A Pastor Prays for His People by Wendell C. Hawley

Eternal God, everlasting Father,
Great and marvelous are your works.
When we really contemplate you as Creator and sustainer of all things,
we are overwhelmed by your greatness.
The flowers of the field are of greater beauty than Solomon in all his glory.
The sparrow is the recipient of your provision,
the object of your watch and care.
Nations and rulers are in place at your will and by your decree.
Events totally beyond our control
are subject to your purpose and determined will.
And in between sparrows and nations,
you extend your providential care to your children.
You, O God, asked Abraham, “Is there anything too hard for the Lord?”
We need to have such truth reinforced in our thinking—
for the enemy of our souls besieges us with doubts
about your involvement in our lives.
We are overwhelmed with contrary circumstances,
and we are sometimes almost drowning in despair.
We confess that we have almost made security and money our idols,
thinking that investments and governments would see us through.
Now we need to realize there is absolutely no security except in you.
You, Father God, are our secure provision.
We need to pray and praise like Mary,
The Lord took notice of his servant and has done great things for me.
May this be our testimony this day.
We confess our sins, plead forgiveness, and trust you for daily bread.
Thank you, Father, for a cleansed heart and a renewed spirit.
Thank you for meeting every need.
Amen

Morning Drive by Wil Triggs

Lorraine was telling me this week that she took a quiz to see how we were doing with our carbon footprint. We came out with a remarkably low carbon footprint considering we hardly think about that kind of thing.

When we drive to work together, it’s not a statement on global warming. It’s a statement about our employment: We work at the same place, more or less the same hours. Plus, I’m cheap. One used car means no car payments and low insurance rates.

On the way to work each morning, we read theFace to Facedevotional by Ken Boa and pray with each other. Sometimes when we are driving and praying, we see evidence of God’s amazing handiwork. It’s often in the sky—the sun, the clouds, God rays showering down. Sometimes it’s the brilliant yellows, golds and reds shimmering in the trees. Look quick before they’re gone.

Not infrequently I have to ask her, “What was that Scripture you just read?” Sometimes I’m thinking about the day ahead or the slow traffic, or I’m anticipating an appointment or a task before me. Will the color copier work? Will the person I’m scheduled to meet with and share from the heart show up for real? Thinking about the day easily gets in the way of thinking about God.

Seeing the wonder of natural revelation, seeing God answering a prayer in my devotional life, I do my share of looking. But much of life involves that which is not seen. Considering all that God is doing every moment of every day, he is remarkably low key.

The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there. John 5:13b

I know there are theological reasons why Jesus slipped away unnoticed after the miracle, but it seems to me that God goes unnoticed. He slips away into and out of my crowded day or my drive to work. At the same time, Jesus came to make himself known, not to hide.

But how many times every day does God do something miraculous and amazing, or small and intimate in his care for his creation, yet we don’t realize it?

I like to search out Christian perspectives in secular media sources. Recently I came across an article Atlantic Monthly published by C.S. Lewis (in 1959) called “The Efficacy of Prayer.” In it, Lewis says, “Prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine. In it God shows himself to us. That he answers prayers is a corollary — not necessarily the most important one — from that revelation. What He does is learned from what He is.”

How much do we miss when we focus on petitions. I think it's not God who hides, but me. All the needs and requests, like people crowding around Jesus to the point where the crowd overtakes him and they're all we can see. Maybe we couldn’t bear much of that knowledge of God. But we could do better. I can do better. I wonder if we petition in our prayers so much because we don’t slow down and consider who it is we’re talking to when we pray. I think of my brothers and sisters in Nigeria and Indonesia and Singapore and Ukraine and Russia and Turkey—Christ with them all in their situations, the same as me as we drive down Main Street toward Seminary Avenue.

Maybe we should cultivate a greater awareness of God at work in day-to-day life and even and especially in our prayers. Be on the lookout, I sometimes remind myself. If you look for God, you’ll find him. He may be humble, but he’s not hiding.

There is a sense of wonder when we dare to see God at work today. He just shows himself. Someone does something that only God could know is just right. When I am surprised, which happens most every time, I suddenly realize he’s done something, “What was that Scripture you just read?” Scripture I've read many times suddenly becomes clear in a new way. A stranger does something unexpected or things happen in a way that just seems obviously engineered and I can almost hear him laugh. It’s a gentle laugh, loving and self-assuring toward me—the sometimes wayward one who wants to know what’s next but enjoys being surprised by something different and better than I could imagine on my own.

