We all need encouragement

   It was just the boys and I for dinner the other night, so we pulled into a fine dining establishment. It is one of those with a drive-through and is perfect for three hungry guys. As we were standing at the counter placing our order, a dozen employees to our left all shouted something at the same time. When it happened a few minutes later I asked an employee, standing nearby, to explain. She said they shout together whenever someone working the drive-thru has a big order come through, as a way of encouraging each other. I loved it!
   Maybe we need more shouting in church, rallying around people as a way of encouragement. We are all in need of encouragement. We are a community of women and men following Jesus. Following is not easy. We need the encouragement. I am reminded of that quote from a few weeks ago: Be aware, every person you meet is fighting a great battle.

• We should rally around the parents of small children and the parents of teenagers. And teenager with parents. They all need encouragement!
• We should rally around those facing illness. We should rally around those in helping professions who go to work everyday to deliver healing. 
• We should rally around educators, and workers, and anyone who goes to work to make a difference, great or small. We all need the encouragement. 

   Every time someone walks through the doors of our church, God is ready to use us. Every time. We have the chance to give encouragement, to share a plan, to offer a call to action that would lead them to victory. Maybe we need more shouting and noise in church: in worship, in the hallways, in our classrooms.
   Grace and peace, Scott

My Mary and Martha Life

While Jesus and his disciples were traveling, Jesus entered a village where a woman named Martha welcomed him as a guest. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his message. By contrast, Martha was preoccupied with getting everything ready for their meal. So Martha came to him and said, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to prepare the table all by myself? Tell her to help me.” The Lord answered, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things. One thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the better part. 

It won’t be taken away from her.” John 10:38-42

by Caspar Luiken, 1672-1708

   The heart of God, revealed through the Word, is intended to jar us out of comfort and return us to a place of unease that results in our trusting God for everything. This is why so many passages strike nerves and catch us off guard. None more, for me, than this passage about these conflicted sisters.
   You see, I am both of them; at least, I strive to be like Mary. I have been seeking a sense of inner peace and rest, nurtured by a rhythm of prayer and release, for a few years now. I believe that my heart is being turned toward the way of Mary. I also know that my mind works like Martha! As I write this I have a scribbled list beside me of the dozen things I need to do before my head hits the pillow tonight. I have to complete them all today, in order to have time tomorrow to get that list done. Each day, in this regard, feels like the previous.
   Yet, there are moments that the beating of my heart reaches the corner of my mind and I remember, "Before I ever accomplished anything or every failed to achieve the tasks before me, I am God's Beloved." In the frantic pace of trying to get it all done, I too often rush past this Word that must be heard. I am God's Beloved.
   You are, too. You are precious in spite of your productivity, or lack of it. You are loved, in spite of your lengthy to-do list. Grace and peace, Scott

(2617 is not an acceptable number)

   Every number is relative. What if I told you 2,617 is the number of times that the average American touches, swipes or taps their phone in a day. Every single day.
   I read an article this week - which I ironically found on my phone and then tapped twice to save to my email - that points out a growing concern that as well as addicting users, technology is contributing toward so-called “continuous partial attention”, severely limiting people’s ability to focus, and possibly lowering IQ. One recent study showed that the mere presence of smartphones damages cognitive capacity – even when the device is turned off.

   “Everyone is distracted,” Justin Rosenstein says. “All of the time.” He is a 34 year old veteran of tech-companies that is really worried about our ability to discipline ourselves. He is particularly aware of the allure of Facebook “likes”, which he describes as “bright dings of pseudo-pleasure” that can be as hollow as they are seductive. And Rosenstein should know: he was the Facebook engineer who created the “like” button in the first place. Talk about irony!

