JUST A LITTLE TEASE OF HEAVEN....

 

HAPPY 70TH ANNIVERSARY MOM AND DAD!!!!!

 MY parents married on 16 AUG 1952, today is their 70th anniversary! Dad died in 2017, mom has vascular dementia and is now in a home in Gatesville, TX, but as Christians they are still married and will be reunited as husband and wife in heaven. LOVE YOU BOTH MOM AND DAD!

What happens in Heaven when we pray

 
I am very, very thankful Lord, thank you......

What happens in Heaven when we pray

I
dreamed that I went to Heaven and an angel was showing me around. We
walked side-by-side inside a large workroom filled with angels. My angel
guide stopped in front of the first section and said, 'This is the
Receiving Section. Here, all petitions to God said in prayer are
received.

I looked around
in this area, and it was terribly busy with so many angels sorting out
petitions written on voluminous paper sheets and scraps from people all
over the world.

Then we moved on
down a long corridor until we reached the second section.

The angel then
said to me, "This is the Packaging and Delivery Section. Here, the graces
and blessings the people asked for are processed and delivered to the
living persons who asked for them." I noticed again how busy it was there.
There were many angels working hard at that station, since so many
blessings had been requested and were being packaged
for delivery to
Earth.

Finally at the
farthest end of the long corridor we stopped at the door of a very small
station. To my great surprise, only one angel was seated there, idly doing
nothing. "This is the Acknowledgment Section, my angel friend quietly
admitted to me. He seemed embarrassed.
"How is it that
there is no work going on here? I asked."

"So sad," the
angel sighed. "After people receive the blessings that they asked for,
very few send back acknowledgments."

"How does one
acknowledge God's blessings? "I asked.

"Simple," the
angel answered. Just say, "Thank you, Lord."

"What blessings
should they acknowledge?" I asked.

"If you have
food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a
place to sleep you are richer than 75% of this world.
If you have money
in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish, you are among the
top 8% of the world's wealthy, and if you get this on your own computer,
you are part of the 1% in the world who has that
opportunity."

"If you woke up
this morning with more health than illness.. You are more blessed than the
many who will not even survive this day."

"If you have
never experienced the fear in battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the
agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation... You are ahead of 700
million people in the world."

"If you can
attend a church without the fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death
you are envied by, and more blessed than, three billion people in the
world."

"If your parents
are still alive and still married.... you are very rare."

"If you can hold
your head up and smile, you are not the norm, you're unique to all those
in doubt and despair......."

"Ok," I said.
"What now? How can I start?"

The Angel said,
"If you can read this message, you just received a double blessing in that
someone was thinking of you as very special and you are more blessed than
over two billion people in the world who cannot read at
all."

Have a good
day,count
your blessings, and if you care to, pass this along to remind
everyone else how blessed we all are..........

ATTN: Acknowledge
Dept.
"Thank you Lord, for giving me the
ability to share this message and for giving me so many wonderful people
with whom to share it."

If you have read
this far, and are thankful for all that you have been blessed with, how
can you not send it on?
I thank God for everything, especially
all my family and
friends.

 

Sermon on Eternal Life and Living Like Liberace With Your Mom and Her Friends Forever 12AUG12

Here is a beautiful life lesson, one that reaffirms hope and faith and life now and forever. From Rev Nadia Bolz-Weber...

Liberace in his heavenly palace. (not really)

Jesus said to them, ⁷Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. ⁴⁸I am the bread of life.

