Deuteronomy 10:12-22:
We are called to treat kindly the foreigner. In the past, the U.S. has done a lot of caring for strangers and have often given them chances to belong and contribute to our country. Please help us continue to welcome strangers, those we are privileged to help. Give us the right hearts, please.
Deuteronomy 3:21-29:
Like a lot of good workers, Moses didn’t want to quit. But he had finished what God had for him to do, and it was now time to give over the job to another, younger man. Our talents and usefulness are according to what God gives us. We leave to others what God has given them. We rejoice and are not jealous when another does what we are not called to do. We do our part and step aside.
Lately, I’ve been rethinking my feelings about the American Revolution. What if we had lost that war? Presumably, we would have remained a part of the British empire. We would have remained a part of the empire that began abolishing slavery in the early 1800’s. We didn’t abolish it until a horrible Civil War in the 1860’s. And nobody can say that slaves were freed in the sense of enjoying citizenship like white Americans did. Certainly not in my native Tennessee.
Heroes of the American Revolution like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and didn’t seem bothered by owning humans as possessions.
A few decades later in Britain, William Wilberforce and others fought to end the British slave trade, but we were no longer a part of the empire that would begin to end that trade.
Certainly, inflicting German troops on the colonies as the British did in the years leading up to the Revolution wasn’t the wisest move on the part of Britain. Mistakes, as they say, were made.
Nevertheless, I think my celebration of the next 4th of July will call for a different kind of reflection: Perhaps a bit of repentance might be a part of it.
I honestly don’t remember if I voted for Ronald Reagan for president or not. I do remember watching some clips of Reagan telling jokes and laughing, including laughing at himself.
As serious as is the office of U.S. president, having a president who can laugh, even at jokes about himself (or, eventually, perhaps, at herself,) should be an unofficial requirement for office.
Recently, two pictures caught my attention: one from a London subway shelter in World War II, another from a Kyiv subway in 2023, Both sets of citizens obviously awaited an all clear to resume their lives. Both called forth a similar respect for ordinary people surviving efforts to subjugate them. Other than picturing more people awake and examining cell phones in the second, both highlight the ability of ordinary citizens to win fierce fights simply by patient endurance: simply waiting out the all-clear to resume their lives and their struggle for independence.
Indeed, Russian citizens, when threatened with a Nazi takeover in World War II, showed a similar resistance to subjugation. Perhaps more Russian people than we know may sympathize with the Ukrainian desire for freedom.
What a hope—that one day, Ukrainians and Russians, both politically free, will discover true friendship between two free and independent states.
“The good that emerges from a conflict of values cannot arise from the total condemnation or destruction of one set of values, but only from the building of a new value, sustained, like an arch, by the tension of the original two.,’
Dorothy L. Sayers; The Mind of the Maker
What a collection of Christians in Rome to whom Paul wrote his letter. All kinds of people, men and women, different nationalities, etc. What a great, myriad group of Christians. As Christian groups today still are.
Eventually, God did crush the Roman persecutors under His feet. Eventually, Rome itself became a major center of Christianity.
Paul would soon become a prisoner of Rome, but eventually Rome would fall to Paul’s God.
We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach. If it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.
Working for the U.S. government overseas, I’ve spent a lot of holidays away from home. I’m thankful not only for being home this year with family but also grateful that I’ve satisfied that wanderlust that I knew as an adolescent and young adult. I’m thankful for the good times I had with numerous friends in many countries, but I no longer feel a need for physically wandering and exploring.
Instead, I enjoy making sense of what i experienced and writing the thoughts for others—whether in essay form or in some kind of story. The desire to have purpose is still there, but in recounting and writing rather than in physical experience.
I’m blessed beyond measure and offer thanks what I’ve had and for the meaning I’m still making from what has happened and for the time to pass it on.
“The good that emerges from a conflict of values cannot arise from the total condemnation or destruction of one set of values, but only from the building of a new value, sustained, like an arch, by the tension of the original two.”
–Dorothy Sayers, The Whimsical Christian, p. 130
Mark 16
The old story is recorded: the women, who, unlike the men, had not deserted Jesus, were not through serving Him. They were going to risk being found at Jesus’ tomb, but they wanted to continue to care for Him, even it if it meant only caring for His body, so they thought.
Doring the best for Jesus, even when all seems in terrible shape, is sometimes hard to do, but we are called to that. His command, not our success, is what leads us.
