at church asked me to speak for 5 minutes. I preached regularly after that, at youth group meetings and women’s meetings. Someone once asked David how he felt about ‘letting his wife’ preach, he replied, “She was preaching when I met her, and I knew there was no stopping her.” Actually he was my greatest encouragement, all through our lives.

I met David when I was 13 and he was not quite 16. When we met we had both already privately promised God, that we would spread the news of his salvation. David knew that God wanted him to be a missionary, I knew that the urge to preach was coming from somewhere outside of myself. Our pastor-friends advised us that all we needed was a good understanding of the Bible and the various experiences of church life that we could learn at our local church. After working under our pastors' directions and studying in the local church we were considered equipped and sent to Japan as missionaries. David and I still longed for more knowledge. When we had been married for 25 years, while we were living in America, we finally got the chance.

I enrolled in college first and David the year after. It was while we were in college that we met Presbyterian Christians, and discovered that their way of being Church fitted with our way of serving and preaching God.

In 1979, aged 51, I was at last judged ready to be ordained in the Presbyterian Church USA. The local Presbytery members would pray. and ‘lay-hands’ on me, and through faith, accompanying the action, the Holy Spirit would fit me for serving the congregation. The date of the ordination service was set, I had invited the speakers and all that remained was to choose the hymns. While I was choosing them David phoned me; he asked if everything was going according to plan and I replied ‘Yes, it’s actually going to happen.” Even before I put the phone down something else happened: I began to laugh, peal after peal of laughter, coming so fast I could scarcely breathe and all the while tears poured down my face. I couldn’t control it. Sober-faced, serious minded Jessie was having hysterics. I didn’t try to stop, because it felt like all the struggles to makes grades and pass exams were being wiped away. The laughter felt like a door had opened and I had gone through and entered into a new space. I continued to laugh and laugh for a long time. When I finally wiped my eyes and took a long breath I decided that I had something in common with Sarah. Sarah had said, “God has made me to laugh so that all who hear me will laugh with me.”

Sarah was ninety years old when she said this. I wonder; had she stopped laughing in her old age? If she lived today she might have; life seems to get sadder as we get older: friends die, pleasures like eating whatever we fancy, running and exercise are discontinued, hearing seeing and moving get difficult. There are truly fewer reasons to laugh.

We try to compensate for the lack of earthly joy by substituting spiritual joys, and there are many of these, but the choice is not an 'either or' choice. It can be both. God sent Ruth a daughter-in-law and a grandchild, Abraham married again after Sarah died, Anna saw the answer to her prayers.

Until the perfect day dawns and the shadows flee away we live according to the promises, knowing (because we trust God) that they shall surely come true. The various answers to prayer that we experience reassure us that God is indeed with us, and for us. Because we know this; it will come about that sometimes and oftentimes, sober-faced Presbyterians, serious minded Lutherans, and industrious Methodists will join the Charismatics of the Church and laughter will ripple and spread. The enemies of the Church will hear it and wonder about it, the enemies of man-kind will hear it and wish that they could laugh too. It may be that when they hear the laughter they will grow wistful and wonder across their territorial lines, looking for us, asking if it is true that happiness can happen to humans. Let us laugh.

Hostility Between Women

When people remember the story of Sarah they never remember any bitterness. If Sarah was never bitter, she was far more virtuous than most of the women married to men-who-obey-God today.

She had so much to be bitter about, Abram sold her twice, to save his life from foreign kings, but risked his life to save his nephew. Abram gave the choice of pasture land to his nephew who hadn’t received a call from God, meaning that Sarai’s husband wasn’t as rich as he could have been if he had, instead, compelled Lot to graze his herds where Abraham dictated. Most of all where was Sarah when her husband and son set out carrying wood for a sacrifice without an animal to offer? Was this act so secret that she didn’t know? Although they returned praising God for his great intervention, what were her feelings when she learned? What does it cost a woman to be married to a man-who-obeys God?

When people in the Church preach about the Hagar and Sarai, they are usually most careful to point out that having a child by another woman with your wife’s consent was both moral and legal at that time and place. What they never stop to ask is what did it cost Sarai, to consent to another woman being in her husband’s bed? When Sarai complained to her husband that it was ‘all his fault’ why are there no recorded words of thanks and encouragement? At a time when a woman’s chief value was her ability to bear children it became obvious to all the herders and staff that Sarai was the infertile partner in the marriage. For all these things Sarai deserved at least the grateful thanks of her servant and husband, instead; the servant despised her, and her husband told her to do what ever she pleased.