When I was in my twenties and totally out of control and pretty much estranged from my conservative Christian parents I used to joke about how my mom would try and guilt me into connecting with them more often by saying in her Kentucky accent “Nadia, the least you could do is come visit us more often…since we won’t be spending eternity together”. Which made me wonder if the church she went to realized that the promise of spending eternity with my mom and her friends wasn’t exactly the best selling point.  At least not for a 21 year old.[1]
But that’s kind of what I was taught: that being a Christian was all about where you will spend eternity after you die – kind of like purchasing a life-insurance plan for the hereafter. And if you manage to be good enough here on earth then when you die you get to go to heaven and be like the spiritual 1% for eternity and live in big mansions with Jesus and wear awesome jewels and walk streets of gold.  Which made it sound like eternal life is basically about getting to live like Liberace Forever.
So even now when I hear the phrase “eternal life” it’s hard to not just think of it as life after death.  Don’t get me wrong, it is true that to have eternal life means that death is not the final word…that beyond the death of these human bodies is a life with God everlasting,  That’s beautiful, and yes, it is good news.  But I dare say that it’s not the whole picture.
Because I need eternal life to be about more than just what happens after I die.  I need eternal life to also be about life before death.  Eternal life can’t just be about time that never ends – because my relationship to time is in some ways, the very source of a lot of fear and anxiety in my life.  The philosopher Kierkegaard knew about this.  He wrote about how our anxieties are about how we relate to time – See, The fixed nature of what has already happened can feel terrifyingly final.   But the unknowable and vast nature of what can happen in the future is also frightening. It seems a simple enough truth – that we can’t change the past and we can’t control the future. Yet this is what haunts so many of us.
So, too often we spend our time, our present time, the actual moments we will never get back again, and we squander them regretting what we’ve done or what’s been done to us in the past, or fearing what will or won’t happen to us in the future. And seriously, we might as well just take all those present moments we spend doing that and just throw them in a dumpster instead because in effect that’s what we are doing anyhow.
So this week I started to feel that if the promise of eternal life that Jesus speaks of in our reading for today is only something that happens after we die, then it just doesn’t feel like good enough news to me.  But then I realized, that if eternal life is related to the imperishable truth of Who God is in Jesus, then this does actually have something to say about our resentment about the past and our anxiety about the future.  Because when it comes down to it, all our regrets and fears that rob us of the present moment …all of them when it comes down to it are actually about the fear of death. Whether it’s a conservative Christian mother who fears the loss of her wayward daughter and wishes she’d call more, or a desperate housewife in Orange County who is injecting Botox into her poor forehead. All fear is fear of death.
So if fear and regret are the things that rob us of the present moment then when Jesus speaks of eternal life, it isn’t just about what happens when we die.  Eternal life is life that is available now and it’s life that comes from knowing that death has finally been put in it’s place. Everlasting life is available now to those who believe that the God of the universe whose love we are drawn into in Christ – that this God is the source and ground of what is more real than any mistake or mistreatment of the past and more real than any hypothetical possibility in the future.  This isn’t about just when we die… because this God is present to you most especially – not in the past or future – but in the present moment. Jesus said I AM the bread of life not I was or I will be but I AM and that I AMness of Jesus transcends time so that his I Amness is available to us in the present moment. Kierkegaard was right when he said that Christ’s presence on Earth is never a bygone event.  The IAmness of Christ is not something that we remember from ancient history –it is always a present reality.
Life everlasting is always about the present. It’s about a promise in Christ made in the past, which continues in the future but is most especially for right now in the present.
I think this is why all the great spiritual leaders teach mindfulness. Because  the gift of the present is the only thing that is real.
This is how the great saints and martyrs of the church survived whatever came their way.  They weren’t saints because they didn’t have the same amount of things in their past to resent or regret as you do…it’s not because they didn’t have the same number of possible bad things that could happen in the future…. I think they knew the imperishable truth of Christ in the real and present moments of their lives and they trusted this more than they trusted all other competing ideas. They trusted this more than they feared death.
I think the saints of the church have always known that I AMness of Christ as the way, the truth and the bread of life is about NOW. This is why every week when we introduce the peace at House for all Sinners and Saints we do so by saying Christ is among us making peace right here, right now.  The peace of Christ be with you.
Maybe you live in a place of resentment or regret for what has happened in the past.  Or maybe you live in anxiety or fear of the future, and if so, please know that this imperishable truth of the I Amness of Christ is present to you.  Right here.  Right now.
So I’ll take a page out of our contemplative-in-residence James Wall’s book and invite you to mindfulness.  I invite you into the reality of this very moment.  God is here. The eternal imperishable truth is found in the way God is present to us in each moment. This present moment is a gift to you from God. Because here’s the thing: God has already redeemed your past and is already present in the future that you keep worrying about.  And the life that God brings us is life eternal. It is happening right now and it is more real and more powerful and more eternal than anything you have to fear or resent or regret.  So welcome to life eternal. Amen

---

[1] Peggy is awesome and loves me and my church and yes, is quite grateful I came back to Jesus
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/08/sermon-on-eternal-life-and-living-like-liberace-with-your-mom-and-her-friends-forever/ 

Sermon on Matthew 25 for Christ the King Sunday 21NOV11

A sermon I needed to read to remind me to be more humble and accept the love and support offered by family and friends.....and to put my actions for those with less than me in perspective......

Matthew 25
³¹When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. ³²All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, ³³and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. ³⁴Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; ³⁵for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ³⁶I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.' ³⁷Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?³⁸And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? ³⁹And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?' ⁴⁰And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.'

Here’s the story I tell about how I met my husband Matthew.  I had left the conservative, sectarian church of my childhood along with their teaching that being Christian mostly meant buying an insurance policy for the hereafter.  We were told not to concern ourselves with this world.  We need not bother ourselves with the poor, the hungry, the stranger unless of course in doing so we might sell them the eternal insurance policy thus adding a notch to our holiness belt. See, as our hymns suggested, we were the spiritual 1% we were all about gold streets and mansions in heaven so the deteriorating sub-standard housing around the corner was not our concern.
Almost 10 years after leaving that form of Christianity and after involving myself quite deeply into issues of social justice  I met Matthew, a really cute Lutheran seminary student.  On our first date we sat across the booth from each other at el taco de mexico and talked about social issues and we saw eye to eye on everything.  Then he said “my heart for the poor is rooted in my Christian faith” at which point I looked at him and thought: What are you?  like a unicorn? some mythical combination of creatures that doesn’t exist in reality?  Soon I learned there was a whole world of Christians out there who actually take Matthew 25 seriously.  Who believe that when we feed the hungry, cloth the naked, and care for the sick we do so to Jesus’ own self.