The Father, maker of so much that dazzles and even more that seems ordinary at the same time. The Son, who is our advocate always and especially when we don’t deserve it, which is always. The Spirit, so close, so caring, delighting with presence through people or silence or Scripture, the one who laughs..

Remarkably, this relational Father/Son/Spirit, invites us in and often unwittingly uses us as agents of God’s work, carriers of grace, messengers of hope. Wow.

So how will your Saturday be today?

Best Route Home by Lorraine Triggs

I have always loved maps—reading them, folding them, tracing routes on them and imagining the places I’d go. I especially loved the idea of U.S. states being pink or orange or green or yellow or light blue (much more creative than the current red state-blue state).

This early love might help explain why I have such a rocky relationship with Siri. Actually, my relationship with Siri is non-existent. When I try talking to her, I speak slowly and clearly, careful to annunciate every syllable. Usually nothing happens or it apologizes or misunderstands and wants to take me to a some other state. That is why we rely on my husband’s mobile phone and the cheery Aussie male-voiced Siri to tell us to turn left in 400, 300, 100 feet. Unfortunately, the cheery Aussie has gone silent of late, and we are left to rely on navigation apps and their maps limited to the size of a phone screen.

Even limited maps have their advantages, especially with their warnings of roadwork and heavy traffic for X number of miles. On a recent trip back home from Michigan as we crossed into Illinois, our navigation app insisted that the shortest route to Winfield was into Chicago and back out again on the Eisenhower. Never mind that when we swiped ahead we saw a solid red line the length of the Eisenhower indicating heavy traffic forever, or at least from the Loop nearly to the Hillside Strangler. The Bears game was just getting out.

What if the shortest route was into the city, through the heavy traffic and then home? We’ll never know. We chose another route home, where the traffic moved, and the road construction was on hold for the weekend. Shortest by miles is not always shortest by time or peace of mind.

I like my life the way I like my road trips—clear sailing from point A to point B. If not clear sailing, then some advance warning would be nice. Moderate trials for the next month; expect some delays. Heavy burdens ahead. Suggest finding a detour, and fast. Just as the limited maps on mobile devices only provide warnings for what’s directly ahead, my limited view of life prevents me from seeing further up and further in. I develop a hunker-down-I-can-get-through-this mentality and focus on the next stretch of obstacle free life. That's the goal--as few obstacles as possible.

What if the best route home is straight through the trials and burdens and crosses?

Moses seemed to think it was. In Deuteronomy, God’s people were done wandering in the wilderness (see what happens with no navigation app?) and Moses says to them: “The Lord your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness, where you have seen how the Lord your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place. Yet in spite of this word you did not believe the Lord your God, who went before you in the way to seek you out a place to pitch your tents, in fire by night and in the cloud by day, to show you by what way you should go.” (vv.30-33)

It was in the wilderness that God navigated his people all the way to the land he had promised, even when their limited view of life made Egypt seem like an ideal place to live. Our steadfast loyal loving God knows that the best route home is straight through the One “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).

Forget Egypt No map or app will guide me where I need to go.

As far as navigation apps or multi-colored maps go, I am counting on Jesus. Author, finisher, shepherd, Savior. After all he has brought us safe thus far and his grace will lead us home.

Ecclesiastes Is Right by Jim Crispin

My mom is 88 years old. Her beloved husband died 35 years ago. It's a long time to be a widow. Before advanced Alzheimer's disease took its toll, Mom was bright, successful in life, a believing Christian, beloved by family and by friends from her church, and a pack rat. My brother lives out-of-state, so addressing Mom's clutter (and other matters) fell to me.

I dislike clutter, yet over time my view of Mom's clutter softened. Many items in Mom's house were worn or obsolete, but Mom didn't see it that way, perhaps partly because she was a child of the Great Depression. Much of the rest was paper in some form, ranging in size from tiny notes-to-self to a 1961 Encyclopedia Britannica. Eventually all of it lost practical value. For Mom those items were reminders of things we all value—family, a meaningful event, a purposeful involvement in life, a success, a humorous or interesting incident. A few items represented her heartfelt dreams.

Life would have seemed stark to Mom if I had removed every bit of clutter, even as the excess of clutter gave rise to problems. I suggested, pleaded, appealed to reason, emotionally manipulated—anything to get stuff to the alley. Sometimes I partly succeeded, only for Mom to replenish purged clutter with new clutter.

