Jesus the Teacher

He never taught in the classroom.
He had no tools to work with, no blackboards, maps or charts.
He used no subject outlines, kept no records, gave no grades,
And his only text was ancient and well-worn.
His students were the poor, the lame, the deaf, the blind, the outcast
And his method was the same with all who came to hear and learn
He opened eyes with faith
He opened his ears with simple truth
And opened hearts with love, a love born of forgiveness
A gentle man, a humble man,
He asked and won no honours,
No gold awards of tribute to his expertise or wisdom.
And yet this quiet teacher from the hills of Galilee has fed the needs
Fulfilled the hopes
And changed the lives of many millions
For what he taught, brought heaven to earth
And God’s heart to all people.

source unknown

Researchers Find That Gratitude Is Learned Slowly

Researchers have proven what most parents probably knew instinctively: gratitude doesn't come naturally. In her book entitled The Gift of Thanks, Margaret Visser cites a study which observed how parents teach their children to say "hi," "thanks," and good-bye." The children in the study spontaneously said "hi" 27 percent of the time, "good-bye" 25 percent of the time, and "thanks" 7 percent of the time. Parents had to prompt their children to say "hi" 28 percent of the time, "good-bye" 33 percent of the time, and "thanks" 51 percent of the time.
In conclusion, children had a much more difficult time learning to say "thanks." Most children have to learn to say "thank you" even before they know what it means. Visser states, "Eventually, when [children] have matured and been further educated, they will come to be able to feel the emotion that the words express. The words come first, the feelings later." Perhaps this applies to adults too!
Based on this research Visser concludes that learning to be thankful involves a steep learning curve. She writes, "In our culture thanksgiving is believed to be, for most children, the very last of basic social graces they acquire … .Children have to be 'brought up' to say they are grateful. The verb is passive: they are brought up, they do not bring themselves."
Visser also notes that, although we have to grow into the practice of thanksgiving, once we finally learn to be grateful, we seldom forget it: "Such phrases [like 'thank you'] become so ingrained in us that they last when almost everything else has been forgotten. In states of aphasia, or in people suffering from Alzheimer's disease, these little phrases often survive the shipwreck of other memories."

Margaret Visser, The Gift of Thanks (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), pp. 8-15

Firefighters Are for Weak People

Recently a firefighter in our church was told by one of his colleagues that belief in Jesus was for weak people. I found that ironic coming from a firefighter.
I have a fire hydrant in the yard that runs along the side of our house. I have never looked at the fire hydrant and felt any shame. I drive by a firehouse every day, and I never think, If this community didn't have weak people, we would never need firehouses. And when I pay my property taxes every month - taxes that help finance fire departments - I never get angry at myself, thinking, If I could just handle fires on my own, I wouldn't have to write this cheque.
Imagine a person whose house is on fire. The fire is raging out of control, and soon a fire truck pulls up, sirens blaring. The person runs out of their house in a rage and says, "How dare you come to my house and think that I can't handle this fire myself! Firefighters are for weak people—not for me!" What would you think of someone like that? You would think they were insane.
We know that fire departments are for "weak" people because a power exists that we simply can't deal with on our own: fire. Actually, we admire firefighters because they are people who have committed themselves to take on the power of fire at personal expense.
Christians are weak in the same sense that a community is "weak" for having fire departments. They are people who acknowledge that a power exists that they can't confront and live - the holiness of God. This, however, is not cause for shame, because there was a man, Jesus, who dealt with that power at his own personal expense on a cross. When someone is rescued from the flames, they're not thinking about their weakness; they're overjoyed that someone would risk it all to save them.

Dave Dorr, Cincinnati, Ohio

The Spirit's Power

Jesus said to them. "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you." (Acts 1:8)
This past Sunday morning I arrived at church to get ready for worship only to find that the power was out as a result of a storm. The building was dark; the computer and projection screens were blank; the organ and microphones didn't make a sound. Early arrivers were standing outside wondering what to do? Fortunately within a few minutes the power was restored and we went on with worship as usual.
In our traditional service that morning we sang, "Only Thou art holy; there is none beside Thee, perfect in power, in love and purity." Then in our contemporary service we sang, "More love, more power, more of You in my life." Both had been planned ahead of time for their respective services.
It made me wonder what would happen if the power of the Holy Spirit were to be temporarily cut off from our lives, from our churches. Would we notice any difference? How much do we rely on the power of the Spirit to deal with our personal problems and worries? How much do we rely on the power of the Spirit to accomplish ministry in and through us? Or are we simply relying on our own strength and our own wisdom?
Today we celebrate Pentecost - the commemoration of the coming of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus' followers after His ascension. It is considered the "birthday" of the church. (Acts 2:1-11) Pentecost is a good time to wrestle with these questions.

