Justin Bieber's Spring Cleaning

Justin Bieber is stepping away from his music career.  Since I was never a fan of his music this news was not disturbing to me. Yet, I know that he was a ‘teen idol’ to millions of adoring fans.  He came to fame at age 15 and his career path led him to a popularity and fortune that few teens know but most dream of achieving.  If his string of awards from the music industry is any indicator, he is good at what he does.

Now he is in a spat with a former girlfriend, Selena Gomez, about why he married his wife, Hailey Baldwin. Their love lives and feelings, which most of us would express in emails or phone calls or commiserating with a buddy at the corner bar, are played out before thousands of eagerly watching eyes and ears. That isn’t healthy, and it is why Justin Bieber needs to step away to focus on ‘family and mental health.’

So, why am I telling you, a generation of readers who, for the most part, do not consume news of Bieber, Gomez and Baldwin, this story? One, if there are children you love, do not wish for them that type of fame and fortune. Discuss with them that their lives have meaning even when thousands are not following them on Instagram and Twitter; that being truly loved by a few people, and returning that love, deserves a lifetime achievement award worth more than a Grammy.

Second, I agree with therapist Siri Sat Nam Singh who observed, "[Our minds] are like our houses. If you don't clean your house it gets dusty and stinky and filthy. If you don't clean your mind — through reading books or calming exercises or meditation — you don't grow. In Western civilization it's all about matter: Everyone is trying to get rich, everyone is trying to buy the house and get the paper. Thus we lose consciousness in spite of the fact that we really are spirits as much as we are matter." (source: Peggy Drexler, cnn.com 3.26.19)

We are in Lent, an old word for ‘spring’. In this spiritual spring, make time to clean your minds, to renew your spirit. And encourage the young people you know to clean their minds and spirits, just like Justin.   

God Loves You Just Like You Are! Easter 2019 Invitation 1

"Free Food!"

I discovered Costco. I have been there enough to appreciate the superstore’s take on the human desire for ‘free food!’  Is there in fact such a thing as a free lunch? It is enough of a lure to capture the mind of an old Dutch man (me).

Of course, you must be a member, or arrive with a member to get the ‘free food!’, but that’s nit-picking. The food really is free. The drink too. In fact, I am sure there are people who plan their meals around the fact that a day of shopping at Costco will mean one fewer meal to prepare because of all the ‘free food!’  Of course, the premise of the very nice mostly female vendors offering you everything from soup to nuts is that someone is going to actually buy the product. They count on suckers, I mean, people like me who suffer from an immediate and overwhelming sense of obligation to buy ‘free food!’ because we want to help the nice ladies just trying to make a buck.  Costco wins.

Which makes me wonder if this is why God has such a hard time giving away ‘free food!’ on Sunday mornings. Christian churches offer Bread and Wine (or juice) somewhere between daily and quarterly.  You would think that would be an attractive offer, one that would cause the crowds to be breaking down the doors.  And yet, people stay away in droves.  Why? They don’t want to make the time? They were taught it is an obligation, and they don’t like being told what to do? They assume there is some hidden cost they will be suckered into because they believe everybody, especially those priests and ministers, all they really want is money?

God issues an invitation to truly free food and drink which results in everlasting life and love.  Yet the majority of people reject the invitation.  Don’t they understand that  the offer has an expiration date? (Isaiah 55:1-3, 6) It’s one thing to walk past the vendors at Costco; it’s a whole other thing to reject God’s invitation to ‘free food!’ What are we doing wrong?

Perhaps God should stop relying on amateurs like me and hire the Costco marketing department.

"The Flames Will Not Set You Ablaze"

“On March 3 (2019) around 12:58am our department was dispatched to assist Beaver VFD with a structure fire at the Freedom Ministries Church, located in Grandview WV. Though odds were against us, God was not. Picture this, a building so hot that at one point in time, firefighters had to back out. In your mind, everything should be burned, ashes. Not a single bible was burned and not a single cross was harmed!! Not a single firefighter was hurt!” Facebook post, Coal City Fire Department

Here is how God tells his story today. There were over 47,000 ‘shares’ and over 4,500 ‘comments’ of this Facebook post. You can spend a long time being absorbed by the testimonies and praise.  And the main theme of it all, God is still doing miracles.  The description of the event reminds me of Daniel 3, where a king sends three men who worship God into a furnace for refusing to worship foreign gods or idols. The fire is so hot that it kills their captors but the flames do not touch Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. 

The world is desperate to believe that in the midst of life’s struggles, God is still mighty to save.  The world is looking for evidence that what the prophet Isaiah wrote is still true:

When you pass through the waters,
    I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
    they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
    you will not be burned;
    the flames will not set you ablaze.
For I am the Lord your God,
    the Holy One of Israel, your Savior… (Isaiah 43:2-3a)

Perhaps you feel like you are standing amidst the flames today; or about to drown in the raging rivers of life.  Can God save you from it? Why do you think God saved the Bibles?

"And when the peony showed up..."

Metamorphóō (Greek), changing from one form into another, still retaining the essence of what one was and one is. Transfiguration. How are we to behold Christ’s glory and live? How can it be that we too are to be transfigured, transformed, that we are to experience metamorphóō in our being? (2 Corinthians 3:18) Some mysteries need a poet’s touch.

Contemplative prayer with peony                                                                                     

by Luci Shaw

So, I didn’t latch onto a holy word                                             

and go into space and, ethereal,

lose touch with my body. But God,

in those thirty slow minutes, you

unfolded in me the bud of a fresh

flower, with color and fragrance

that was more than my soul

was capable of, on its own.

. . . We all, with unveiled face,

behold as in a mirror

the glory of the Lord.

And when the peony showed up,

I knew it as a kind of mirror. This

was glory in pink and cream, with

a smell of heaven. Petals like valves

opening into the colors of my heart.

I saw myself kneeling on a grass border,

my knees bruising the green, pressing

my face into the face of this silken,

just-opened bloom, and breathing it,

wanting to drown in it. Wanting

to grow in its reflected image.

(Source: Christian Century, Nov. 19, 2015)