In early 2018, Mom's faster-than-expected move to assisted living and prompt home sale required lots of fast work by me, which I accomplished in part by two all-nighters and morale-boosting burritos from a great Mexican hole-in-the-wall in Cicero. I wore out the pavement carrying Mom's stuff to the alley.

Very recently Mom moved to memory care, which required another downsizing. Not counting her bed and several pieces of furniture, I suppose that Mom's belongings now take up less than one percent of the cubic space they did five years ago. Material things are gone. Involvements of the past are gone. Most of Mom's mind is gone, none of these to return. "What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?" (Ecclesiastes 1:3, NIV)

Today other people live in Mom's house. Scavengers took away far more than I'd expected, and I trust that at least some recycle bin contents were indeed usefully recycled. "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9, NIV)

Prompted by her own experience, in the early 1990s Mom took classes at Northern Baptist Seminary with a goal of becoming a hospital chaplain. Courses included church history, spiritual formation, and deep dives into several Old and New Testament books. Mom being Mom, her grades were excellent, and she got as far as interning. Today it is as if none of that happened. "Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind." (Ecclesiastes 1:17, NIV)

Believe me, I relate to this verse: "A time to search ... and a time to throw away." (Ecclesiastes 3:6, NIV)

Many of you are acquainted with Alzheimer's, which is both dreadful and unpredictable. "Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them." (Ecclesiastes 9:12, NIV)

As a young adult and young Christian, I thought that Ecclesiastes was a downer. Today I see it as no-nonsense, matter of fact. I had overlooked its encouragement: "I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it." (Ecclesiastes 3:14, NIV). In my view, Ecclesiastes is not without humor: "Do not pay attention to every word people say, or you may hear your servant cursing you." (Ecclesiastes 7:21, NIV)

Parts of Ecclesiastes puzzle me, but that doesn't throw me. Our pastors are glad to take a swing at the hard parts, and there are commentaries. Should the Lord tarry, one day I'll be gone, and other people will wonder about Ecclesiastes. There is nothing new under the sun.

God Talk by Wil Triggs

Every fall for many years, I have been reading the story of Kury to the incoming Kindergarten class. One chapter a week. We will probably finish around around Thanksgiving. The story starts where Kury’s dad dares to plant his yams with no prayers to the tribal gods. Instead he plants them in the name of Jesus.

Two women missionaries have come to the village to translate the Bible and tell the people about Jesus. Before the story starts, Kury’s Dad already believes, but Kury is not so sure.

Right now I’m at the part of the story where Kury gets a snake bite and he is sure that he’s going to die. He’s losing the feeling in his legs. The missionary ladies come and call for medical help to come by helicopter. Kury doesn’t know what a helicopter is. People are praying. Villagers come to look at him and say that it’s because of his father not planting his yams in the traditions. There is a storm. The sky needs to clear so the helicopter can reach them. Kury falls asleep, not knowing if he will ever wake up, inexplicably glad that his father has planted the yams in the new way. That’s the end of the chapter.

Spoiler alert: Kury doesn’t die, but don’t tell the Kindergarteners; we won’t get to that part of the story until October 2.

This part of the story makes me think back to the boy at our first summer camp in the Kaluga region of Russia. As our team was preparing to leave, the leaders called me and Jimmy into a room where a boy was lying on a bed, sick. They thought his sickness might be related to his aunt, who was a witch. He had never been around Christians. She was likely not happy about this. But it could also just have been a cold or fever or both. Either way, there was no doctor or nurse at the camp or in the churches behind the camp.

So we laid hands on the boy and prayed. We prayed not just for his illness, but for his soul. Then I had to go. I did hear a week or so later that the boy had recovered. In subsequent years, I have heard about several of the other children and camp staff through the years, but I never knew what happened to this particular child. Enough years have passed that this boy is a man now. He could be fighting in the war for all I know, on one side or the other. Or he could be a pastor.

The Kindergarteners will find out what happens to Kury in just a few days. I won’t find out what happened to that Russian boy probably until I get to heaven. But though I do not know, that does not mean that I should stop praying for him, because the One I am praying to knows and cares a lot more than I do.

In the missionary story I read every year, Kury and his family have funny names for Christian things. They call the Bible “God’s Carving.” They call prayer “God Talk," and I like that. It changes the point of view of prayer from me to God and who he is and what he has done and will do on earth as it is in heaven.

So now it is time for God Talk.