- Rev. David T. Wilkinson

The Stranger

A few years after I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family.  The stranger was quickly  accepted and was around from then on.
As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family.  In my young mind, he had a special niche.  My parents were complementary instructors: Mum taught me good from evil, and Dad taught me to obey.  But the stranger... he was our storyteller.  He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries and comedies.
If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future!  He took my family to the first major league ball game.  He made me laugh, and he made me cry; the stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn't seem to mind.
Sometimes, Mum would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet. (I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave.)
Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honour them.  Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home... Not from us, our friends or any visitors.  Our longtime visitor, however, got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush.  My Dad didn't permit the liberal use of alcohol.  But the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular basis.  He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly and pipes distinguished.
He talked freely (much too freely!) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing.
I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by the stranger.  Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked.... and NEVER asked to leave. 
More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family.  He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first.  Still, if you could walk into my parents' den today, you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures.
His name?...
We just call him 'TV.'
He has a wife now....We call her 'Computer.'

source unknown

What Children Need

It's not better teachers, texts, or curricula that our children need most; it's better childhoods, and we will never see lasting school reform until we see parent reform. 

- Samuel Sava, early childhood education advocate who helped in the development of Project Head Start

and held several executive positions with education-related organisations.

God’s Providence

Life is not a straight line leading from one blessing to the next and then finally to heaven. Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback. And the point of biblical stories like Joseph and Job and Esther and Ruth is to help us feel in our bones (not just know in our heads) that God is for us in all these strange turns. God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ.

- John Piper, A Sweet and Bitter Providence

Celebrating Both Births

Today is my birthday, and I've joined the ranks of the seniors. I was born on May 23, 1951. I had no choice in the matter. It just happened to me. Mind you, I am very grateful for that birth - to my parents for conceiving me and to God "who formed my inward parts; and. knit me together in my mother's womb." (Psalm 139:13 NRSV) On that day I became the child of Don and Betty Wilkinson. And I appreciate this physical life, more and more so every day.
But there's another birthday I celebrate as well. On June 8, 1969 I was born spiritually, or born again, as some might say. Remember Nichodemus? Jesus said to him, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." (John 3:3) In this new birth, I had a choice - to be or not to be. I chose to receive Christ as my Savior and My Lord. The Gospel of John explains, "As many as received [Christ], to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of man, but of God." (John 1:12-13 NKJV) On that day I became a child of God. And I appreciate this spiritual life, more and more so every day.

- Rev. David T. Wilkinson

If You Find God Too Easily

If I find Him with great ease, perhaps He is not my God.
If I cannot hope to find Him at all, is He my God?
If I find Him wherever I wish, have I found Him?
If He can find me whenever He wishes,
And tells me Who He is and who I am,
And if I then know that He Whom I could not find has found me:
Then I know He is the Lord, my God:
He has touched me with the finger that made me out of nothing.

Thomas Merton

God Is a Better Witness Than Twitter Readers

Explaining why he doesn't Twitter, author and editor Skye Jethani writes:
I know I'll get grief for this, but in the 2004 film Shall We Dance?, one character had a really insightful bit of dialogue:
We need a witness to our lives. There are a billion people on the planet … I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things … all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying, "Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness."
We all want our lives to matter, and we believe they only matter if they are noticed by someone. I wonder if this desire for a witness isn't what fuels a lot of blogs, Facebook, and especially Twitter. We want someone, anyone, to take notice … to care about us … to watch us and by their attention communicate, "You matter. Your life counts."
If this is one of the hidden motivations behind Twittering, and I think it is, we're really talking about a spiritual hunger - one that I don't believe can be satisfied online. Perhaps the most significant reason I don't Twitter is because I already have a witness for my life ….
Psalm 139 says it best:
  O LORD, you have searched me and you know me.
  You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
  You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
  Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.
I believe in God's economy there is not a single thought, feeling, or moment that is lost. There is nothing that is unseen or unrecorded …. God is indeed with me and witnessing every thought and reflection. My ideas are not lost, and my life really does matter—not because someone read it, heard it, saw it, or Tweeted it, but because God is my witness.

