SALT & LIGHT.... REFLECT DON'T REPULSE

In the early morning when I wake up, get my cup of coffee, and have my quiet time with You is my favorite time of the day.

Late at night, when I make my rounds, shutting everything down for the night, lying on my bed waiting for sleep to come is my favorite time of the night.

Beginning and ending each of my days with You brings delight to my heart, peace to my mind, and refreshment to my soul.

You are with me throughout the day, but I have to be a bit more intentional about recognizing and responding to Your Presence.

The many affairs of life tend to crowd in, requiring and demanding my attention.

But my mornings and days end spent with You are a natural rhythm and ritual for me.

The older I get the longer my morning extends and the earlier I end my day…

More time with You.

It always mystifies me when people tell me they have a difficult time finding time for a spiritual discipline of a Quiet Time.  To me that is like telling me they don’t have time to breathe.  I used to go into high gear and explain the necessity of this time, and strongly encourage them to at least make a commitment of five minutes a day.  But I have come to see the futility of that and don’t do it anymore.  Now I just feel sad because I see their loss and God’s loss as well.

It’s difficult to make people drink if they aren’t thirsty…so now I simply pray that they will at some point become thirsty and drink from the fountain of living water.  I can’t make people love God and want to be in his Presence.  That is an inside response that only can be discovered by each individual for themselves.  What I can do is point them to the One who fulfills all thirst when they ask for a drink.  (I Peter 3:15)

I am called to live my life right, before God, and before the world.  When I do that God will be honored.  Right living requires a rightly formed conscience and obedience to the example and teachings of Jesus.  That will result in being salt and light to the world.  In my repentance and my times of refreshment while being in God’s Presence, and in my ability to know and share the reason for the love and hope I have inside, then others will recognize that I have been with Jesus and then respond as the woman at the well in John 4:12-15, “Give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty.”  Then I can point them to the fountain of living water that becomes “a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

It is God who wishes to draw all people to himself.  He desires us to be reflections of his love to meet that end.  Unfortunately many times we are stumbling blocks and builders of barriers as we act in our own power and arrogance. It is this that the Christian Church itself needs to repent of before calling others to repent of their ways.

God has nothing but love for all people and it grieves him when people reject that love, “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 5:9).  Those who love God and follow Jesus need to stay out of their way; we need to help as reflectors, not hinder as repulsers.

We need to follow and obey Jesus as he calls each of us to follow and obey.  Our lives are our witness and our words and actions are to be salt and light, to create a thirst and to show the Way.

BATHING IN THE FOUNTAIN OR REPAIRING BROKEN CISTERNS

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and money. THEREFORE, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life” (Matthew 6:24, 25).

“I have no silver or gold, but what I do have I give to you.  In the name of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk” (Acts 3:6).

Many religious systems today are serving money rather than God.  Ministries have grown dependent on the bottom line, giving up programs that help people to maintain the business of keeping their institution going.  Activities that used to be volunteer work have become work for pay, and when the money is gone, so is the work.  Once that pattern starts the downward spiral begins.  Now religious institutions are worried about rights that they claim God gave them, and then were followed through by our founding fathers and government.  Now money is being poured into law suits, money that could have been used for better purposes.  The disciples called ‘foul’ on the woman with the alabaster jar for wasting money.  I call ‘foul’ on the law firms and lawyers in these law suits.  Somehow, I believe Jesus would as well.

When I look at the roots of the Christian Church I find very little close to what it is, to what it was.  That is true of most of the religious institutions I have seen and worked with these days, including The Religious Society of Friends.  “You cannot serve God and money.”  The quest of many of these groups is to return to the origins of the early church.  The liturgy is changed, the missals are changed, the concept of community is changed; the outside of the bowl is being cleaned up to look like the early Christians.

But, Peter and John had no money, no church building or church affaire to manage.  What they had was the power of Jesus Christ to be able to heal a lame beggar they happen to walk past on their way to temple.  They were true to the teachings of Jesus, not the ways of the world that so quickly serves money rather than God.  They loved God, the fountain of living water, and did not build cisterns, broken cisterns that held no water.  That is what religious institutions need to do as they return to their roots…draw near to God and stop trying to repair their broken cisterns.