“The way of the cross”
Mark 8:27-38 (September 15, 2024)
Thursday evening, Lindsay and I were getting ready for our walk. We do that every night. We walk through the neighbourhood. About a half hour or so, just to clear our heads, get some fresh air and a bit of exercise. Half an hour together, at the end of the day, is no bad thing! I don’t know if you remember, but Thursday was a drizzly day. Cloudy and wet. So before we left that evening, I checked the weather on my phone.
These little devices are amazing things! They’re not simple telephones. They give us access to all kinds of news and information. They have different ways of communicating. I can even remotely turn on one of the electrical outlets in my kitchen, so the coffee machine is ready when I get home. It’s incredible!
I opened the weather app. And it said: Light rain for 19 minutes, then stopping. Rain again in 40 minutes. And I said to myself, “That’s pretty detailed information.” I opened the back door and discovered it wasn’t raining at all! And I thought, “Can I trust this weather app?”
Weather is notoriously difficult to predict. “Rain for 19 minutes.” It seems to me like this app pretends to be smarter than it actually is.
It’s a “know-it-all” app. And know-it-alls can be annoying, claiming to know everything about this and that. Even when they don’t.
What we have in our gospel story today is an example of someone claiming to know things about Jesus.
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He’s on a journey with his disciples, travelling through the villages of Caesarea Philippi, a place of shrines and temples dedicated to pagan gods. It’s a teachable moment. And it sparks an important conversation.
Viewing his surroundings, Jesus asks, “Who do people say that I am?” The disciples respond with rumours they’ve heard. “Some say John the Baptist; and others Elijah; and still others one of the prophets.”
“But you,” says Jesus, specifically asking his closest friends, “who do you say that I am?” Now it gets personal. In matters of faith it always does.
It doesn’t matter what the rest of the world thinks of Jesus. Or what your parents thought of Jesus. Or the church. Or your friends. Or someone who’s written a best-seller, a celebrity on TV. What matters is what you think. Jesus looks at each one of us, waiting to hear what we will say.
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Peter was the first to jump in. “You are the Messiah.” “Messiah” in Hebrew or “Christ” in Greek. Both mean “anointed one.” The one anointed by God.
But now things start to get tricky. Because the common understanding of Messiah was associated with power and strength, the vanquishing of enemies, the establishment of God’s reign by force. The guy with the bigger gun always wins.
Jesus “sternly ordered the disciples,” not to go preaching that! Instead, he offers a radically different vision of who he is and what his life, in service to God, and all humankind, will consist of. If Messiah is the correct answer, it’s not the kind of Messiah that Peter thinks.
How often do we say the right words and still not get it right?
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Peter seems like a pretty smart guy. He’s got an instant answer to the question Jesus asks. But he’s shocked when Jesus begins to push him further.
From that moment on, Jesus “began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” Suffering, rejection, death ….
Now hold it right there! Peter can tell this is headed in absolutely the wrong direction. He grabs Jesus and pulls him aside. “Wait, you can’t be serious!”
It’s a cheeky move. Peter, the disciple, trying to correct his teacher. Attempting to re-direct Jesus at this crucial point in the gospel story.
We all have these pictures of who we desperately want Jesus to be. But he does not conform to our expectations. Jesus, the anointed one of God, does not answer to us. We’re not in charge. Jesus will be the Christ that God wants him to be.
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A disciple is supposed to be a learner. A disciple is a student. And these disciples, including Peter, have been following Jesus for some time. They’ve been part of a select group of friends, privileged with easy access and hours of instruction. They’ve listened to Jesus’ teaching and observed his ministry first-hand. But they still don’t get it. There’s still so much for these disciples to learn!
Well listen, isn’t there more for you to learn as well? Or do you have it all figured out? This enigmatic figure named Jesus. The great mysteries of a God who created the entire universe. The complexities of your own personal faith. If you think you’ve got all that sorted, well congratulations! But I think, like the weather app on my phone, you may be a little overconfident.
“Slaves are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them.” (John 13:16) We are not the boss of Jesus!
However long we’ve been followers of Jesus, there is always, always more to learn. The church, through the centuries, sometimes gets off track. But Jesus patiently calls us to return. To learn, and re-learn, and try again. To go deeper in our relationship with him. To go further in our journey toward his kingdom vision. We don’t become fully fledged disciples overnight.