The servant girl did not have the sense to remain outwardly humble and grateful, instead she despised Sarai, who in turn despised her. Sarai treated this poor pregnant girl so harshly that she ran away. The self-righteous amongst us (and I must admit there are a lot of us in church, because we concentrate more on how good we should be than on how good God is.) would find it hard to have sympathy for the servant, but God does not find it hard. The angel of the Lord came searching for the scornful servant and gave to her the promise similar to the one he gave Abram: ‘I will greatly multiply thy descendants so that the multitude of them cannot be numbered. The servant obeyed the instruction to return home and submit to her mistress and came back to Abraham the father of her child, and Sarah who had mis-treated her.

After the maid's return, how did Sarai feel? She lived childless in the same household as Abram and Hagar who had both received the promise of a multitude of descendants. Did she ever feel over-looked by God? Did she ever despise herself for her inadequacy? Did she weep at night because of the seeming injustice of her situation? Other people besides Sarah have felt this way; they struggle against misfortune, struggle with personal inadequacies, and feel that there is no justice in life. Sarah’s story has a happy ending; but Sarah had a long wait before her prayers were answered. The waiting time is long and hard for to-days multitude of discouraged, disheartened people. Believing against evidence to the contrary is not easy.

For Hagar, the woman who was so badly treated that she ran away even whilst she was pregnant, there was an angel. The angel ‘found’ her and asked her questions, then gave her a promise. For both the Sarahs’ and the Hagars’ of today there is an angel who seeks the people that other people have forgotten about. That angel is the Spirit of God’s presence among humans, that Spirit brings instructions, and promises. God’s Spirit supports those who have no other support, and those who have much support. It is all the same to God because we all shall be blessed and richly blessed, and we all shall be made a blessing.

Sarah's name for Abraham

A couple we were friends with, began to have marriage problems. Separately they both consulted one of us. Doreen told me that her husband Donald had apparently stopped loving her. He complained to her, and had recently begun complaining about her to other people. His complaints suggested that she was his enemy and the enemy of the work he was doing for God. Donald told David about his wife’s refusal to live by every word of the Bible and her disobedience to the ‘commands’ of Paul the apostle. Donald had great ambitions for the ministry he was doing and he had begun to wonder if his work was being hindered by his wife’s lack of obedience to scripture.

His complaint appeared ridiculous. Doreen had been Donald’s friend as well as wife, she believed in the work he was doing and in his leadership of his branch of the organization. In order to help him dedicate his life to the organization she had sacrificed daily, living with insufficient money to run the home, suffering from their social isolation, and especially his pre-occupation with his work. All this they both did, because serving the organization was their way of serving God.

The problem was identified when Donald threw the remark in his wife’s direction that Sarah was ‘subject to her husband and called him Lord.’ A statement made by the Apostle Paul. You will remember that he also cautioned elders and pastors against anything that placed them in superior status to other people, and stressed that we are all the same in relation to God, neither male nor female, neither master nor slave.

Did Dennis truly want Doreen to call him ‘Lord’ in the house and in public? Yes, that was what Scripture said, and scripture ‘Cannot be broken.’

On the staff of Donald’s organization was a gentle amiable girl: old enough to have been married some years ago, but not married, because, she had, “Given her life to the Lord.” All her energies had been poured into the particular ministry that Donald was engaged in. Gradually she had become more and more useful to Donald; she never criticicized, never questioned, never had any suggestions of her own, and was careful to call him ‘The Director’ whenever she talked about him to the staff. On the contrary Donald’s wife had suggestions in plenty: was not afraid to say what could be improved and even said what needed improving.

In a long, angry battle during which Doreen talked through her tears and sobs Donald finally said that he wanted Doreen to become like the gentle amiable girl who almost worshipped him.

My sons often are disappointed in me because I tend to see the weaknesses of people besides their strengths. They think this shows an un-Christian, judgmental attitude and would like me to become uncritical. Helping Donald and Doreen is one reason why I consider it pastoral to look for the weaknesses in people besides their strengths. On this occasion we were so convinced of the commitment of this married couple to the service of God that we didn’t think about weaknesses. Instead we struggled with Donald’s interpretation of Paul’s words, against Doreen’s interpretation that to call a man master was to grant him the leadership of the venture he had taken responsibility for.

