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"Running in Faith" is an electronic devotional guide written by members of Abiding Presence Lutheran Church. Each week, writers use their personal interpretation of scripture to write an inspirational message they hope will help readers take their Sunday faith into weekday lives. Your comments are appreciated and, when related to a particular devotion, passed to the writer. We hope you will share these devotions with friends and coworkers. We are always happy to add new names to our e-mail list. Please contact us if you wish your name to be added. | |
Devotion for the week of April 3, 2000 "For by grace you have been saved through faith, We don't easily give up control of our own lives into God's capable care. Part of my own problem comes from being fiercely independent and self-reliant. I guess it's an admirable trait---until the point that it makes me so stubborn that it is hard to accept gifts and service from others. Accept the gift of God's grace or God's giftedness through somebody else? "No, thank you. I'd rather do it myself!" Just for kicks, a colleague of mine tried a little experiment at a toll booth along the New Jersey Turnpike. As he rolled up to the booth just ahead of a person he had never met, he handed the cashier a dollar and said, "This is for me, and that red Ford behind me." Then he drove off. Watching in his mirror, my colleague saw the guy in the other car behind him motion emphatically with his hands as he took far longer at the booth than other cars. Then he punched down on the accelerator and caught up with the donor down the highway. As he drew even with my colleague, he suddenly snapped his head to the right and glared at him---with anger! We receive God's grace like that, too. We want to second guess God's motives. It just seems too good to be true. We evaluate why we might be selected for such grace. Then, we wonder what kind of hidden hookers there might be behind the gift. For heaven's sake, Dan, just accept the gift of love and forgiveness and say, "Thank you." What freedom there is in giving up such stupid control! From that point on, life in all of its giftedness becomes a vast vista of surprise.
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Devotion for the week of April 10, 2000 "Be still, and know that I am God!" "Be still!" I can hear my father whispering this warning to my sisters and me on our many walks through the woods or along the beach when we were growing up. My father was not reprimanding us, he was warning us. "Be still", pay attention, because if you continue on your giggly, noisy, childish way, you might miss something wonderful. And indeed my father was right, because on these walks when we did stop, and listen and pay attention, we were rewarded with sights and sounds that still delight me in their memory. A whippoorwill singing, a mother deer and her fawn, a snake sunning on a rock, a fiddler crab ducking into his hole, a barnacle eating. All of these things and many more would have never been a part of my growing experience if I had not heeded the warning to "be still." Our Father in heaven also tells us to "be still." He wants us to take time during our day to stop, pay attention, and know that He is God. He knows that if we do not take time from our busy, stress filled days to "be still," we will miss something wonderful. We will miss the opportunity for our own spirits to bask in the presence of God, and we will miss the opportunity to mature in our relationship with Him. "Be still!" This is not a reprimand, but a warning. A warning from a loving Father who wants to continue walking with his children and sharing their delight in the gift of life that He has given them. Loving Father, help us to make being still a priority in our lives, |
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Devotion for the week of April 17, 2000
Growing up in a household of six children, I would always hear, "I'm sorry, please forgive me." It would come so often that sometimes I never stopped to really think about the word "forgiveness." We are able to forgive because God has forgiven us. When we realize how forgiven we are, only then are we free to let go of the accumulated hurts stored within our hearts and minds. God is the source of our ability to forgive. What made the difference? The difference is a wooden cross dug into a hill where a man once died in shared pain for the sins of the world. On the cross, Jesus gathered all the pain we made God feel, and he felt it there with God. He felt the same pain God feels when we turn our backs on him and chase after silly tin cups of our own making. Shared pain, between Jesus and God; this was his way of confessing our sins for us... There is a cross of shared pain in the life of God. This is why he never shuts the door to us. You can bet on it; he will always forgive. He does not merely forget, he does not merely understand; he puts himself at our side and says, "Let's start over. I will be your father. I will be your friend. I will be your savior. So lets get going." If God has done all that for us, if you are truly a forgiven person, then you can become a forgiving person. You have received the ability to give to others what God has extended to you.
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Devotion for the week of April 24, 2000 (Jesus said) "Lo, I am with you always, Slowly, she descended the stairs, flipping on the light switch as she went, and surveyed the damage. The water was beginning to seep in, covering the grey basement floor. The heavy unrelenting spring rain had finally drenched the still half-frozen soil completely. Now the water was winning the battle over the sump pump and paint-sealed floor. Packing cartons, filled with items not yet needed, sat on the floor. A little more than a year ago, she and her husband had made the journey to their new home and new life here in North Dakota, a long way from the house in Florida where they had lived for so many years. A "second career" pastor, she had commuted between home and family in Tampa and the seminary in Columbus, Ohio, alternating a quarter of the year in each place. Her time had been filled with studying, doing Internships, spending as much time as possible with her husband and the young adults who had been her children such a short while ago. Her husband had been understanding when she told him of her plans to go back to school to accomplish the thing that she had felt led to do even before college. In those days, women had not yet begun to imagine that they could become pastors. Her life had progressed to marriage (to a bank accountant) and four children. Now that these children were almost grown, it was time for her to realize her call to the ordained ministry. One by one, she opened the accumulation of boxes that sat in the small basement store room. Corrugated cardboard bottoms were stained dark brown with the increasing moisture. Forgotten items appeared -- most were undamaged, some already damp. What could be salvaged? What was beyond hope? Certainly, Christmas decorations made by the small loving hands of those now grown children must be preserved if at all possible. Other things could be discarded. After all, if it hadn't been needed in the 18 months of storage, would it likely be needed at all? One by one, the cartons were opened, the contents examined, their fate determined, the remnants gathered. One by one, she considered pieces of a former life and sorted them out. The last box was unfamiliar. Things had been packed in a hurry by a variety of people; maybe this one held some of her husband's missing treasures. As she opened the box, she was startled to see a statue of Jesus, with extended arms. The hands were no longer there, a reminder that we must be the hands of Christ in this world. She had never seen it before. Perhaps it had been packed away when one of the churches she was serving was redecorated. In the midst of the water, soggy paper and boxes, the odds and ends of damaged and now useless possessions, she was reminded that JESUS WAS WITH HER. In the coming years, no matter where she is serving, whatever the circumstances, this will be a reminder to her -- Quite by accident, after I wrote this I learned that ENDS also stands for Eastern North Dakota Synod, where my dear friend, Pr. Annette Campbell Crickenberger serves Zion Lutheran Church in Kulm and Martin Luther Church in Fredonia. Dear Lord, help us to remember you are always with us, |
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