Rejoicing with Rejoicers
Wilderness Wanderings
Our text is Romans 12:15: Love must be sincere…Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. One of my professors warned, “There will be days when you do a funeral in the morning and a wedding in the afternoon. You will need to weep in the morning and rejoice in the afternoon. Your tears and your joy better be sincere.” That advice comes directly from our text for today. Paul is laying out different shades of Christian love which is not rooted in feelings but in a decision of the mind to behave in certain ways. Empathy is “the ability to...
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Involved in the Mission
Wilderness Wanderings
Our scripture is from Colossians 3:12-14: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience…Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” When are we involved in God’s mission? Christians often think that only activity connected to the church is involved in God’s work. The implication is that God is not interested in our daily lives. But this is far from the truth. In the beginning, we were made to be involved in...
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A Dunked Community
Wilderness Wanderings
A Sunday Sermon edition of Wilderness Wanderings! The text is Acts 1:1-11. Dive In discussion questions are below for further reflection! To see this sermon in the context of the worship service it comes from, find it . Or, head to our website to connect with the worshiping community of Immanuel CRC: Dive In Take a stab at defining Christian communal identity. What comes to mind when you hear the words ‘mission’ and ‘missionary’? How should we understand it? The disciples ask Jesus about the kingdom. How does he shift their focus? Four responses to the...
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Sabbath & Generosity
Wilderness Wanderings
Our text is Deuteronomy 15:1, 4-5: “At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts…there need be no poor people among you, for in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the Lord your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today.” Old Testament laws are not always easily applied to us because they concern Israel as a nation state. These laws about the Sabbath year, when debts are cancelled and land is returned to the families it was originally given to, are such...
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Blessing Enemies
Wilderness Wanderings
Our text is Romans 12:14 “Love must be sincere…Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Love has many colours. Having explored hospitality, Paul ups the ante. Love is no easy thing. It flies in the face of the normal human reaction to negative things: anger and revenge. Let’s start with a brief story about revenge. On a Friday early in 1982, Kevin got drunk, got into his car, went for a drive and killed an 18-year-old. He was convicted of manslaughter and drunk driving. Since he was only 17,...
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A Word of Encouragement
Wilderness Wanderings
Our text comes from Romans 15:2, “Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up.” This verse is written for the church community. Yet, Paul uses the word neighbour, which is rarely used except in the commandment, “Love your neighbour as yourself.” So, we can apply this instruction to contexts outside the church. It a good word of wisdom for daily living. How might we apply it to our workplaces, communities in which we volunteer, and even in our homes? It is important to recognize that we build others up without desire for...
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Who Do You See?
Wilderness Wanderings
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Leaving Egypt Behind
Wilderness Wanderings
Our text is Deuteronomy 5:15: “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.” Egypt is difficult to forget – for the Israelites; also for us, Egypt seeps back into our bones. Egypt is brick building. Quotas. Meet your quota. Exceed your quota and you might get rewarded. But if you don’t meet your quota, you will be punished, severely. Brick building. Endless brick building. Mr. Julius Caesar Dithers in the comic strip...
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It's Not about You
Wilderness Wanderings
Today our text is Romans 12:9a, 13 Love must be sincere…Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. We return to hospitality. Why? Because culturally, hospitality is mostly about the one hosting, whereas Christian hospitality is about the one being hosted. Let’s flesh this out some more. Hotels and restaurants are part of the hospitality industry. They seek to impress customers so that they will return. Likewise, we want to impress people so they will associate with us. Hospitality is largely understood as having people over. More importantly, people we...
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Good Works
Wilderness Wanderings
Our text comes from Genesis 2:15, The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. and Ephesians 2:10, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Well, its another Monday. Rumor has it that many of us do not like Mondays. We do not like the return to the grind of work. The weekend is relief, Monday is back to it. Yet, it was not meant to be this way. Created in the image of God, each of us was created to be productive. This does not refer only to paid labour. We were...
info_outlineOur text is Exodus 9:1:
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says: “Let my people go, so that they may worship me.”
In 1901, Dr. Girdner coined the term “Newyorkitis” to describe an illness whose symptoms included edginess, quick movements, and impulsiveness. It was a condition of the mind, body, and soul affecting many New Yorkers. That was a world without the internet, high-speed cars, or computers. Our world has only sped up. I wonder what he would say about us.
Speed has become a god. Our culture generates in us an endless pursuit of greater security and greater happiness; a pursuit always unsatisfied because we have never gotten or done enough. This god is accompanied by the god of the market that summons us to endless desires and needs that are never met but always require more effort. The advertising god in service to the market god always offers one more product for purchase, one more car, one more deodorant, one more prescription drug, one more cell phone, one more beer.
We are harassed by many Pharaohs who kept reminding us of the inadequacy of our lives. Constantly, we see signs that we do not measure up yet, haven’t quite arrived, haven’t yet reached our potential, haven’t been recognized by quite the right people. Weariness, being heavy-laden, carrying an ill-fitting weighty yoke are all ways of speaking of those serving these gods of endless productivity. We have become worshippers of a system of gods that leaves us permanently restless.
Into that system God says, “Let my people go, so that they may worship me.” The God of the Bible is a Sabbath-keeping God, ensuring that restfulness and not restlessness is at the center of life. Sabbath becomes a decisive, concrete, visible way of opting for and aligning with the God of rest. We must choose the gods of restlessness or the God of restfulness.
Jesus declares to his disciples, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24). The way of money is the way of endless desire, endless productivity, and endless restlessness without any Sabbath. Jesus taught his disciples that they could not have it both ways.
God called Israel to depart from the Egyptian system to dance and sing in freedom (cf. Exodus 15). He calls us to do the same. Sabbath is not an idea but a practical art. We are conditioned to run at brick-making speed. God offers freedom. To cease, even for a time, the anxious striving for more bricks is to find ourselves with a “light burden” and an “easy yoke.” It is now, as then, enough to permit dancing and singing into an alternative life. Which will we choose?
As you journey on, go with this blessing:
Go to Jesus and he will give you rest and an easy yoke (Matthew 11:30). May the presence of God go with you and give you rest (Exodus 33:14).