Skye Jethani, "Why I Don't Tweet," Skyebox: The Weblog of Skye Jethani (11-12-09)

The Everyday Gospel: Maturity doesn't mean moving beyond the gospel, but more deeply into it

I once assumed the gospel was simply what non-Christians must believe in order to be saved, while afterward we advance to deeper theological waters. But I've come to realise that the gospel isn't the first step in a stairway of truths, but more like the hub in a wheel of truth. As Tim Keller explains it, the gospel isn't simply the ABCs of Christianity, but the A-through-Z. In other words, once God rescues sinners, his plan isn't to steer them beyond the gospel, but to move them more deeply into it.
In his letter to the Christians of Colossae, the apostle Paul portrays the gospel as the instrument of all continued growth and spiritual progress, even after s believer's conversion.
"All over the world," he writes, "this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God's grace in all its truth" (Col. 1:6).
After meditating on Paul's words, a friend told me that all our problems in life stem from our failure to apply the gospel. This means I can't really move forward unless I learn more thoroughly the gospel's content and how to apply it to all of life. Real change does not and cannot come independently of the gospel. God intends his Good News in Christ to mold and shape us at every point and in every way. It increasingly defines the way we think, feel, and live.
Martin Luther often employed the phrase simul justus et peccator - "simultaneously justified and sinful." He understood that while he'd already been saved from sin's penalty, he was in daily need of salvation from sin's power. And since the gospel is the "power of God for salvation," he knew that even for the most saintly of saints, the gospel is wholly relevant and vitally necessary. This means heralded preachers need the gospel just as much as hardened pagans.
In his book The Gospel for Real Life, Jerry Bridges picks up on this theme. The answer to sin, he says, isn't to try harder, but to comprehend more fully and clearly Christ's incredible work on the cross - then to live in more vital awareness of that grace day by day. The main problem in the Christian life, in other words, is not that we don't try hard enough to be good. It's that we haven't accepted the deep implications of the gospel and applied its powerful reality to all parts of our life.
There are two challenges for preachers, those of us called to announce this good news. First is to help people understand theologically that the gospel doesn't just ignite the Christian life but it's also the fuel that keeps Christians going and growing every day. The second challenge, which is much harder for me than the first, is to help people understand how this works functionally.
I address the second challenge by regularly asking myself this question: Since Jesus secured my pardon and absorbed the Father's wrath on my behalf so that "there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus," how does that impact my longing for approval, my tendency to be controlling, and my fear of the unknown?
In other words, how does the finished work of Christ satisfy my deepest daily needs so that I can experience the liberating power of the gospel every day and in every way?
If you're a preacher, then God has called you to help others make the connection between Christ's finished work and their daily life. To do this, we must unveil and unpack the truth of the gospel from every biblical text we preach in such a way that it exposes both the idols of our culture and the idols of our hearts.
Every sermon ought to disclose the ways in which we depend on lesser things to provide the security, acceptance, protection, affection, meaning, and satisfaction that only Christ can supply.
I pray that as you come to a better understanding of the length and breadth of the gospel, you will be recaptured every day by the "God of great expenditure" who gave everything that we might possess all.

- Tullian Tchividjian: pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and a grandson of Billy Graham. © 2010

Still Thinking – The Beauty of Imperfection

I had the opportunity while in Seattle to attend four lectures by John Dominic Crossan at the University Congregational Church.  Crossan’s topic was on Paul, the Apostle Paul that is.  Crossan is a man who is both passionate and very knowledgeable about the early Christian communities.

Among the many things he said one was that perhaps the most valid mission of the church today is what he called “mission by attraction.”  I suppose he means that we must become what we preach.  However, it seems important that we don’t fall into the mistaken idea that when we are pure, clean, righteous, holy and good liven’, that people will rush to be with us. I am sure that the contrary is true and we set ourselves up for hypocrisy.  Surely the greatest attraction is to be real and tell the truth about yourself and your life.

While I was sitting at an oyster bar in a Seattle restaurant, I had a conversation with the oyster shucker.  He knew a lot about Australia and particularly the early convict settlement at Botany Bay.  After a time I said to him, “well, you must come and visit us some day.”  “I can’t,” he replied, “I am a felon and even though Australia was first settled by felons they won’t let me in today.”  Now, that comment didn’t push me away from him, in fact I felt more attracted to him because he had disclosed to me a stranger, a truth about himself.  I was curious to ask what crime he had committed but in didn’t seem appropriate at the time.

I think we have the mistaken impression that people only want to hear about our “perfections” our successes and our wins, when in fact a true encounter with another is always open to hear the truth about the other person.

