deeda-zoomlens: This is the day that the Lord has made.’14 And God...

deeda-zoomlens: This is the day that the Lord has made.’14 And God...: This is the day that the Lord has made. ’14 And God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the...

This is the day that the Lord has made.

’14 And God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be signs and tokens of God’s provident care, and to mark seasons, days, and years,’

Markers of God’s passages, the sentinel seasons carry our lives inside their gowns of time — swinging picture lanterns through our days, ever drawing the lifeline of humanity forward — glowing paths that star-dot God’s direction to our final future — past time, past space, inside light and being — Heaven inner-lit and home.

Our blue sky, timeless and tireless, finds a slanted ray and this New England edges onward, with infinitesimal purpose towards transition — from rose-red to burnt umber, from tiger-lily yellow to cinnamon orange. These are the colors and days of utter fullness, the cornucopia prefigured —  green stalks high and cornsilk tassels, reaching for the clouds — before the gathering, before bringing in the sheaves.

This August Monday is yesterday’s spring, singing its freedom song to the mountains, throwing  its untamed voice to the wind through miles of Kankamagus evergreens, our land and heritage — remembering itself in age old values, as in the very dust of the Old Man — complete in its very granite self: Eagle and moose come together to guard the free north country while the loons undulate inside memories of Golden Pond. Our land. New Hampshire. God’s country.

We are given this full bounty as good stewards to watch, to sense, to assimilate –husbanding  into ourselves its vital health, its pure beauty, its strong and lithesome grace — our gift — understanding providence at this turn-of-days made summer long — the shorter tracery of sunlight tenderly visible in its leaving:

Look around!! Day lilies yawn a tiger’s tale and honey suckle vines tendril their primrose yellow, sweet and high, vining their honeyed path straight into our tomorrows.

Butterfles and dragonflies laze, suckling swaddled nectar. Vigor fills the night air as mums think about awakening, their brisk — bounty unfurling. A soft haze falls into our summer’s day; sky-lit gold shimmers into gloaming as man’s plans roll forward toward the thoughts of sweet mown hay.

Eventually the bands will play last hurrahs at Hopkinton Fair. The pumpkin vines, filled, will surround the sounds of sheep and hawkers. Labor Day will show its face and school will start. Wood will be stacked for the burning. Brass kettles will be polished and ready. New England waits for crisp crimson edges as in complete peace and according to God’s will, summer leaves: Turn.

5 Therefore I tell you, stop being perpetually uneasy (anxious and worried) about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink; or about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life greater [in quality] than food, and the body [far above and more excellent] than clothing?

26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father keeps feeding them. Are you not worth much more than they?

27 And who of you by worrying and being anxious can add one unit of measure (cubit) to his stature or to the [w]span of his life?

28 And why should you be anxious about clothes? Consider the lilies of the field and learn thoroughly how they grow; they neither toil nor spin.

29 Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his magnificence (excellence, dignity, and grace) was not arrayed like one of these.

Psalm 118:24 (ESV)

24 This is the day that the Lord has made;
    let us rejoice and be glad in it.

 http://blog.maplestreetchurch.com/this-is-the-day-that-the-lord-has-made/

A time for every season.

So, it’s the last Friday in July, pushing itself into the first weekend of August. What are you going to do with these days of warmth and family? Of salt sea and summer beaches, of icecream sundaes and kids’ sand castles?

On TV, the talk edges toward Back to School Sales.  What happened to spring? How did summer get so far behind us? What dreams and plans are not yet put up in our pantries, or half thoughts only — our journals still to be filled? Time moves ever so quickly through the happy days of barbecues and water sprinklers.

What fruits. or wheat or tares, did you grow inside that personal garden you were determined to plant this sweet summer? What gifts did God whisper — blowing some seedling thought toward your heart-plot? You remember — that time you took just a moment from the hurly burly and listened to the still voice of Spirit in the seawheat wind; it was maybe just a tickle of a thought, maybe a touch of forgiveness for a hurt long ago, a new pattern of finding joy in the tracks of life’s sand, perhaps even mercy and a love of your fellow man — just that hint of a miracle in some fresh insight, new to your inner ear, heard under heaven’s blue sky and God’s eye.

