World Brightening Behavior # 1

Greet People Warmly

“Good morning. It is good to see you”. Become an enthusiastic and, fanatic greetor (sic). Greet everybody, whether or not they make eye contact—say “Hello”, “Good Morning”, Great to see you!—anything, to send a pleasant message of noticing them. A greeting is a connection. It is knocking at a door saying “I notice you... You are valued… You are somebody!’ That is a simple, clean, blessing, everybody needs. There are no exceptions.

(In the process notice how it makes you glow, how it brightens your own life).

Five Key Essentials Vital for Every Caring Person to Know

1. I have the capacities, qualities, and abilities that can brighten another person’s life, help them gain confidence, and feel hopeful about life.

2. Everyone can be helped by my encouragement, kindness, interest, and friendliness. No one is exempt.

3. My warmth, friendliness, and kindness, when another feels it and sees it, makes them feel there is goodness and care in this world. .

4. When I show any form of loving-kindness toward anybody it is like showing it to Jesus, himself.

5. The care and kindness I give to others is infectious. They will catch it and pass it on, to help keep the ripples flowing, making this a happier world.

BONUS: The benefits others gain from my care and kindness are matched by the positive feelings I experience, in and from the process of offering such love.

ANYTHING WE SHOULD ADD TO THIS LIST? ----- Jim Kok

A Powerful Statement about Living for Jesus

Ponder These Words. They are so Important!

“Every act of love, gratitude and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one’s fellow human beings and for that matter one’s nonhuman creatures; and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the Gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world—all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make. by N.T. Wright Surprised by Hope

Everything good contributes to the new creation, the new heaven and new earth, to be fulfilled when Christ comes again. We start, right now, to anticipate that perfection. Nothing is wasted. What we do is the beginning, no matter how small it is.

BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD

BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD

Getting away from it all works wonders. Quiet, time alone, solitude, beauty, creates space for reality to regain proper perspective.

There is a way of knowing that goes beyond logic and deductive reasoning. In a scientific age such knowledge is seldom given credence. Still, of all we believe and hold true, a great deal comes from the anecdotal accounts of other people. Unproven, untested, but believable because they said “it happened.”

Knowing God and Jesus Christ falls into that special, personal, subjective, category of knowledge for many.

Astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell talks of his confrontation with knowledge that transcends reason:

When I went to the moon, I was as pragmatic a scientist-engineer as any of my colleagues. I’d spent more than a quarter of a century learning the rational-objective-experimental approach to dealing with the universe. But my experience during Apollo 14 had another aspect. It showed me certain limitations of science and technology

It began with the breathtaking experience of seeing planet earth floating in the immensity of space – the incredible beauty of a splendid blue-and-white jewel floating in the vast, black sky. I underwent a religious-like peak experience, in which the presence of divinity became almost palpable, and I knew that life in the universe was not just an accident based on random processes. This knowledge, which came directly, intuitively, was not a matter of discursive reasoning or logical abstraction. It was not deduced from information perceptible by the sensory organs. The realization was subjective, but it was knowledge every bit as real and compelling as the objective data the navigational program or the communications system was based on. Clearly, the universe has meaning and direction – an unseen dimension behind the visible creation that gives it an intelligent design and gives life purpose.

I. What is Christianity About?--A Lenten Reflection

I.

A Lenten Essay about The Nature of Christianity

The well-known TV personality and Interviewer Barbara Walters remarked about Christianity in this way. She said, that after all her conversations with Pastors, Evangelists, and other noteworthy Christians, she has concluded that Christianity is about going to heaven, and avoiding going to hell.

It is not surprising that she has come to that conclusion. A majority of active Christians share that view and see their faith in that way. In most Sunday worship services that is what the stress is on--sin, and avoiding punishment, heaven.

Is this what Christianity is mostly about? Is that the impression we want the Barbara Walters of the world to have-that Christianity is mostly about going to heaven and staying out of hell?

Certainly Jesus death on the cross is the enormously dominant theme of Christianity. "Jesus died for the world." Definitely John 3:16 stands high above other verses in crying to the world to enjoy the gift of salvation: "God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life."