Now here is a big jump in logic and it has to do with spending the weekend soaked in the Bible with Dominic Crossan.  I think people are more attracted to the Bible when we acknowledge that within this collection of books, letters and sayings, written over a period of eight hundred plus years, that there are in fact errors, inconsistencies, and human failures and that some parts are relevant today and other parts are best ignored.  It is possible that we are more attracted to honest imperfection than convoluted attempts to present a perfect text.  Perhaps it is because we know that those moments of absolute “rightness” are rare and we crave more the courage to live with the incomplete, the imperfect; the not yet; and the almost there, rather than the hollow triumphalism of the absolutist.

There is a Japanese art form called Wabi-Sabi, “it is the quintessential Japanese aesthetic. It is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete” I wonder if beauty has more to do with relationship, meaning and honesty than it does with perfection. There is a rather quizzical passage in the Gospel of Matthew that says, “Be ye perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.”  Some have argued that a better translation is, “Be ye whole or complete as your Father……”  Now that makes more sense to me because I know that the only way I can be truly complete is to incorporate into my life my imperfections.

The Christian Church has spent centuries trying to convince the world that the Bible is the revealed Word of God, true in every detail and divine beyond measure, while what humanity craves most is an honest recognition of imperfection, that is true to human foibles and frailties and yet in its imperfection has the remarkable capacity to display the beauty of the divine, the scared and the presence of God.

Christopher Page

Still Thinking – The Centre Knows

Two years ago Anne and I spent a week travelling through central Australia from Alice Springs, through Kings Canyon to Uluru. Since that time I have become convinced that this great rock, almost in the centre of Australia, holds some great truth about our place in the world.  It was the American poet Robert Frost who wrote the words, “we dance around the ring and suppose; but the secret sits in the centre and knows.”  As Australians we, by and large, cling to the fertile coastline.  Most of our population lives in six cities, all on the coast.  So from this place of relative comfort we turn our backs to the centre and gaze toward the ocean’s horizon. And while the edge and the circle can sustain us, it is only by turning to the centre that we can find that which nourishes our souls.

I use this metaphor deliberately because after spending an afternoon with Dr Parker Palmer at his home in Madison Wisconsin, I am aware that it is only by living our lives around the spiritual centre that we will truly be filled with the richness that life in God offers.  Perhaps that is just stating the obvious, and yet for whatever reasons we as individuals, communities and societies, often miss the possibilities we could have if we lived both from and into that life giving centre.

Some would say that if we all just worshiped God and believed in Jesus then we would have the centre we need.  But that approaches too easily collapses into religiosity and theological games.  Rather it is the “God beyond god” that we really seek.  That may not make a lot of sense to some, but it is an attempt to move from idolatry, where an image, idea or institution is central and worshipped to a mystery that speaks its wordless truth to all of us.

James Hollis in his insightful book, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally Grow Up, says that a person or a culture cannot “create” a mystery it is only glimpsed, encountered and felt.  It is the ineffable “More” of life – not a riddle to be solved, but a wordless surplus of meaning to be experienced.  And at its most authentic it is an inner experience at the centre of one’s being.

Parker Palmer has given us a great gift through his development of the Circles of Trust.  He explained in our conversation that much of our lives are spent talking to the person next to us and seldom do we gaze into the centre, that open space filled with meaning and possibility and even silence.  But at the same time it is necessary to note that Parker’s approach is not merely a form of personal development or self-actualization.  It finds its truest expression in the world in which we act with care, compassion and justice, as the circle ever widens.

There is a sign at the bottom of Uluru that asks people to respect this sacred place by not climbing the rock – it is not enforced so many do climb it.  The sign ends with these words from an aboriginal elder, which I paraphrase, “What’s with you whitefellas, why do you always need to get to the top of everything? Why not just walk around the rock and let it speak its truth to you?”

Christopher Page

ASAP....Please send this on ASAP!!!

Ever wonder about the abbreviation A.S.A.P.? Generally we think of it in terms of even more hurry and stress in our lives.. Maybe if we think of this abbreviation in a different manner, we will begin to find a new way to deal with those rough days along the way.

There's work to do, deadlines to meet;
You've got no time to spare,
But as you hurry and scurry-
ASAP - ALWAYS SAY A PRAYER

In the midst of family chaos,
"Quality time" is rare..
Do your best; let God do the rest-
ASAP - ALWAYS SAY A PRAYER.

It may seem like your worries
Are more than you can bear.
Slow down and take a breather-
ASAP - ALWAYS SAY A PRAYER

God knows how stressful life is;
He wants to ease our cares,
And He'll respond to all your needs
A.S.A.P. - ALWAYS SAY A PRAYER.

source unknown