There is still time! The sun is high and the fields are green. The ground is lush and ready. PLANT! You can do a bit of weeding and leave the rest to God. He will water with SUCH a water as you have never known, the Spirit will form and fuss over angles and truth in being, and Jesus will keep it safe through lightning storms and snares of wolvish predators.

Whatever your age, now is this summer of your life. Glorify it! Glorify in it! Set those summer seeds while yet the earth is warm to your sight and your barefeet can take delight in the playing.

This good earth, these good life passages, this good faith that sustains you, hold it lightly. It will not leave you. Fold your days around the faith-seeds, mustard or lily, what is gifted is yours. In the quiet inspiration on the summer wind, own that miracle  — inherent life — that inward arcing out to birth and growth — creation heavenward — a gift from God.

This is the last Friday in July. It is time for planting. What are you going to do with these days of warmth and family? Of salt sea and summer beaches, of icecream sundaes and kids’ sand castles?

God bless your planting!
http://blog.maplestreetchurch.com/a-time-for-every-season/

Playing games with the Holy Spirit. Tictock: Clock is running.

So, He said to me, “Do you play chess?”

Not well enough to play with you, (I thought but dared not say) but I was young and invulnerable and so I ventured,  “OK, I’ll try a move or two.”

He said, “I’ll be white, but you can go first.”

I said, “No fair; that was your first move!”

And He just smiled.

I didn’t want to sacrifice the pawns, much less the beautiful knights or triangulating bishops, (too many people pleasing relationships at stake you see.) So I focused on the castles, but then decided that was pretty risky: Even young, brash and prideful has to keep up with the Joneses to some extent — and have a good mattress for a firm foundation. That Spirit was a crafty player, using up all my options — cutting right straight through my justifications.

All that was left of course were the King and the Queen and I knew I needed them. “So, hmm…” A body can’t just go around giving up partners in crime and idols of clay. I mean, all that look in the mirror attitude was getting abit much.  But that Spirit, he just — waited me out.

I paused for a decade or so and muddled around with the rest of the generation, testing theories inside my own pictured head. Bound to be an answer out there and I would find it. It’s my game afterall. — Or maybe not.

When all my strategies were null and void, I sighed and said, “OK, I know the game; I like to play, but I lost the rulebook along the way:

I choked abit on this one, but there was no way out and Sartre was long gone with No Exit. So, I bleated, “Tell me the forfeit that I must pay.”

The Holy Spirit looked at me with those inside eyes and — breathed. Strange and freeing the breath of life,the breath of truth, the Comforters’ soul touch.

I laughed at His checkmate: We both knew the game was over,

but Life had just begun, and the neat part was that we had both won.

The lost ache, the chaos, the justification game of life itself — our collective fall and panicked race to cross the finish line first, to find home base again and make it ours alone, to win our destiny crown — flipped paradigms cleared my sight and right there, back  in perfect place was the door and the life to forever, not so hard to see afterall — once we stop playing games; inerrant of source and master made, the moves are steady, sure and pure.

With sacred gps, God’s dead reckoning — direction at the ready — passages, jumps, turns and sacrificial pawns — rise within the kingdom’s win — Home again inside New Jerusalem’s jeweled walls.

Rev 21:21 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

5 And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.

6 And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.

7 He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.’

http://blog.maplestreetchurch.com/playing-games-with-the-holy-spirit-tictock-clock-is-running/

“And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me.”

Psalm 139:14-16 (MSG)

“13-16 Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
    you formed me in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!
    Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
    I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
    you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
    how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;
    all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared
    before I’d even lived one day.”

