I was called to serve once as a character witness once in a murder trial. The young man on trial was deacon in the church I was serving right out of seminary. He'd assisted in his mother's suicide and had been indicted on a first degree murder charge. I witnessed to the truth as I knew it, as I had experienced it from my perspective. I gave my testimony.
The writer of I John states that "the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world."(4:4) To have faith means we don't always understand. God is much bigger than we are. God's ways are beyond our ability to understand everything that happens. To have faith is to trust even when things happen that make no sense.
The origins of Mother's Day go back to efforts by Anna Jarvis of West Virginia to honor her own mother, who cared for wounded soldiers on both sides of the Civil War. West Virginia was the first state to recognize the holiday, and in 1914 President Woodrow Wilson signed the proclamation establishing Mother's Day as a national holiday.
Love! If there is a more slippery word in the English language, I don't know what it is. I love New York. Don't you just love Margie's new home? I love "da Bears." One day Donna White's son came home from kindergarten and said, "Mom, I have a new girl friend. Patricia and I are in love."
When asked, "What is love?" one child said, "When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love." Another said, "Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen."
Poets and writers and mystics through the ages have expressed the meaning of love in countless ways, but none more eloquently than the Apostle Paul, who wrote, "Love is patient and is kind; love doesn't envy--doesn't seek its own way--bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails."
Real love means living out our faith by what we do. Non believers will criticize the Church when we profess to be loving, but practice exclusiveness. To exclude others from our congregations will be seen as hypocritical. People will say "They don't practice what they preach." Whether we realize it or not, people are watching everything we do.
I don't like sermons filled with a lot of "you ought" and "you must" and "you should." I'm sick and tired of that. You probably are as well. I don't need more advice. What I need is strength. I don't need to be told what's the right thing to do, as much as I need the strength it.
Our society's message is clear: Practice your faith, if you must, but please do it PRIVATELY. First John says NO. It tells us that what we believe will determine how we behave--people will see it. If we are children of God, the world should be able to see the family resemblance.
Martin Luther rejected the idea that heaven was somewhere "up there" and hell "down below." Luther said that Jesus' ascension to the right hand of God was not spatial but rather than Jesus had come into his heavenly power.