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There’s a great story in the Gospel of Mark about the healing of a blind man. It’s only found in this one gospel. And it’s found immediately before the passage we read today. This is no accident.
In the story of healing, Jesus puts saliva on a blind man’s eyes and lays his hands upon him. Then asks, “Can you see anything?” And the blind man answers, “I can see people, but they look like trees walking.” And this is odd. Doesn’t Jesus usually get things right the first time?
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Christ_and_the_pauper.jpg" width="282" height="53" />Obviously, this is not going to be an easy miracle. So Jesus lays his hands on him a second time. And now, scripture says, “he saw everything clearly.”
Here’s what I think this story is telling us: The healing of the disciples will be a challenging project. You and me, we are not an easy fix! Jesus touches us once, and we can see – some things, sort of. But our sight is still fuzzy.
Here is Peter, the disciple. And he’s been granted a miraculous insight. “You are the Messiah!” he proudly proclaims. But he’s only half got it. Peter needs a second touch.
I guess we all do. A first touch, to open our long-blind eyes and show us the light. And a second touch to help us see more clearly. And then, I’m thinking, probably several more touches throughout our lifetimes, to illuminate and better focus our vision.
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It reminds me of a visit to the optometrist, where you look through a couple of peepholes and the doctor moves the dial switching various lenses and flipping them over. “Which is better, this or this?”
Our hope is always to see better.
I think also of that 12th century prayer made famous in the musical “Godspell”:
Day by day, Dear Lord, of thee three things I pray:
To see thee more clearly,
Love thee more dearly,
Follow thee more nearly,
Day by day.[1]
It doesn’t happen overnight. Our vision, like Peter’s is clouded by cultural expectations. Mistaken assumptions. Peer pressure. Personal preference. What we want Jesus to be, instead of what he really is.
Let me pause there and ask, “What might be clouding your vision?” Can you pray that God will reveal the Christ to you and enable you to follow the light?
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I said “follow” … because we don’t get to know him truly until we step out of our comfort zone and begin to act. The walk of faith is meant to encompass our whole being. Including who we are and what we do.
Faith that’s only shallow talk means very little. Which is why the next thing Jesus says to Peter and the disciples is even more challenging. Do you remember?
“If any want to be my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
It’s fascinating that the cross, of all things, has become the universal symbol for followers of Jesus. We put them on our churches. We hang them around our necks. Muslims have a crescent moon, Jewish people have the star of David. But Christians have a cross.
So what might a cross-shaped life look like for you and me? At the very least, I think it means that we let go of our own self-interest and embrace the kingdom way. A way of loving, serving, giving, God-honouring. A Christ-centred way of life.
The apostle Paul tells us that, in our baptism, we are buried with Christ. We die to sin so that we might rise with him and walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:4ff.)
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We’ll hear more about this again next Sunday. We’re only half way through the gospel of Mark. And like those first disciples, we have much to learn.
Today we stand with Peter, feeling a little humbled. Did he speak too soon? Did he claim to know too much? Perhaps it was a necessary step on a much longer journey.
We say what we can. But we’re meant to say it in a spirit of humility. Because, Lord knows, we could be mistaken. We may be partly right. We haven’t plumbed the full depths of God’s will and purpose for our lives.
But we surely want to, don’t we? I know I do. I want to keep moving forward with Jesus, learning the full dimensions of the reign of God.
The church is not for know-it-alls. The church is for stuttering, stumbling disciples of Jesus who’ve caught a glimpse of something beautiful, and want to know more …
“To see thee more clearly,
Love thee more dearly,
Follow thee more nearly,
Day by day.”
May it be so! Amen.
[1] St. Richard of Chichester, 1197-1253, "Day by Day", in The Hymnal of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America, 1940, Hymn 429. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_by_Day_(Godspell_song) (Accessed September 13, 2024.)
“The secret of serving”
Mark 9:30-37 (September 22, 2024)
Have you ever had to keep a secret? It’s not easy!