Father, maker, creator, orchestrator of all, you make. You know. You breathe; I breathe.
Son, shepherd, I sin; you die. I’m dirty; you wash. I stray; you find. You lift up lambs out of the briars and rocky crags they’ve stumbled upon. You rescue.
Spirit, flickering warming flame, you build the home in which I live. You laugh and love. No matter how far down the path I go, you are ahead of me and behind me.
Everywhere is not too far, always is not too soon, new is now. Too true to be true, yet truth unchanging and forever lives in you, is you, and in you I marvel and live this morning, this Saturday, this always.

Anonymous Sources by Lorraine Triggs

June 17 marked 50 years since Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward broke the Watergate scandal, thanks to their anonymous source, Deep Throat. As a senior in high school, I was not only hooked on watching the Watergate hearings day after day after day, but also hooked on journalism. Bernstein and Woodward became my heroes for not revealing their source and exposing the likes of Haldeman, Hunt, Liddy and Colson.

From 1972 to 2005 Deep Throat remained anonymous, and then he revealed his identity: Mark Felt, the number two official at the FBI in the early 1970s. Felt was then 91, and four years later he died. It seems so quaint nowadays that someone would choose anonymity over fame.

Scripture is full of anonymous sources, unnamed individuals who had a part in a story that was bigger than theirs. In 1 Kings 5, it’s the little girl from the land of Israel who got things going for Naaman when she said to Naaman’s wife, “Would that my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” (1 Kings 5:3) We teach Bible stories about Naaman and rarely mention the little girl.

The gospel writer Mark liked his anonymous sources: Simon’s mother-in-law, a leper imploring with Jesus to be healed, four friends and one paralytic, whose sins were forgiven. There were tax collectors and sinners around a table, a man with a withered hand in the synagogue, a woman exhausted from her chronic illness and a Gentile woman who didn’t back down.

Except for the leper who wanted his 15 minutes, the rest of these people came and went from Mark’s account, leaving Pharisees and disciples to ponder this Jesus who had the authority to forgive sins and to order around the wind and sea.

These anonymous sources weren't part of a story of high-level corruption in the halls of power. Theirs was a different story, altogether more wonderful than anything Mark Felt had to say. This was the best news ever.

Mark describes anonymous crowds who followed Jesus, and townspeople who begged Jesus to depart after he healed the demon-possessed man. Unlike the man, now in his right mind, who begged to stay with Jesus and was told no. Instead, Jesus said to him, “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” The man did exactly that, promoting Jesus, not himself. I am fairly certain that he knew he had nothing to boast about, save Christ’s mercy.

We, yes, unlike the man who was formerly demon-possessed, have become decent practitioners of self-promotion. It's an unavoidable fact of modern life. We have platforms, followers, likes and websites. Or we follow, like and quote celebrity Christians, a term that seems a bit oxymoronic to me. Imagine if the Apostle Paul were writing today. Paul, what’s your platform? How many followers do you have on Facebook or Twitter? Do you have a website? "Rubbish" probably would have been his response.

The final verse of the hymn “May the Mind of Christ My Savior” puts self-promotion and Christian celebrity culture in their proper perspective:

May His beauty rest upon me
As I seek the lost to win,
And may they forget the channel,
Seeing only Him.

And it was Paul who first wrote, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant.” (Philippians 2:5-7)

The Paths We Walk by Wil Triggs

One thing social media has given us is the ability to rediscover people from our past. In other words, you no longer need to go to a reunion to find out what’s happened to an old friend.

You can discover professional and academic accomplishments. You may see spouses or realize that a friend has remained or become single. You get to see children and relatives of friends. But you may also see a person whose face you honestly don’t know.

There have been times when I have absolutely not recognized a person from their posted photos. Of course, the same might be said of me from someone who knew me years ago.

Weight gain or loss and hair loss or change combined with passing years can really affect a person’s appearance to the point where there’s no recognition. Which person at this restaurant is my old friend? Sometimes I have no idea.

This kind of freezing people the way we remember them is still a thing. I tend to freeze kids at their Kindergarten age. A few years later I see one and I sometimes think to myself, “Oh, look. It’s James' older brother. No. Wait a minute. That is James!?”

Time plays tricks on our memories confusing people as they used to be with who they have become. We mainly talk about outward appearances, not necessarily who people are on the inside. Because who but God knows what’s really going on inside?

There are different dimensions to this when it comes to faith. On one hand, through social media I discover that someone I knew who was not a Christian is now a believer—answered prayer. The flip side is one of my good Christian friends who is now describing herself as both lesbian and Buddhist. The reconnections can go in both directions.