The couple struggled on; Doreen showing less and less interest in the organization her husband ran, until left too much to his own judgment, Donald made an administrative error which blighted the organization.

The unconscious seduction of the girl who never questioned, together with Donald’s exhaustion after years of running an organization and trying to support a family suddenly became apparent. The mercy of God was that Donald recognized that his struggle was not against his wife but against temptation. It was not until several years had passed that we all four understood that Donald’s too literal interpretation of the Bible was really been a masculine cry for help.

We visited them, living on a salary which did not have to be raised from donations. Donald was taking a rest from preaching, working somewhere where the success or failure of a venture would not become his responsibility. Doreen showed me her pretty home and the items that she had actually bought instead of receiving them from donations of unwanted furniture.

The organization they worked for has cast them off. Having sucked their youth and energy to breaking point, they now consider them failures because of Donald’s administrative error. In God’s organization which is called, the Church, we understand that we have all failed and fallen short of what God requires. Thank God for the Church.

I wish that Jewish religious people talked more frequently with Christian religious people, I would like to know what Paul read that taught him something I didn’t see in the Old Testament, and I would like to discuss with female rabbis how they understand Paul’s reference to Sarah’s name for Abraham.

Walking the territory

Get up; walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.” Genesis 13.17

Before our family went to live in Kansas City, Missouri, I bought a map. Kansas City is built on the grid system, so the map was a pleasure of simplicity to look at. I drew a circle round the place where we were to live and memorized the names of the streets nearby. It was all book knowledge, but in the spirit of the song; “This Land Is Our Land” I felt like I owned Kansas City and I wasn’t there yet.

In the wonderfully hot summer of 1973 I walked those streets, and we drove them, exploring the clean friendly city and all of its treasures. Faith is like this, there is a kind of faith that people own because they have learnt it from a book, or believed what they heard in church. They call it ‘their faith’ but they haven’t really walked the streets yet. As faith develops there comes a day when, mentally, they step off the map and into the streets of faith, they walk around, exploring the sub-divisions, gazing at the view from high places. Faith has become lifestyle.

How does it happen? Usually by attending to some instruction in the guidebook and going there. A person whose faith is passive, or has been limited to a mental opinion could be said, to be still reading the map. One day he/she becomes convinced that faith requires activity, so they decide to try one activity. The result is exciting, they decide to try another activity and suddenly they are walking the streets of faith. Faith increases with use and as they act according to the requirements of faith their confidence in the goodness of God increases. They are alive to God, their life is no longer limited to the ‘now’ but assimilates the future, they no longer walk alone they are accompanied.

When I read the words of God to Abram, I understand them as spoken to me also, “Get up, and walk through the land, the length of it and the breadth of it, for I will give it unto you.” God wants to give us faith; he wants to increase our faith. He speaks to us, through scripture, telling us to take possession of the gift of faith and begin to explore it; experience its hills and valleys. As we do this a life stirs within us which we know is not the pale thing we called life before but is God living in us and through us, and we are told that the new life of God within us will continue past death, into futures we have not yet seen on any map.

John 7:17

Living Like Abraham

Abraham knew what we forget: that we should demonstrate the goodness of God in every action we do. Whether it’s eating and drinking or whether it’s avoiding conflict between family members, we should act so that God’s goodness is demonstrated by our actions. (We call it, doing to the glory of God)
The Apostle Paul knew this and he wrote that he didn’t think about what was best for himself but what was best for others. Paul urges us to follow his example.

O.K. so we did this! All those long years of raising the children, consistently we did what was best for them, and put our selves second to their welfare. Now they are grown up, isn’t it time to please ourselves? How long do we go on doing this?

The awful thing is there is no end to it, and it doesn’t just apply to putting our children’s good before our own, but to our neighbors, members of our church and especially to the members of other faiths. We are to consider their good and choose what is good for them rather than what is good for us. We do this so that through us they may learn about the goodness of God.

Now there is an escape route that Christians frequently use: the argument that what is best for everyone is a system of firm rules and strong consequences. We unblushingly say that we ourselves have been subject to firm rules and strong consequences. We even imply that, that is why we are such righteous people. This way of escape says that doing good to our neighbor means setting rules and making consequences when our rules are not followed, even when the consequences are disastrous to their welfare.