There is the key to salvation, embracing that incredible truth. But salvation is a lot more than gaining the key to heaven. The fact that Barbara Walters bottom-line impression of what Christianity is about is the heaven-hell question is a sad revelation.

We must re-learn what Jesus had in mind when he came into this world. He did a lot of teaching, he performed miracles, he died on the cross, and then was raised from the grave. Think about the very earliest announcement about Jesus, the angels words to Joseph The Carpenter-“Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife….She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

The Jewish Joseph could not have had a clue what this meant-“He will save his people from their sins.” His life was still immersed in the religious practices of the Israelites. Sacrifices, rituals, altars, sheep, oxen, goats and doves and strict rules impacted every day of their lives and all they did. It was all about paying for and preventing sin.

These verses illustrate the context in which Joseph and Mary lived: Leviticus 4:32 "If the offering you bring as a sin offering is a sheep, you shall bring a female without blemish. You shall lay your hand on the head of the sin offering ; and it shall be slaughtered as a sin offering at the spot where the burnt offering is slaughtered. The priest shall take some of the blood of the sin offering with his finger and put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering, and pour out the rest of the blood at the base of the altar. You shall remove all its fat… and the priest shall turn it into smoke on the altar, with the offerings by fire to the Lord. Thus the priest shall make atonement on your behalf for the sin that you have committed, and you shall be forgiven”

How could Joseph the Carpenter have a clue about what Jesus significance was to be, living as he was in that context of sacrifices for forgiveness. Even if he shared the conventional longing for the Messiah, no Jew expected the Messiah would die like ordinary people.

My next Lenten reflection will jump from Joseph to Jesus on the cross and his words “It is Finished”.

I Appreciate The Crucifix--a Thought for Lent

I Appreciate The Crucifix

The empty cross on which Jesus died, I have known all my life, is the proper representation of that symbol. Jesus was removed from that terrible device, carried to a tomb and the tomb was sealed and guarded. Then Easter! There is the heart of Christian life. Death is defeated. A new age is inaugurated. The resurrection of the body we celebrate and anticipate for the human race. So the Cross is properly vacant. Christ is risen, not hanging on the cross.

Nevertheless there is powerful and important teaching in The Crucifix. Looking at the Lord Jesus hanging there in terrible agony tells us of God’s love in a graphic way. It speaks a message softened by the empty cross. It is the message of God’s pain, and a divine love, that would experience such an awful death for his people.

I have come to appreciate and love the Crucifix. Looking at it is a lesson about love. What greater love is possible than that—dying, voluntarily, being put to death, in a terribly painful way, on behalf of others.

That is love! And we are called to live that way. Not to go to the cross literally but to leave our comfortableness to help others. Every action taken whereby we bother to reach out to lift another person is of the species of dying for another. Every tiny, medium sized or major action of giving up time, money, energy, a preference, to help someone else is a form of dying for others. Looking at The Crucifix, the dying Jesus, can serve as a reminder of what our lives must be aimed at. The Crucifix, more than the empty cross, portrays love.

Jesus said: “If anyone desires to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever desires to save their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.” (Mt. 16:24). That is the remarkable thing in all this. We find such meaning, purpose, vitality, and hopefulness, in carrying the agenda of dying for others, every day of the week. We find life in that kind of love-giving.

The Crucifix magnifies Jesus final words: “It is finished.” A whole religion was being ended and a total new age welcomed. All the preoccupation with sin, guilt and punishment was over. “It is finished.”

Now we are called to build the Kingdom through love. Sin is forgiven. Look to the cross and see Jesus/God in absolute, horrible pain--for us. That is our inspiration, and example, for lives of loving-kindness toward others.

The Right Answer

The Right Answer



Pastor: (trying to generate discussion of his children's message) "Who knows the name of the little animal with a bushy tail often seen in city parks?"



Children: (silence, no one answered).



Pastor: "Surely someone knows what that little animal is called."



Child: (timidly raising her hand) "Well, I think it's a squirrel, but I know the right answer is Jesus."