News of a birthday party that happens to slip out at the wrong moment, in front of someone who shouldn’t hear? A bit of good news you’ve just found out? You’re dying to say something … when – oops – out it tumbles. A piece of salacious gossip that would set your neighbour’s ears a-tingling? My goodness, it's hard to hold it in! Why is it that as soon as someone asks us not to share, the pressure to do so increases exponentially?
In last Sunday’s reading, we heard Peter confess that Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ. You’d think that would be the kind of news to shout from the rooftops. Isn’t evangelism part of Jesus’ call to discipleship? Yet Jesus “sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone about him.” (Mark 8:30)
Again, in today’s reading, Jesus passes through the region of Galilee. But he doesn’t want anyone to know it. All through the Gospel of Mark we have repeated instances of Jesus telling folks to keep quiet – the demons he cast out, the people he healed, even the disciples themselves.
Scholars have referred to this as the “Messianic Secret.” Jesus does not want people to share. Perhaps because the disciples are not ready. They only have part of the story. They’ve had the miracles, the wonderful, spectacular miracles! But they haven’t had the cross. They have yet to see the full implications of Jesus’ life and ministry.
In our passage today he speaks of the cross again: “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.”
The disciples can barely take it in. A Messiah who suffers is not part of their calculation. It does not compute. “They did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask.”
I think, actually, the disciples are beginning to understand. When scripture says “they were afraid to ask,” it seems to me they had an inkling. And it scared them. There are times in all our lives when things are just too hard to speak of. We don’t want to face them. We push them aside. “Please, can we not talk about this?”
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So then, what are the disciples talking about? Well! Does it come as any surprise to hear they were arguing about who’s the greatest?
This is a human tendency. And it’s present, at some level, in every one of us. We want to get ahead. We want to be first in class, #1, the gold medal winner. We want a place of honour, privilege, maybe power. In its extreme form, this becomes a kind of narcissism, where all we can see is ourselves. “Look at me!” Do you know anyone like that?
Surely not any Mennonites, for we have learned to be a modest and humble people. But perhaps, if you look deep enough, you’ll be able to find, here and there, a hint of selfish ambition.
The disciples know better. Which is why they hang their heads in silence. They know what they’ve been discussing. And what’s worse … they know that Jesus does too. It’s an awkward moment.
Jesus, of course, can see into every heart. Don’t even bother trying to hide it! It’s not going to work. He’ll see right through that self-righteous mask you try to wear. You may be able to fool others – maybe even yourself sometimes – but you’ll never fool him!
“Tell me, what was it you were discussing?” he asks. Silence.
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So then Jesus takes a seat – which is the posture a rabbi used when he wanted to teach his students. He calls the twelve and gathers them around and sits down.
Then he repeats this shocking word of instruction, the same sort of thing we heard last Sunday, when he said you gain life by losing life. And that we should take up our cross. In today’s passage he says, “Whoever wants to be first must be servant of all.” Not chief disciple but last in line.
And then, just to give a bit of visual aid, he takes a little child and puts it among them. Watch now as he takes this child in his arms. Literally, he hugs him. Jesus wraps his big strong arms around this little one and pulls the child in toward himself. As though he’s known them all his life, and loves them with a love that will never, ever, let them go. And isn’t that the truth of it!
He holds this little one tight. Then looks around at his friends. And says that whoever welcomes “one such as this” welcomes Jesus himself. And not only that, but welcomes the very God who sent him! Think about it. Reject God’s little ones and you reject God’s own self. Welcome God’s little ones and the Holy One of heaven and earth arrives in your midst!
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Welcome is at the centre of what Jesus is speaking of. More than a few perfunctory lines given by the worship leader at the beginning of a service, I mean a real, heart-warming, never-turn-away welcome that embraces the least, the lowly, the pushed aside, the otherwise-ignored.
Have you ever felt unwelcome? Like you didn’t belong in a group of people? An outside? One whom they would never fully-embrace?
Now, consider the opposite. A time when someone went out of their way to extend hospitality, and make you feel included, to bring you in.
I remember hearing about the greeting someone received when they first came to a congregation. One person in that church, in particular, had reached out to them. “And who knows, I might not be here,” they said, “if it wasn’t for that.”
In our circles, who goes unnoticed? Who is looked over? Who is deemed unacceptable, and therefore excluded by definition?
