A Prayer for Tuesday of Holy Week – Heavenward by Scotty Smith

A Prayer for Tuesday of Holy Week – Heavenward by Scotty Smith

Baseball

I have never been a skilled baseball player, nothing much has changed. I'm not even a fanatic, keeping up with a favorite team and player anymore. Still baseball was a bonding point for me with both of my parents. My cousin, Mike Pagliarulo played pro ball first for the Yankees then for a few other teams. Last night, holding my son, I watched a PBS special on Fenway Park. There is a strong connection for me there. My mother's family is from Boston, and I have been privileged to see two games at Fenway. One was a Red Sox v. Yankee game in the 1980s when my cousin was playing. It truly is an incredible experience to go to that historic park. It was a moment, holding 2 of my kids in which there was this deep connection to my roots (my family, my relationship with my dad and my mom, and experiences with students) that came into a unique perspective, something as simple as baseball that transcends time, geography, and any number of things to build a strong family connection for future generations.

Loving Difficult People

Calvin Miller delivers a wonderful resource for ministers in his recent book, Letters to a Young Pastor. Miller draws on his 30 years of pastoral ministry and his perspective as a seminary professor to encourage, caution, and challenge a new generation of pastors. Essential reading for anyone in ministry!

Above all, never hate anyone. 

John said that to claim to love God and hate your brother is but a great deception that blinds you to what you really are, the certified lover of the church, all of the church, starting with the difficult people.  

Most people are difficult once in a while. In fact, nearly everybody is a problem to somebody, sometime, somewhere. You must decide whether to solve these people problems, cope with them, ignore them, or run them off. Pastor, I know that in ministry it gets hard to like everybody. Will Rogers did, I know, but then there's a general feeling that while Will never met a man he didn't like, he never really got out all that much. And I'm pretty sure he never pastored a church. 

I think you could insert served a church rather than pastored, because anyone who serves in a ministerial position faces this challenge weekly.

The Need for Christian Thinkers

John Stott in his commentary on Acts writes, 

There is an urgent need for more more Christian thinkers who will dedicate their minds to Christ, not only as lecturers, but also as authors, journalists, dramatists and broadcasters, as television script-writers, producers and personalities, and as artists and actors who use a variety of art forms in which to communicate the gospel. 

The Millennial generation is less influenced by talking heads who lecture about the incarnation of Jesus Christ than any other generation in history. They are more open to traces of the transcendent in pop culture. The church must find ways to communicate the gospel in new forms, even newer ones than Stott mentions, but include those he references if we will see future generations encounter the living Christ! We don't just need new generations of missionaries and preachers we need believers in all vocations to make Yahweh famous.

The Demands of Jesus

In comparing the demands of the contemporary, evangelical church to the demands of Jesus, Mark Galli finds the church sufficiently lacking. It seems that in the church we want to make it as easy as possible to follow Jesus, yet that doesn't square with the picture of Jesus in the gospels.

So it seems we want some theological and moral demands made on us, but just not too many. Give us a somewhat challenging faith and we do just fine.  

Then along comes Jesus, telling us to cut off a hand or foot or cut out an eye if it gets in the way of serving him. He instructs us to abandon wives, sisters, brothers, and friends and put our lives on the line. I don't know about  you, but I'd much rather tithe, pray daily, serve on a couple of church committees, lead a men's Bible study, serve on the church board, and attend weekly worship. As exhausting as it is to be a good churchman, it's infinitely easier than the demands Jesus would make on my life.  

The point is simply this: if we've given ourselves to a contemporary, high-demand expression of faith, we should recognize that it doesn't even approach the demands Jesus makes on us. Even monastics, old and new, know that their sacrifices are ridiculously meager. And when this reality hits us from time to time--as well it should, if we're at all honest with ourselves--the only reasonable reaction is fear and trembling. What else would a sane person do after realizing that Jesus wants nothing less than all of us--every molecule, every breath, every ounce of energy, every interest, every passion, every thought, every action, every love? It certainly scares the bejeebers out of me (134-136). 

The God Who Is Able

Jude 1:24-25

New Living Translation (NLT)

A Prayer of Praise

²⁴ Now all glory to God, who is able to keep you from falling away and will bring you with great joy into his glorious presence without a single fault. ²⁵ All glory to him who alone is God, our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord. All glory, majesty, power, and authority are his before all time, and in the present, and beyond all time! Amen.

I'm thankful that my salvation isn't dependent on me, rather on God. He alone is able to keep me from falling, preserving me until that day that I meet him face to face. He truly does deserve glory and honor in our lives!

Mark Galli's book Jesus Mean and Wild grabbed my attention because of the title, unfortunately the book was less engaging than I hoped. I was still able to distill a few great truths though.

Galilee is the beginning of things. Galilee is where Jesus was first revealed to us. Galilee is where we must go to get in touch with reality again.  

To go to Galilee means to remember what it was about Jesus that first connected with you. It means to explore those things that drew you into the faith in the first place. This Jesus likely left you with more questions than answers and perplexed you as much as fulfilled you. It took years to get all those answers and resolve those perplexities and thus year to refashion him in your image. Instead, return to the alluring, mysterious, captivating Jesus who first attracted you--not in a naive way (as if you've learned nothing), but in a way that sees the simplicity of Jesus within the complexity of faith (177). 

In writing about the encountering God in our world Galli writes,

God is found in the magnificence of Half Dome and in the miracle of the embryo, in the abandoned play of children, in intimate conversation over coffee. He is found when a husband and wife make love or when two or three are gathered in his name. He is found in the hungry, in the homeless, in the prisoners. And most specifically, he is found in his Word, in his body, and in the breaking of bread and the sharing of wine in his name (181-182).