Abraham didn’t use the escape routes; he applied his own rules to his own behavior and didn’t impose them on Lot, who certainly knew about them. The only consequence that Lot experienced was his own discovery that the best pasture land was not the best social environment. And even when he discovered that, Abram was there to help him and never told him that he had made his bed and must lie on it.

We who are Christians have not been subjected to strong rules and consequences, but to repeated forgiveness and to the unfailing help of God our Father. Jesus came to save us while we were still defying God. God says that he has held out his hands all day to a nation that was ignoring him. What we have received is grace, the good that we didn’t deserve. If we are to follow the example of God, and His Son Jesus we are to offer grace and forgiveness, support and help to every other person.

Where do we find the strength to go on living in this sacrificial way? From God himself who, as is shown by the next story about Abraham, is not just watching how we choose but is standing ready to support
And befriend us.

1 Corinthians 10. 31-33
Ephesians 5.1 & 2

Choices and partitions

‘You have a choice’ those were magical words we all heard when we were young. We could choose a career, a spouse, even the house where we lived with our spouses. Now the magic has quite gone – stolen by a generation of parents with child-managements skills, who have turned choice into law: like this; ‘You have a choice eat your broccoli and get desert, or leave your broccoli and get no desert.” The magic word, ‘choice’, now fills me with gloom; dinner without desert – what kind of a meal is that?

Abram’s nephew had a choice, and he was no longer a young man, he had been with Abram ever since Abram left Ur and stayed in Haran. Now Lot was rich, and his uncle was even richer. The men taking care of their herds of animals had begun to quarrel over available space to graze animals and pitch tents.

“You have a choice said Abram to Lot” but this was no child-management law this was the word of opportunity. "We need to separate to prevent quarrelling between me and you, and between our herders." So it had got to that had it? Lot had begun to quarrel with Abram, and Abram had begun to search for a peaceful solution! Was separation the only peace they could devise? Lot continued to need Abram, and perhaps childless Abram was going to miss his only male relative. I live in an era when angry congregations separate from their home congregations and go their own way, I wish it wasn’t so: both sides need each other in ways that will only become apparent long after the separation.

“You go in one direction and I’ll go in the other,” said Abram to his nephew. Lot chose to go in the direction of the valley, leaving for Abram the tops and sides of the hills and mountains.

When this story of Abram and Lot is read in discussion groups, people are quick to denounce the selfishness of Lot, but too embarrassed to talk about Abram because he looks like the looser. The more straightforward speakers in a group, would say that Abram came out of the negotiation looking like a fool – I like that kind of honest speech because it opens the door for questions: was Abram foolish; or too hasty with a half-thought-out solution; did he love Lot so much that he willingly gave him the best; or was his confidence in God’s provision so great that it made him generous?

I sold real estate for two years after I retired from being a pastor. (I needed a change from too many funerals and too few baptisms.) Another retired minister joined the staff of the franchise where I worked. His name will have to be Herbert because I can’t give you his real name, but this story is true. “Business and Christianity don’t mix.” he said. “Christianity is about getting right with God and going to heaven; business is about making as much money as you can for your client: you can’t do both things at the same time.” When I returned home and reported this conversation to David he said, “Ask him if that applies to carpenters?” At the time I had no quick reply and had already discovered that Herbert didn’t converse, he just pronounced. Herbert had erected a wall between what he believed and what he did. It’s an old heresy that says, my soul will go to heaven, therefore it belongs to God but my brain belongs to my body, and will die, therefore I can do what I choose.

Most of what I did as a pastor was help people break down that mental wall that separates religious thought from daily life actions. Individuals become new people when they break down the partition they have made in their minds, and allow faith in God to infiltrate every day choices until the whole is one great lake of love of God in body and soul heart and mind,

Did you enjoy your run today?