Apart from Jesus, it’s all vanity. But we are not left to ourselves. Jesus doesn’t check our social media activity to find out how we’re doing. So why do we focus on the outside person and not enough on the inner? Do we sometimes define ourselves by the way we look to other people?

Honestly, most all of us do in one way or another, and yet, it’s God’s gaze that matters most of all. The eyes of others can lead us astray. But God’s eyes never will. Instead, they point us to where we have gone astray.

Examine me, O God, and know my mind.
Test me, and know my thoughts.
See whether I am on an evil path.
Then lead me on the everlasting path.
(Psalm 139:23-23)

We look back. We bring the past into our present day and think we understand things better if we could only do it over again. But what about the choices we face this very day? And what of the days ahead?

Our inner beings. Are they better today than they were two years ago, five years ago? Ten? Social media seems to be so much about what is happening now or what has already happened. But how might we look forward to what lies ahead? How are we to find the eternal path? I don’t think it’s by looking back.

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.(2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

Lead us on the everlasting path. It’s not where we’ve been, but where we’re going.

One Sunday, many years ago, we got home from church. Mallory, our seven-year-old neighbor at the time, asked us where we had been. We explained that we had been to church, thinking that she would understand that this is something people do on Sunday morning.

Mallory responded with a look of incomprehension and childlike pity. In her religious tradition her mother would rush out Saturday late afternoon for a quick turn at churchgoing to get it out of the way before stay-up-late Saturday nights, and then the family could stay in bed and sleep in almost til the neighbors (us) get back from their Sunday morning church.

The churchgoing choices have broadened since then. With livestream broadcasts, we can watch our own church service from the beds or couches of our homes. I wonder if Mallory rushes in and out of her church Saturday afternoon or goes Sunday morning, livestreams some other church or has chosen another path altogether away from us?

The footsteps on the everlasting path may be unremarkable in the short run. They can be simple, but they are headed somewhere truly remarkable. Last Sunday, I first recounted with five-year-olds the story of the prophet Elijah, wildly popular after the triumph against the prophets of Baal, walking with God, emulated by Elisha and then caught up in the whirlwind to heaven. From the whirlwind of Kids' Harbor, I went to the bookstall and met some people for the first time. I also spoke with Paul and Lynn and Liita and Ken. I listened to the preaching from the Gospel of Mark and considered the warning of religiosity and pharisaism and the miracles of Jesus. The loving arms of the Good Shepherd often are visible in the loving hands of his people, tearing open the rooftop or shaking your hand when you come into service, throwing cloaks down in front of a donkey on the road the Jerusalem or giving you a cup of coffee or a glass of water on Sunday morning.

If we’re sick or infirmed, livestream might be all we have. But I keep thinking about the people tearing apart the mud-dried roof to lower their friend down to Jesus for healing. This was not a remote experience done from the comfort of their own houses.

And a highway shall be there,
and it shall be called the Way of Holiness;
the unclean shall not pass over it.
It shall belong to those who walk on the way;
even if they are fools, they shall not go astray.
No lion shall be there,
nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it;
they shall not be found there,
but the redeemed shall walk there.
And the ransomed of the LORD shall return
and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain gladness and joy,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.(Isaiah 35:8-10)

It’s Back to Church Sunday tomorrow at College Church. Let’s pray together. Let’s worship together. Let’s hear from God’s Word. Let us find healing and hope and lean on the everlasting arms of the Savior. Together.

God's Faithfulness by Ellen Elwell

From Prayers for Every Occasion by Ellen Elwell

Generous God, at times I’m slow to learn your ways and quick to forget how faithfully you provide—just as Jesus’ disciples were. After witnessing Jesus perform the miracle of feeding five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish, then later feeding a crowd of four thousand from equally meager fare, the disciples were concerned when they forgot to pack food for the next part of the journey. So swiftly they forgot!

Yet my memory can be just as short. I see your hand in my life and delight in the ways you have sustained me, but days later, I toss and turn, worrying about new unresolved problems. I need to hear the echo of the words Jesus said to his disciples: “How many leftovers did you pick up afterward? Don’t you understand yet?”

Lord, help me to remember how many times you have fulfilled my needs. Help me to get it! With you, my mighty God and Creator, there is no shortage of bread, no lack of resources. You have proclaimed to all of us, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again.” Thank you, Father, for filling me up.