There’s always an edge to Jesus, isn’t there? He pushes at our boundaries. He won’t let us rest easy with the status quo of our lives. Because he wants for us so much more! He’s calling us into a heavenly kingdom, a new way of being, God’s way, even here on earth.
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Jesus took the child in his arms and he hugged them.
Lindsay and I had a little song we sang with our children as they were growing up. We learned it from one of their kindergarten teachers:
“Four hugs a day, that’s the minimum,
Four hugs a day, not the maximum.”
And so we’d chase each other around the house, mostly laughing, though sometimes resisting, until we got our hugs.
Sometimes we have this romantic notion of children, like they’re all cuteness and innocence. But anyone who’s spent much time with them will realize that children can be just as self-centred as adults can.
You’ve heard me speak of my 2 ½ year old granddaughter, who I love dearly. But I also know she likes to test the limits of good behaviour. It’s all part of growing up. She likes to think she has some kind of power over me. Little ones don’t have a lot of opportunity for that (the world is so much bigger than they are), so I frequently play along with it. She directs me and I obey her orders.
But sometime she’ll need to learn (we all need to learn) that living well with neighbours means we try not to push others around. I’m not bigger than you, nor are you bigger than me.
In the Realm of God, says Jesus, the values of this old world we live in are being turned upside down. “Whoever wants to be first must become last of all and servant of all.”
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And now we come full-circle, because our passage began with a secret – remember? Mark’s Messianic Secret: “Don’t say anything. Don’t tell anyone about me.” Yet word about Jesus continued to spread. You can’t hold the Good News in.
So I want to finish by sharing another of Jesus’ so-called secrets. Maybe you’ve already heard it! But here it is again. It still surprises me.
The secret to life – and here I mean fullness of life – is found in serving. Serving God, serving others. Letting go of that deathly-tight grip we have on our own well-being, so that we can pay attention to the interests of our neighbours.
In doing this, we die to our own self-centredness. We lose our lives, at least that sinful part of us that wants to make ourselves bigger than everyone else around. Living in the kingdom of God shrinks our egos down to size.
We lose our lives to save our lives. When we focus not just on ourselves but on those around us, we find that, miraculously, our lives become enlarged, enriched. We grow, as persons, to become more than we were before. More loving, more caring. More aware of other’s needs. More compassionate. More Christ-like in character.
The community we are part of grows larger too, with more invited in. The bonds that tie humanity together are strengthened. And Lord knows, in our coming-apart society, we need that! We all do better together. Life for all of us becomes larger, fuller, richer, more lovely.
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When I think of Jesus and the child in our story, I think of a woman who lived in small-town Ontario, in the first church I served. Her name was Thelma. And you could find her every Sunday morning in the corner of the lower auditorium, where the nursery was located.
She gladly took responsibility for it. All the children of the church came through her door. It was their first contact with the family of faith – and I guess with Jesus himself – as their parents went about the important business of worship upstairs in the sanctuary.
Thelma worshipped too, sort of. There was a speaker wired into the nursery so she could listen to the sermon while she sat in her rocking chair, holding a little one in her arms. But her primary focus was always the children in her care. And she never claimed to be missing out.
Maybe you know a Thelma. Maybe you’ve been a Thelma. I hope today we will pray for people like her who offer care for little ones. And I don’t only mean children. I mean newcomers, people with disabilities, and all sorts of folk whose lives depend on the kindness of others. People on beds of illness, people on the street. The very young and the very old. People far away in need.
“Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. … Whoever welcomes one such little one in my name … welcomes me.” Do you want to know fullness of life? Here’s the secret: Try serving others. Try living the Christ-life with your neighbour.
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And now for the really good news: We are all God’s children, drawn by the arms of Jesus, into the circle of God’s love. What a gift!
But don’t tell anyone! Unless, of course, it happens to slip out along the way …
https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56876 [retrieved September 23, 2024]. Original source: https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/come-unto-me-little-children-11621." width="278" height="98" />
“A royal waste of time”
Ephesians 5:15-20 (August 18, 2024)
There’s a note my children gave me, attached to a lovely new canoe paddle, as a gift for my retirement – that is, my first retirement. It reads like this: “In hopes that you will always remember to do the things that bring you joy … - the ‘kids.’”