I saw a baby stroller in a corner of my son’s drive way and asked if I could borrow it to take his young daughter for ‘walks’ in the neighborhood. Yes, certainly he replied, but first let me pump the tires up. I was appalled; do to-days young mothers really have to pump up the tires of the stroller before they take the baby for a ride in it? How hard they make life for themselves. “It’s a jogging stroller explained my son,” telling me that people not only push the stroller, but they run whilst they are doing it. He also explained that it had a wrist strap so that if I ran down a particularly steep hill the stroller couldn’t break loose and run away by itself. No, that’s not likely, but I do have a rather vivid picture of the stroller running down hill dragging an attached grandma by the wrist strap. Now I have seen jogging strollers before, but the reason I didn’t know what they are meant for, is because I’ve only seen them outside coffee shops. I see parents unloading these things from the car trunk, inserting a child and ordering a coffee. Then they sit in the sunshine and talk with other parents who are likewise seated beside their offspring in jogging strollers. Now this I can understand; social exercise is something parents of baby-talking infants desperately need, before the parent looses the ability to think in anything other than child-speak. It is interesting that if the child is old enough he/she is given a carton of chocolate milk to drink while the parent drinks coffee. Pleasant and relaxing, but running with a stroller; that’s pushing it! Imagine someone with a past history of pregnancy and labor and a future prospect of broken nights and near frenzy, being willing to run up and down our California hills with a stroller.

Physical exercise, say the Apostle Paul writing to Timothy is a little useful, but godliness (god-likeness) is profitable for every situation. God-likeness in a parent might just be something that a child appreciates as much as the slim and healthy body his parents are striving to maintain.

As strange as the notion of jogging with a stroller is, so is the phrase, ‘spiritual discipline” Spiritual disciplines are religious exercises. People who value godliness do them because they wish to become more godly. There are spiritual disciplines (exercises) in every denomination. I grew up in the Assemblies with fasting disciplines and Bible study. When I became a Presbyterian I added reading from the lectionary and praying from the Book of Worship. (Because when I do these I am not alone in my home, but many others are reading the same passages on the same day in different homes)

Physical exercises result in health and a good appearance. Spiritual exercises have a similar result; healthy religion and good actions. The good actions are a product of the exercise but also a way of maintaining the results, because it is when the word springs from our heart into our hands, feet and lips that it is perceived as godly. Choosing what is God-like becomes a learning exercise, and doing what is godly, develops spiritual strengths and muscles.

Godliness, says Paul, is useful for everything, not only now but in the next life also. The body will die and be resurrected, but in a different shape. The Spirit however will never die but will give account of all the things done in the earthly body.

1 Timothy 4: 7 & 8
1 Corinthians 15: 35 – 44
2 Corinthians 5:1-5 .

Going Back To The Beginning

Abram returned to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, and to the second alter that he had built. Genesis 13. 3 & 4

How about you, dear friend, do you ever want to return to a place in your past? Could you if you tried? Some people do; they come home after a career of traveling and excitement, carrying their past successes with them and retire in the same town where they grew up.

Abram returned to the place where he had been at the beginning. Beginning of what? Beginning of living with God in the land of promise. Native of Ur, resident of Haran he was, but Canaan was his home now. He had been forced to leave when famine struck, and, years later, he returns to the place where his tent was at the beginning and to the second altar he had built. There is no mention of Abram building altars in Egypt, or on his way through the Sinai peninsula, not even in the Negev. Of course the record can not state every detail of his life, so why then does the record mention this particular altar?

Abram always believed God, and he believed confidently, but does even a confident faith have times of fervent excitement and times of patient waiting? The journey to Egypt, the plot that failed in Egypt and the long journey back with his many possessions, had they been years when there was more patient confidence than joyful exhilaration? Now he is back to the place where he started from, back to where he was when the land was green, his wife trusted him, and the silent voice of God was louder than every other sound.

Is there a time in your faith journey when you heard the silent voice speak loud, when the preached voice spoke truth that cut through the sinews of your being and your soul sprang to life in the truth, when your response was fervent as well as faithful? Was there a time when you thrilled. like the strings of a plucked violin, with expectation, because you knew that God would be faithful to you, bless you and make you a blessing? Those times were a beginning for you, and you can return to them.

Not the place where it happened, not the person who preached when your soul leapt to life, but to the truths themselves. You can return. Places change, worship styles and pastors change, we can not find what used to be in what is now. But the truths themselves are still there and they will again illuminate you; liberate you and develop the spiritual person that you are. Sometimes it takes a journey to get back to the beginning. It is most likely that we shall have to make the journey alone, and even arrive alone; our churches are busy reaching a lost generation. But there is a way. You may find it through prayer and reflection, or in reading scripture and writing what it said to you, probably through the prayer books of the church and the faith confessions of past believers. Somewhere you will find again the foundations of the faith; the witnesses to God’s mercy will speak to you. You will find authenticity and be back where you were before too many duties and too great an effort dulled your faith and lulled your hopes.