   Earlier this year a few hundred folks paid up to $1,700 to learn how to manipulate people into habitual use of their products at a technology development conference organised by Nir Eyal, who has spent years teaching techniques he developed by closely studying how the Silicon Valley giants operate. “The technologies we use have turned into compulsions, if not full-fledged addictions,” Eyal writes. “It’s the impulse to check a message notification. It’s the pull to visit YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter for just a few minutes, only to find yourself still tapping and scrolling an hour later.” None of this is an accident, he writes. It is all “just as their designers intended.”
   Where are you in this pitfall? Are you a victim? Do you have ways of resisting being caught up in their techniques? What about loved-ones? What things are suffering as we spend more and more time lost in these virtual worlds of social media? If these struggles are true, shouldn't we talk about them? How can we help? We were made for a rhythm of work and rest, going between being on and off. Are devices preventing you from turning off?
   Grace and peace, Scott
PS - I encourage you to read here for the full article.

An Ancient Prayer for a Modern Tragedy - Psalm 71

Our nation grieves, again. Hear this word, from long ago, through the cries of mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, following the violence in Las Vegas or any of the other 257 mass-shootings (defined as 4 or more victims) that have occurred in the United States since January 1 of this year.

My God, rescue me from the power of the wicked;
    rescue me from the grip of the wrongdoer and the oppressor
because you are my hope, Lord.
    You, Lord, are the one I’ve trusted since childhood.
I’ve depended on you from birth—
    you cut the cord when I came from my mother’s womb.
    My praise is always about you.
I’ve become an example to many people because you are my strong refuge.
My mouth is filled with your praise,
    glorifying you all day long.
Don’t cast me off in old age.
    Don’t abandon me when my strength is used up!
Yes, my enemies have been talking about me;
    those who stalk me plot together: “God has abandoned him!
    Pursue him! Grab him because no one will deliver him!”
Don’t be far from me, God!
    My God, hurry to help me!
Let my accusers be put to shame, completely finished off!
    Let those who seek my downfall be dressed in insults and disgrace!
But me? I will hope. Always.
    I will add to all your praise.
My mouth will repeat your righteous acts
    and your saving deeds all day long.
    I don’t even know how many of those there are!
I will dwell on your mighty acts, my Lord.
    Lord, I will help others remember nothing but your righteous deeds.
- Psalm 71:4-16

Every Person you Meet is...

   Babies want to look around and see the world, as they develop, but especially want to find other eyeballs with which to connect. It happened to me twice last week. First, standing in the entrance of a large auditorium in the middle of a worship service on Thursday, I spent a few minutes exchanging glances with an infant child, being bounced by his mother, as she swayed back and forth in that soothing pattern every parent holding a child knows so well. Later in the week, standing in line at Kroger, I realized the eyes of a child, no older than 6 months, were fixed upon me from one row over. Each moment prompted me to smiled and marvel at the miracle of life before me. I also appreciated the care-free life of children, that the world too quickly takes away.

   I believe the simple ritual of looking a person in the eyes is a part of the larger spiritual practice of seeing a person as the Beloved of God. How can we claim to love someone if we do not know them? How can we claim to know someone if we do not look at them? 

   A word of wisdom, shared with me in my first year of ministry, over 17 years ago, continues to return with truth and goodness. It is a word that helps me to see those I encounter in a deep, spiritual way, that even my eyes cannot see. The word is:

Be aware, every person you meet is fighting a great battle.

This piece of wisdom might not apply to those infants, being gently held and rocked as the world moved around them, but it is surely true for everyone else. I find that seeing others in this way changes my approach to them.
   Despair, debt, fear, fatigue, finances, marriage, childlessness, injustice, hopelessness - these are but a short list of the battles any of us are facing this day. Can we see into the eyes of those we greet and offer the kindness of Christ in the midst of the battles others are waging? Can we point them to a place of surrender, knowing that not every battle is even ours to fight?
   Grace and peace, Scott

Jesus is Alive through our Church

   Since starting as the Bishop of the South Georgia Conference as September, Lawson Bryan has kept our focus steadily on the question, "Where are we alive together in Christ?" He loves the verses from Ephesians 2, "But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ..."
   It was my friend Allison Lindsey, who helps coordinate disaster response for the 650 UMC congregations in South Georgia, who referred to the amazing "ALIVE sightings" during the past month of storms. She included local churches opening as shelters, Wesleyan College opening their campus to evacuating families of their students, and our Methodist Children's Home in Macon hosting the Florida Methodist Home kids and staff.
   I've seen and heard of similar amazing "ALIVE" sightings in our own church just this week:

• A mom and her two sons spent all day Tuesday serving local older couples, they'd never met before, in their yards
• A family pooling their $10 talents to provide care packages for utility workers
• Another family baking and delivering cookies and drinks to utility workers all over Houston County as they worked 
• One woman coordinating a host of others to prepare meals to feed evacuees housed at Trinity UMC
• People donating diapers and wipes to help flooded families in Texas
• One family of three donating filled UMCOR cleaning buckets and then collecting money to fill more of them
• Others opening their homes to welcome people without power

   Hear Paul's words, again, "God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive together with Christ." Jesus is alive in Houston County when his church loves its neighbors! Grace and peace, Scott

Little Chapel on the Bonaire Prairie

The Bonaire Methodist Chapel, by Marie Holly

   It was this month, in 1894, that the Bonaire Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was completing construction on the chapel built by a handful of families from the farming community. Earlier that year, the Rev. M. B. Ferrell, a preacher at the Sandy Run church, choose Bonaire as a spot to try to plant a new church because it was the next stop headed south on the Georgia Southern and Florida Railway. That February a committee was formed to consider the formal development of an ongoing, worshiping congregation, and soon afterwards Mr. W. S. King donated land. By mid-summer, he and his two sons were joined by five other men in the actual building on the structure that we still worship in on Sundays.
   We don't have photographs from that August 1894, but mind does create images as I wander back there with questions about life in our community one-hundred and twenty three years ago.

Was that August as hot as it is now?
What did they do about the mosquitoes?
Who provided the saw mill to cut the timber used in construction?
How much traffic passed by on a average afternoon when the men worked on the church building after completing their work on their own respective farms?
How vital was the support they received from their wives and families, that they saw the project completed in a such a short period of time?
What visionary sketched out the plans for a room large enough room that it would still be used today to welcome new friends and guests?

   At the century mark, Earline Cole compiled a wonderful history of our church. She choose Psalm 102:18 as a theme, Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet unborn may praise the Lord. It is so true. We have been blessed by men and women, who could surely never have imagined the stream of persons yet unborn who would enter our little chapel. We are sending out invitations this week for our Church Anniversary on September 24 to give witness to the greatness of God. Mark your calendars now.
   Grace and peace, Scott

The Storm Around You and Me

Gale-force winds arose, and waves crashed against the boat so that the boat was swamped. But Jesus was in the rear of the boat, sleeping on a pillow. They woke him up and said, “Teacher, don’t you care that we’re drowning?”
- Mark 4:37-38

Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1633  

   Panic is what we are tempted to do when waves come crashing in on the boat we are in. The disciples gave in to the temptation, even to the point that they accuse Jesus of not caring. The disciples were afraid. They knew the lake well, most of them growing up on its shores and working its water from their youth. When things suddenly change, people panic and that reaction, left unchecked, tries to replace common sense and truth. 
   Trust. Fear was not the only option, though. Jesus was not acting based on fear; in fact, he was asleep on a pillow. Jesus trusts that the waves cannot do more than they can do. They cannot touch his soul or the souls of the men on that boat. 
   We are 10,000 miles from that lake. It happened 2,000 years ago. The languages spoken there are now dead, but the story is still very much alive. This story is important. When the boat we are in is being battered by the waves, we have a choice to give in to fear or to trust. This is a word for America. This is a word for me. Is it a word for you, too?
   We are called to trust. We are called to give witness to the power of the one who calms the storms. We are called to not panic. The means of grace, given to us by God, to stay grounded in such trust include prayer, the scriptures, worship, and fasting. These get us through the storm.
   Before the story is over, Jesus spoke and the winds and storm were immediately calmed. He has that kind of power. Our task is to trust and not give in to fear.
   Grace and peace, Scott