I love the thoughtfulness of that. It was good advice and so I decided to keep the note. In fact, it’s sitting in our car, just under the dashboard. Every time I get in, I see that encouragement to do what gives me joy.
A year ago, someone entered our unlocked vehicle and took several things, including a handful of change and a set of prescription sunglasses. The one thing they left was this note. I guess they thought it had no value. But it does! At least to me.
And it sounds remarkably like the advice given to us in Ephesians chapter 5. “Be careful how you live,” it begins, “not as unwise people but as wise.”
And what does this wisdom consist of? Paul’s advice to the Ephesians was to make the most of the time. Literally, the phrase is to “redeem” time. To buy it up. Take it back and put it to good use. Don’t let a single moment go to waste.
“Because the days are evil,” he says. And while that may sound a bit extreme to us, it was indeed a dark time for that first-century Christian community, in conflict with the synagogue and in growing tension with the state.
Paul says, “Redeem the time.” Be wise, not foolish. Use what you have for good, not evil.
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Would you say the “days are evil?” I feel very fortunate to live at this particular time, and in this particular place. Yet there’s an undercurrent that gives me pause. You can hear it voiced in conversations. Beyond the standard complaints about this or that …
There is anxiety about change in our society, conflict all around us, difficult problems with no solution in sight, threats and dangers looming on the horizon.
Of course, we develop coping mechanisms to keep all this at bay: We seek entertainment to distract us. We turn to consumerism, filling our lives with more possessions. We go to parties. Or we find ourselves drawn into the virtual world of the internet, which is itself addictive.
“Don’t be drunk with wine,” says this letter to the Ephesians. Don’t spend your time on meaningless diversions. But instead, be filled with the Spirit of God.
I want to pause and have you think about what’s filling your life. What monopolizes your time? What do you spend your emotional energy on – your worries, your fears, your frustrations? And now ask yourself this: Is it wise or foolish to live this way?
“Be careful how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time.” (Eph. 5:15)
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I was sitting with some folks the other day, visiting back and forth, and the phrase came up: “Life’s too short!” It’s a familiar expression, isn’t it?
Life’s too short … For what? For getting upset about this or that. For allowing some trivial matter to ruin a relationship. For letting our worry about something overwhelm us or take away the joy of living.
Life’s too short for a lot of things. This is what Ephesians says: Don’t waste your time. Instead, redeem it. Use it for something good, joyful, hopeful!
We only have so many years. What did the Psalmist write? “The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.” (Ps. 90:10)
Toil and trouble. Oh dear. That sounds like another pessimistic assessment. These days, with all the demands upon our lives, time goes by even faster, and seems to be in short supply.
Our passage today calls us to be full of God’s Spirit. The Spirit that brings new life. The Spirit that reminds us of Jesus. The Spirit that is mysteriously present in and through the whole creation, in every place and every time.
This Spirit brings to us the presence of God, and the activity of God.
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“Be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts …” (Eph. 5:20)
Make melody to the Lord. It’s what we do here every Sunday morning. Singing has been part of Christian worship for centuries. The writer of Ephesians commends this practice. He tells us it’s a good thing.
I asked a friend this week why they sing. And this is what they answered:
“I like singing. It comes from the heart. And the mind. I like the feeling it gives. And I like to think that it inspires and encourages people. I like to sing praise to God and about God. I think I’ve been given a talent that I need to use to glorify God.”
The singing this person speaks of comes from the heart and reaches toward heaven. And when it touches the lives of others along the way, so much the better!
Do you sing? At home? In the car? With the radio? Do you hum softly so no one else will hear? Lindsay and I find ourselves singing more than ever, now that we have grandchildren in our lives. Little ones are not self-conscious or embarrassed. We read a book, we sing a song, we clap our hands in rhythmic delight.
Singing is part of our human lives. And it doesn’t all depend on skill or training. It’s a natural form of communication.
Listen … robins sing! Whales sing. “The valleys deck themselves with grain, they shout and sing together for joy.” (Psalm 65:13)
Christians sing:
“My life flows on in endless song,
above earth’s lamentation.
I catch the sweet, though far-off hymn
that hails a new creation.