Blessed be the name of the Lord! Blessed His glorious name! In times that test men’s souls, mankind instinctively turns to the Lord. As a moth to a flame and as a bee to a flower, the consciousness of humanity , those souls with open eyes, turn our hearts and our sight toward the light, following our Savior out of  satan’s dark domain.

Night has fallen on the spirit of life: We see God’s miraculous gift devalued and defiled. In front of us in living color, we see videos of hardened hearts and soulless eyes, buying and selling the tender organs of our babies — our children for sale on the block of mammon. Seventy- five for a kidney, how much for a brain? Life groans at shattered being.

“Mark 9:36 He took a little child and had him stand among them. Taking him in his arms, he said to them, 37 “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.”

No longer does a baby’s cry evoke the sweet picture of love and family — the nurturing parents smiling and quick to be up and away  — pulling a blanket closer for warmth or carefully listening for the sweet bubbling, the whoosh of precious air, making sure the babe’s God given breath comes easily and sure. But not now. Not in this grisly world of money for body parts, threepence for a liver, twopence for a lung. No, the cry of the lung is pierced, is crushed at the skull, very carefully, so as not to disturb the value of the sale.

“Jer 22:3 This is what the LORD says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of his oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the alien, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place.”

Ring it up at the cash register: This little girl who would have been, say Regina Brown, is worth about eight hundred dollars in today’s flesh market, her separate parts adding up dollar sign after dollar sign. There is no life for Regina Brown. No Cookie Monster in her future or Mr. Roger’s reruns. No giggles wearing Mama’s sunglasses and a floppy hat at the beach — no thrill of protected laughter as she rides high on Daddy’s shoulders. No birthday candle. Candle out.

Regina Brown is broken into pieces, but Planned Parenthood celebrates another year of slaughter. Poor Regina Brown fallen into bloody remnants on the organ tray. What color were her eyes? What laugh did God give her? Were her dimples deep or freckles to be honey colored and sunbursty? Poor Regina Brown. We cannot visit your grave but we mourn your sundering, your tearing murder, with grief from all our hearts.

Matthew 18:10 (AMP)

“10 Beware that you do not despise or feel scornful toward or think little of one of these little ones, for I tell you that in heaven their angels always are in the presence of and look upon the face of My Father Who is in heaven.”

Stand up for life. Stand up for all the Regina Browns. Stand up for birthdays and Thanksgivings, Christmases and weddings.

“Matthew 18: 2He called a little child and had him stand among them.

3 And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

4 Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

5“And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me.

6 But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

Stand up for God’s great gift, the miracle of life. Do not let Thirty pieces of Mammon betray our children.

Pink for blue and cans for boxes.

Funeraled shears and death night watches.

As little fingers flinch and tears fill the soul,

Stay the thrust of the bone hand potter,

http://blog.maplestreetchurch.com/5-and-whoever-welcomes-a-little-child-like-this-in-my-name-welcomes-me/

The great empty.

Do you ever feel lonely? Do you ever feel blue? Old song from years ago but it holds the age old empty pain of our human condition.

Why do we always need more — more money, more status, more things in general (think of a man in Lowes’ or Home Depot or some computer store — or a woman in Kohls, Macy’s or Bed, Bath and Beyond) We have an incessant thirst coupled with a burning desire for more everything — gadgets and adornments — types of food and drink to satisfy the palate, trips to exotic locales or even just to get away from home for a time and find more grass that is green — and perhaps greener — more decorations, more hobbies, more people in our personal circle, and our larger bulwark — our Homey tribe family that stretches out and surrounds us with safety and acceptance – (activism and politics anyone?) We most covet relationships of depth but they are not for the faint of heart and are not so easily bought.

We are collectors of baubles and beads, bling and things — people noise to push the inner silence away, to make the pain of loneliness leave us so filled with constant chatterings that we have no time to hear our hearts crying –‘ I am so alone, so scared and I hurt.’ We push the mirror of ourselves away until we are too numb to see the pain that lines our faces, In the end, we do not even recognize the hurt; all we know is that nothing is worth anything in and of itself, no matter how much of it we get.