The ELCA, the denomination this congregation is apart of, even has this great slogan: God’s work, our hands.  And I believe that.  No question.  And most of you believe that too.  The work many of you do serving the poor is informed by your Christian faith as well it should be. Soon after meeting Matthew I heard from the pulpit of a Lutheran church that we are the only feet and hands that Christ has so we are to be little Christs out in the world.  And to a large extent this is true.   God’s Work, our hands…absolutely. So I could preach a sermon about how actually giving a crap about the poor is part of following Jesus.  But most of you already are on board with that.

And as tempting as it seems when we read a Gospel text like this to think  Look!  Even Jesus agrees with us!  We are probably missing something…and we can so easily replace the conservative personal morality insurance plan for the hereafter checklist with a liberal social justice, here’s what Christianity REALLY means checklist.  Either way we end up not really needing Jesus so much as needing to make sure we successfully complete the right list of tasks.  Because in the end every form of Checklist Christianity leaves Jesus essentially idling in his van on the corner while we say “Thanks Jesus…but we can take it from here”

So while we as people of God are certainly called to feed the hungry and cloth the naked that whole Christian “We’re blessed to be a blessing” thing can be kinda dangerous.  It can be dangerous when it starts to feel like we are placing ourselves above the world waiting to descend on those below so we can to be the “blessing” they’ve been waiting for like it or not. It can so easily become a well-meaning but insidious blend of benevolence and paternalism.  It can so easily become pimping the poor so that we can feel like we are being good little Christs for them.  

So this week I had these dangers in the back of my head as I read Matthew 25 a little closer and I realized this: Jesus says I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me. Which means…Christ comes not in the form of those who feed the hungry but in the hungry being fed.  Christ comes not in the form of those who visit the imprisioned but in the imprisoned being cared for.  And to be clear, Christ does not come to us AS the poor and hungry. Because as anyone for whom the poor are not an abstraction but actual flesh and blood people knows…the poor and hungry and imprisoned are not a romantic special class of Christ like people.  And those who meet their needs are not a romantic special class of Christ like people.  We all are equally as Sinful and Saintly as the other.  No, Christ comes to us IN the needs of the poor and hungry,  needs that are met by another so that the gleaming redemption of God might be known.  And we are all the needy and the ones who meet needs.  Placing ourselves or anyone else in only one category or another is to tell ourselves the wrong story entirely.
As many of you know I was at the funeral this Monday of Cythia Burnside.  Wife of bishop Bruce Burnside. I met Bruce at the ELCA church-wide assembly and had preached about that the following Sunday.  I preached about how he and I had sat next to each other at a worship service where I discovered that his wife had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer a month before. During  a particularly un-singable hymn that I was distracted by hating…I realized he was crying. So, throwing my snotty opinions about church music aside I just had to sing that terrible hymn twice as loud because my grieving brother in Christ couldn’t sing.  After the liturgy ended, even though I was a new pastor he had just met and he was a bishop I asked him if he would like for me to pray for him and anoint him with oil and his eyes teared up and he said thank you yes.  I committed to pray for him every day since and checked in occasionally via text message and email.  At his wife’s funeral Monday I asked him “Who pastors Bishops?” He whispered “no one”   So here’s the thing…I don’t really think I was the one who allowed Christ to be revealed in this encounter… it was Bruce.  Because Bruce allowed himself to bear a need that someone else could, however imperfectly meet.  And when the grief of our brother was cared about Jesus was cared about.
I’m not a great example of this. I hate asking for help.  Clearly not in terms of setting up chairs or baking bread for communion.  I mean, if I am hurting or in pain it’s like torture to admit it and even worse to humble myself to ask for help.  It’s as though I think that I am not deserving of the care I give others which, of course, is totally arrogant.  So I wonder in this text about how we withhold Christ from each other when we pretend we have no need.  When we are only the ones being the blessing to others do we keep Christ from being revealed in our own needs that could be met by another.
Because I just don’t think the economy of grace includes 2 separate classes of people, one who hunger and one who offer food.  The fact is, we are all both sheep and goat.  We are both bearers of the Gospel and receivers of it.  We meet the needs of others and have our needs met.  And the strangeness of the good news is that, like those who sat before the throne and said huh? when did we ever feed you Lord?,  we never know when it is that we touch Jesus in all of  this. All that we have is a promise, a promise that your needs are holy to God.  A Promise that Jesus is present in the meeting of needs and that his kingdom is here.  And that he’s a different kind of king who rules over a different kind of kingdom.   Because it looks more like being thirsty and having someone you don’t even like give you water more than it looks like polishing a crown. It looks like giving my three extra coats to the trinity of junkies on the corner than it looks like ermine trimmed robes. That is the surprising scandal of the Gospel; the surprising scandal of the Kingdom:  it looks like the same crappy mess that bumps us out of our unconscious addiction to being good, so that you can look at Jesus as he approaches you on the street and says, man, You look like you could use a good meal.

MILITARY POWER vs UNARMED HEALER

"Imagine a world where the representatives of the greatest military power on earth are humbled by an unarmed healer from the backwaters of Galilee. If you can imagine this kind of world, you possess … an imagination ready to discern the reign of heaven."
- Stanley Saunders