No storm can shake my inmost calm
while to that Rock I’m clinging.
Since love is Lord of heav’n and earth,
how can I keep from singing.”[1]
And so the writer of Ephesians tells us to make melody to the Lord in our hearts, in the midst of a discordant world
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“Giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Eph. 5:20)
Giving thanks at all times. Not just in church. But at home, at work, when we rise in the morning – now that’s a tough one for me, because I can be a little grumpy first thing. And when we go to bed at night.
One author writes: “Gratitude is a powerful force that can transform our perspective on life. By appreciating the good in our daily experiences, we shift our focus to positivity and find fulfillment. Expressing gratitude deepens our connections with others and fosters a sense of community.”[2]
“Give thanks at all times … and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Really, for everything? Well maybe not. Not for death and disaster and darkness in the world. But thankfulness in the midst of everything. Finding something to be thankful for, even in the worst of times. Looking for that one thing that inspires gratitude and directs it to God. Being thankful for God, whose presence never leaves us.
“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ‘thank-you,’” wrote the medieval mystic Meister Ekhart, “it will be enough.”[3]
It’s interesting – the word for thanksgiving in the New Testament is Eucharist. And Eucharist, you may know, is another way of referring to the Lord’s Supper. It is a meal of gratitude in which we offer our prayer of thanksgiving. “Thank you, God, for the gift of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.”
Be full of the Spirit, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. And giving thanks.
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I guess you may have noticed: This is the language of worship. This is what the Christian community is meant to do with the time that we’ve been given.
We live lives that are full of worship. That carry what we do here every Sunday morning out into the world. How many times have you caught yourself humming throughout the week something we’ve sung at church, or a piece the choir has performed? It sticks with us. And leads us forward.
This is the antidote for “evil days:” Focus on God! Don’t waste time on silly things that do not matter. Keep in mind the very purpose of your being.
In the Westminster Catechism of 1647, the question is asked, “What is the chief end of human beings?” And the answer is: “The chief end of all humanity is to glorify God, and to enjoy God forever.”[4]
What a remarkable thing to say! Our whole purpose in living is to enjoy the presence of God. Is there joy in your relationship with Jesus? Do you relish being in God’s presence? Do you delight in it?
Live wisely, says Ephesians. Live for what matters. Let beauty and wonder and prayer and praise be part of all you do. Know that God is with you. Even when the days are evil. Redeem them.
Wake up every day and say, “God I thank you! Today I will live for you. Today I will sing your song!”
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You may have wondered why I chose such an odd title for the sermon this morning: “A royal waste of time.” Actually, I borrowed it from a book about worship by theologian and author, Marva Dawn.
She talks about society’s expectation that we use our time productively. We’re always so busy, working to accomplish some great and wonderful thing. But worship, she says, is not like that.[5]
Worship is not our usual busyness. It accomplishes nothing, other than putting ourselves in a place of receptivity, where we can be open to the gift of God, and offer ourselves to God.
The world around us may think of that as a complete waste of time. But nothing could be further from the truth! This is how we learn to enjoy the presence of our Creator.
And this is also where we begin to offer our lives to the service of God’s kingdom. And the life that is truly worth living. The thing that makes our joy complete. What did my kids tell me? “Always remember to do the things that bring you joy.”
“Be careful how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time ….”
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Oh yes, there’s one last thing I need to say. And that is, if there’s something you need to do, or need to say. Or something you think you need to be. Don’t put it off, don’t wait for long.
Because life’s too short. It really is. Whatever days we’re given, they don’t go on forever. So make them count. Take whatever God gives you and live it to the full.
Remember to sing the song that God puts in your heart. And give thanks every single day.
For life itself is a gift. And every moment can be full of God’s beauty and grace. If you seek these things, you will find them. May it be so for you. Amen.
[1] Robert Lowry, Bright Jewels for the Sunday Scholl, 1869, alt.
[2] https://swagcaptions.com/gratitude-quotes/, Accessed August 16, 2024.
[3] https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/meister_eckhart_149158, Accessed August 17, 2024.
[4] https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/westminster-shorter-catechism, Accessed August 13, 2024.
[5] Ministry Matters™ | Why worship is a royal waste of time, Accessed August 13, 2024.
