Monthly Archives: March 2006

No, I guess it may just have all kind of come together this morning.  God has been teaching me some of this stuff over a fair stretch of time with a bit more intensity in the last few weeks.

This morning I led the kids in their time together after the morning worship service.  We heard the story of how God protected this guy, Moses, as a small baby, being a child of the wrong race in a society out to get rid of children like him.  

It just happened that Moses was also talked about in the sermon – a man of faith.  

I guess all those things that happened to Moses were in preparation for the role God had for him.  Being protected from birth – being raised by his mother who must have said more than a few prayers over his little head – learning the inside workings of the pharaohs court, trying violence as a way of freeing his people, failing and fleeing, learning to live as a nomad sheepherder (that was good training) then finally hearing God’s voice and becoming a leader in spite of being stammering and reluctant.  I’m glad God chose to call into service people with flaws.  Maybe there are no humans without flaws anyway.  I find it hopeful that God could take this guy who was living a pretty ordinary nomad shepherd life and make him the leader he needed, transforming Moses into the person he needed him to be.  So, as Moses followed God’s instructions, as he grew in faith, he became the great leader that God wanted him to be.

It struck me that God wants us to be healthy; whole people.  Not just healthy in our spiritual aspects, but healthy in all of our many facets.  If we want to know God, if we want to hear his direction for our life, he will move us towards wholeness.  So as I come closer to him, instead of becoming only more “spiritual” and satisfied with that, he also shows me other aspects of my life that need to become healthier – things that make up my psyche where I need to become more healthy mentally and lifestyle things that would lead me towards better physical health.  I don’t know if I will ever arrive at that place of health that he desires for me, in this life – not likely.  I seem to have all these obstacles that I put up to run around, and I love chocolate far too much and procrastinate way too easily, but it is good to realize that complete health is God’s wish for me and that he will keep on working with me to move me in that direction.  

I think that if I can follow God like this that God will bring about healthy changes in me.  Then, like Moses in faith following God, he can move me towards the places he wants me to go, to do the work he has for me to do. 

This may be either foolish or brave – sharing this.  I am still mulling over what it means, if anything.

I had a dream

No this is not the sort of dream of freedom and equality that Martin Luther King had.  Just a dream in the night that made me wake up and write it down.

I do not dream much.  I think I used to, but not any more.  So in a way I guess just having a dream that woke me up and one that disturbed me enough to remember, is pretty significant. 

Let me tell it to you as best I can remember it.

I was on a train.  All the seats were full so I was surrounded by people.  At the beginning there was something that was warning me of impending disaster.  It seems to me it was a woman but that is pretty fuzzy.  Somehow I had something in my hand that I if I reached down through the floor of the train and placed it on the track, it would prevent the disaster.  But I remember being unsure.  Would this work or would it actually cause the disaster?  And I was afraid to ask the woman what to do. I decided to do nothing. 

We approached a railway bridge or something like that.  I think it was a bridge since we ended up in a river.  As the car I was in went onto the bridge the cars behind ours started to derail.  As that happened, the bridge collapsed.  I remember thinking that I should have tried to prevent this; that I could not have made anything worse than this happen.  And then also thinking that if I make it out into the river that I could swim to the far shore and be OK. 

Somehow that is what happened.  We hurtled far enough across the river that I was able to head for the opposite shore.  I wasn’t hurt.  I held my breath and made it out of the submerged car.  But lots of people didn’t make it.  Somehow I knew that.  The only other person I knew was Grace, my daughter.  She also made it to the shore with me but then I lost her.  Funny, because she only seemed to come onto the scene right at the end – I don’t think I dreamed her being with me from the beginning.

Then I woke up.

It seems somehow as if there is more to this than just a dream.  I

I am trying to sort out stuff about teaching children about God.  In our church, which is small, we do not have an abundance of people to carry on children’s programs.  The ones doing this for the past few years are burnt out – maybe not all of them, not completely, but close enough.  Close enough that I, as the new head of the committee that deals with this area of church life, have to do something really soon.  What a way to break in a new committee! 

I just don’t have an easy solution popping into my head.  We need people in the church to take enough interest in the kids to volunteer.  We have older people and some younger parents but not many in the in-between group that are not already busy on Sundays.  Many of the older group express opinions on how there should be “Sunday School” for the kids but are not inclined or able to volunteer.  The younger parents often need the break from child care to do some learning themselves.

I sat and discussed this whole dilemma at length with God this morning.  And this is what I read from Luke 11:

And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will be given what you ask for.  Keep on looking, and you will find.  Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened.  For everyone who asks, receives.  Everyone who seeks, finds.  And the door is opened to everyone who knocks.

And Psalm 50 contained the verse:
Trust me in your times of trouble,
       and I will rescue you,
       and you will give me glory.

I still don’t know what to do.  But I guess I should trust that God has some sort of solution for us.  And I am not worn out from asking yet.

We don’t have that many young school age children but we have some.  And “some” are enough to be worthy of our time and energy so that we pass on the stories of our faith.  In passing on the stories of our faith perhaps we will also pass on our concern.  Maybe by spending some time with these kids we will learn to love them and that will get transmitted too. 

I don’t know.  I think one of the most important things we do as a community of faith is to tell our children the stories and as they watch us live, show them how to work the teachings out in real life.  But there are things for which I feel grossly inadequate.  I feel that I have not done a bang up job teaching my own children about the faith although I think I have raised children with a strong sense of compassion and generosity.  I bring this baggage with me into my dealings with this.  And guilt for not doing a better job of course.  

I wonder if anyone else has worked through the same sort of problem in a small church (attendance about 80 to 100).  I would like to pick their brains!

Maybe God will have to do something special here.  Maybe we need people not so much gifted as teachers but just willing and passionate about passing on their faith, willing to be creative and loving.  Willing to sit down with the little people. 

Hmmm – maybe that is me.  Just maybe.