“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/ 

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven

Age after age, echo following echo, those hallowed 

words tic-tock our days, marking our lives through daily prayers. 

Etched in our desires -- front and center in daily

defiance, struggle rings louder than our soft 

repetition: We do not easily see submission

as a freedom call. 

His Kingdom on earth, is now. From our lips to God's

ears is inside the instant -- our time right here, our place

right now. The ever passing present, cannot be caught,

cannot be ruled by temporal culture or secular king.

Our Father's Prayer is Kingdom Come -- now--

moment to living moment! Words of awe, words 

of power, words miraculous. 

From the fall into discord, the harmony of God's  

will waits for us to hear again and to follow, just 

as the sun lights the day, as our hearts power our 

bodies -- easily and naturally -- without struggle or strife. 

All we have to do to live free is let loose the shackles --

say goodbye to desire's self-will, finding freedom 

at last, in natural law -- in earthly terms: Submission. 

We agree, but that is easier on Sunday. In REAL life,

we murmur and mumble, fearing to give

God our lives, our plans and our strategies -- 

our notions of how our lives

ought

to be,

have to be,

will be only if...

But just like Jericho, our self-made certainties

crash down, like pick-up sticks toppled over; 

we follow the fall, as in Eden, from one tribulation

to another,

shouting to the Lord

for help 

but holding on to our wills, our ways -- our kingdom. 

 

On this earth, God's earth that He found good, let us

 together again, find Thy Kingdom Come! Let us tie our

 hearts to Jesus' love and offer our days, not sacrificially,

 but joyously free, to His Kingdom Come!

The keys to that kingdom are, 'Thy will be done.'

 

Rejoice! I say again, rejoice!

Sunlight prisms through windows --
         falls gently
  over mothers and fathers
   sisters and brothers
          in sleep,
      bringing awaking --
  anticipation to our faces,
    joy to light our eyes --

    Jesus comes in light --
    recharging our world.

Tenderly spirit passes through coffee
 talk and hairbrushes, caressing
        ordinary moments;
    borne on waves of love,
           Jesus calls:

 whether we welcome Him or not,
     whether we argue or not,
whether we speed past Him or not,
 deaf and blind, with no ears to hear
           or eyes to see  --
                 Still

              always:
        God is love and
           God  is now.

     Psalm 118:24

This is the day that the

Lord has made; let us rejoice

    and be glad in it.

    

Let your light so shine

  May your eyes shine today
     with peace that passes
     your worried planning,
    your fears for tomorrow,
    your hopes for the future --

      passing your deepest
          understanding.

May your footsteps be sure and joyful --
   your heart carrying no load
  but the singing of love's song.

May tears and sorrow flee from you --
your enemies finding softened hearts
         a renewal of trust,
        outstretched hands,
     a palm to palm re-awakening.

     In your deepest place of secrets,
whatever the shadow that makes you wince
                and cry
       by yourself, to yourself,
              'How could I?'

        Turn to Jesus and listen:
     
   He said, “I am the way, and the truth,
 and the life. No one comes to the Father
         except through me.

Then spoke Jesus again unto them, saying
       I am the light of the world: 
           He that follows me
 shall not walk in darkness, but shall have
             the light of life.

      May you forgive yourself
      as Christ forgave Peter.
      He will also forgive you.
   May you abide in the grace
 and the love of our Lord forever.

Beautiful to God

We think of white fences and wild roses --
of spiderweb sparkles shimmering on the lawn,
at peace in the morning's dew.

We think of sleepy lakes and friendly country valleys -- of rugged granite
mountains and the climbing of ancient trails, at home with wild ravines and forested evergreens.

Home.

Safe and known.

It is home our hearts finger as cherished memory: Mother calling suppertime with hot food at the table; dad making a joke as he drives up. Children washing hands and family dropping by to say, "Hi!"

These things are beautiful to our hearts,
precious to our memories.

But.

The here music, the now wonder
is the truth of people and their hearts, seen and unseen -- known and unknown --
at home or not at home, shining in our lives, their individual beauty right before our eyes:

The grocery bagboy with the limp who rambles on and on to himself -- but stops and smiles back at you;

the cranky old lady at the video store with sad eyes and hair dyed too red -- whose face comes to life when you notice her keepsake bracelet;

the department store cashier with the hard attitude and the heavy accent -- who dips her head when you notice her locket and tells you about her kids through softening eyes;

at the food pantry the tattooed man, wearing a sleeveless undershirt and dirty jeans winks you a confidence and shares a gold toothed grin -- whispering that he slips tracts about Jesus into customer's bags;

the roadworker who drops the vacant stare and flashes a hesitant sweaty hand -- because you looked in his eyes and waved.

God's beauty is his image in each of us. He is our rock and our home -- home
to each one of us -- His family. Let us rejoice in Christ's family. Let us remember to see the beauty of His making, the beauty of his myriad images,
in the unwashed
and the sunwashed
alike.
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Hebrews 13:2 English Standard Version (ESV)

2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.