Idols are useless things:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear —
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.’
Percy Bysshe Shelley

We are God’s children. We miss our parents, the Trinity, and we miss our relationship, our home the way God intended us to live and have our being before the fall of Adam into the confusing world where there are no values higher than the next desire or the next conquest. Our yearning, that silence we seek to hear and not to hear, to fill with things — is our call home to God, to do His will not ours, to live out His kingdom in our lives instead of following a parade of worldly folly.

This is how we were made; this is etched into our very souls:
Genesis 1:27-28
26-28 God spoke: “Let us make human beings in our image, make them
reflecting our nature
So they can be responsible for the fish in the sea,
the birds in the air, the cattle,
And, yes, Earth itself,
and every animal that moves on the face of Earth.”
God created human beings;
he created them godlike,
Reflecting God’s nature.
He created them male and female.
God blessed them:
“Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge!
Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air,
for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.”

We are given relationships as a foreshadowing of our unbreakable connection with our Lord, a oneness and freely given servant’s life. We have a misty memory of walking in the evening breeze in a fruited garden, stewards of His paradise. There can be no thing that fills the void where the Holy Spirit lives inside us, with Jesus asking us to come inside and be united, born again, into the family with our Godhead once again.

Drink of the living water so that you will thirst no more, so no idol will capture you, so that the love that IS God Himself will be the joy that guards your life’s door from the waste of a longing and a soul seared pain. That three in one presence, that over-arching grace holds all music, all art, all content that has meaning in creation. We cannot buy it or fashion it on our own, but we can allow the empty ache to be filled by accepting Jesus Christ as God’s only unique son: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, [Jesus Christ], that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

John 6-10 Jesus told this simple story, but they had no idea what he was talking about. So he tried again. “I’ll be explicit, then. I am the Gate for the sheep. All those others are up to no good—sheep stealers, every one of them. But the sheep didn’t listen to them. I am the Gate. Anyone who goes through me will be cared for—will freely go in and out, and find pasture. A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.

1 Corinthians 15:3-9 The first thing I did was place before you what was placed so emphatically before me: that the Messiah died for our sins, exactly as Scripture tells it; that he was buried; that he was raised from death on the third day, again exactly as Scripture says; that he presented himself alive to Peter, then to his closest followers, and later to more than five hundred of his followers all at the same time, most of them still around (although a few have since died)

John 3:3 this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” 3 Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4 Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?”

John 3:5
Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.

2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

James 1:17
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

1 Peter 1:23
For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.1 John 5:1
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.

1 John 5:4
for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.

Matthew 24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?

Consider this an altar call to your heart! Come to Jesus, cast your loneliness aside and lay your burdens down.  If you accept Him as your savior and have no fellowship near you, or if you would just like to ask some questions and talk, reach out to our Christian family! Call or email Pastor Charlie Willson or Pastor John Hooper athttps://maplestreetchurch.com/.

 

The gospel of our lives.

Fellowship is not just on Sunday. That seventh day of rest is our touchstone, though; it charges us — builds us up — with balance and centered faith. The accepting eyes around us, the heart-meant hugs, the open faced smiles of Christ’s family bind us together as one lamp of living light, one loving unitary body, with the solid strength of purposed conviction; together we carry the gospel of our lives out into the waiting world.

All around us rings the sound of creation — God’s beautiful world, from the abundance of full flower yellow to the golden green of august hues, we are surrounded by a sheer magnificence of beauty — this miracle after miracle of color and form, arc and flow, old memories of ancient trees, babbling brooks and their laughter, the sound of solitary wind over the plains, the deep sonnets in sounding waves from sea to sea — fish and fowl — life moves on wings of emotion that  lift us up toward the trinity — sky lights focused, heaven bound!~ Indeed How Great is our God!

How gloriously, how tenderly wrought, the author and the painter created layers of backdrops for our dramas, our timed piece sets across the stage of being: But today as we leave our Sunday gathering, we move into  a tone deaf life that has been dulled and jaded — groaning under the weight of a downward spiraling culture. When we leave those friendly doors at church, go down the ramp or stairs and get into our cars, we drive into and through a time and space that increasingly is alien to our presence as followers of Christ Jesus. It is in fact, inimical to life and the mystery of being itself. It is a culture at cross purposes with God.

Leaving those sanctuary doors does not close off our nexus to God’s family. Though we live in a time alien, we carry our light together as we enter the days, as we enter what fray there may be. Through the week our lives intertwine now in a way, closer than ever lives were connected before,  not in tribal village drums or singing together in tent to tent meetings, but online with kiddos’ pictures and rhyming memes — the happy and pedestrian moments become shared with all the world — what we had for dinner, which flowers will or won’t grow, the sickness or the healing of friends and family. On goes humanity’s magic show of moving silhouettes across the stage of days — intersected and punctuated  — with touch taps from the internet. It is all part of expanding God’s world and our lives, our fellowship growing ever outward together into the skein of larger hearth and world wide home. We are at our Father’s work, living out our lives in moment to moment testimonies.

Our newsfeeds are filled with Christian concerns, familial prayers and joys — wonderings of politics, of our earth itself, of our pro life stand, of those left behind spiritually and those ahead who may yet see — a prayer for you, a prayer for me shared together for a pastor in a foreign country bound, a woman scheduled to be murdered for her Christian faith in Pakistan. No, this is not the going in and coming out of biblical times, but it is the communication of our day — keeping faith with Emmanuel, our balance point; we are strengthened by our fellowship together on Sunday — our unitary body remains enlivened and intertwined around the I AM THAT I AM.

There is no longer a pigeon held letter, waiting to be unfurled, to carry the good news, (or from a nearer past) a ribbon tied stationary, penned ever so carefully and carried by stagecoach. It is instead the the journal of our days in this time of instant everything. We share our pastor’s sermons, to watch anew in the quiet hours of a weekday, reflecting as we can. We share the comments and the views and remember songs sung and people gathered. There is scarce lag time for thought. We speak quickly and scroll on by.

The new frontier in fellowship and outreach is beneath the keys, mouse clicks, and touches of our fingers. Dear family, dearest church, let us be be mindful of the air we fill, the content we give. Let it be felt as an awakening that Christians brought salt, light, and love — with the true sword of spiritual understanding ‘For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart,’  We carry the light of our Lord and that of His universal fellowship, shining it by the living of our everyday lives, our reactions, our choices to engage or not engage; to offer solace and understanding, and maybe abit of wisdom along the way —  to share the very joy of life that made David want to dance for the Lord, we offer ourselves in these pressured days as reference points of spirit life — brothers and sisters in the family of Jesus Christ that spans from continent to continent.

We are all the city on the hill. Let us shine pure and bright — until once again on the next day of worldly rest, in closer fellowship we can reach out and hug each other, share a more personal conversation with the brothers and sisters God has planted to bloom near our hearts, near our daily lives — in our little towns — just where we smell the sweet scents of life — holding the newborn babes, attending the happy weddings, and helping the aged find a friendly hand to ease them into their seats. With this family, this living church, we recharge and feel the glow of spirit, blanketing us from eyes and ears that do not wish to hear, comforting us in our personal sorrows and pain, rejoicing with us in our personal victories and celebrations. Let us take this wonderous glow that we gather together and hold it sacred through the virtual days until we meet in the flesh again, sharing the bread and cup of fellowship in remembrance.

May the love and spirit of our Lord — in all the churches over this and all lands –remain as points of anchor, shared moments the gospel of our days, holding  us all in peace and at safe haven as we go through this Monday and through this week.  Until we meet again, may we hold to our faith, praying for its steadfast gift and shining it through our words for all the world to see.

http://blog.maplestreetchurch.com/the-gospel-of-our-lives/