Yesterday my husband and I walked down to the beach to check how our bay was handling all the water and debris flowing down from the mountains.
More debris than I’ve ever seen and a big log or two. Well, the drought of earlier in the year is obviously over with. Unfortunately, the end of it brought too much water, with flooding and houses washed away and other miseries. Concerns about overflow in streams in all the islands.
For me, at least, worries about climate change are no longer overblown.
Wonder if our stalwart New Years Day plungers will congregate this year for the annual dip into the bay.? They may be worried about more than just the cold.
First, my suitcase had been lost in transit. Second, my feet hurt. I had traveled for a couple of days in and out of airports from New York City to the Middle East.
In my battered travel shoes and worn outfit, I wandered around the U.S. consulate complex in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, finally finding my way to the gathering held to introduce me, the new U.S. consular officer, to my new neighbors, as the first Gulf war loomed in the background.
I was older than most Foreign Service officers, having finally been accepted into the Foreign Service as I was approaching fifty years old. I also spoke with a decided Southern accent. Previous foreign travels included a couple of days in Canada when I was a teenager, plus a quick trip across the border to Mexico when my brother was stationed at a U.S. army base in Arizona.
Somehow, I survived. A few days after the consulate gathering, I attended a Christmas celebration with a small number of mostly expatriate Christians, then went on to complete several Foreign Service tours against the background of momentous changes in the Middle East that we still are living with.
Mark 12:28-34:
Love God with everything that we have is the first commandment. Loving God? Eternal awesome God? That I could be privileged and allowed to love Him? Who first loved me? And after I’ve soaked in His love, I then surely find it natural to love my neighbor, whom He had made and loves as He does me. Amen, Lord.
The beginning of the U.S. Constitution states several reasons for the establishment of the United States. One is “in order to form a more perfect union.” Others: “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity . . .”
Surely these are worthy causes. Yet, at the time of this writing, most black Americans were slaves, and only white men had the right to vote. Indeed, the most active Americans generally were fairly well-to-do white men.
Sometimes words are spoken or written that are so powerful that even the speakers of the words don’t realize their power or what they really mean if taken literally.
In Mark 10:36-37, Jesus took a little child in his arms and told the disciples: “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.”
One way to judge the worth of a nation is how well the nation takes care of its children. We can have all kinds of arguments about welfare and whether the poor are deserving or not, but whatever we decide, no child should starve or not have shelter or be mistreated.
Taxes are essential to maintaining our government. Tax breaks are best when they encourage families, not inaccessibly the rich. Not everyone is called to have children, but we are all called to encourage their care.
Mark 8:1-13: Jesus Feeds a Multitude
It isn’t whether we have enough for everybody; of course, we have enough when we share. God shares with us; then we share with others.
The Pharisees kept trying to trap Jesus. Here was God, in loving form, and they were concerned about a sign??
Perhaps I never would have developed my love of reading if my mother hadn’t needed a place to park me when she shopped downtown. When I was growing up, one went “downtown” to shop. We deprived people had no shopping centers then, only small neighborhood shops lining a few spots on the highway. For major shopping, “downtown” was it.
As soon as I learned to read (about seven, later than most children, I think; we had no preschool), I discovered that the stories I had imagined for fun (to find adventure, to live out stories my father told me about early Nashville history, etc.) could be found in this place called a library. From that moment on, boredom vanished from my life (except anywhere you weren’t allowed to read.) In short, I became a bookworm.
Fortunately, I also had school and church and two close friends to join with me in the school band, so I wasn’t deprived of a social life, but any time away from friends or prescribed duties, I usually lost myself in a book. TV was only beginning, and anyway, it was dull next to a good novel about fighting villains. And if I wanted to learn about something, the library was there to search.
Everywhere we have lived, I have found the closest library. I introduced my children to them, and they also became readers. I think the public library system, opening free books to everyone in the community is one of our greatest inventions of mankind.
What if less and less people are born, leading to the buying of less and less things?
Some observers suggest that after centuries of population growth, the earth could be entering a time of population decline.
What would population decline mean to our economic systems? For centuries, the goal of many of those systems has been to sell more and more things to more and more people.
What happens if merchants and businesses have less customers?
What happens, for example, if our purpose for buying housing is not to build an investment but only to have shelter and perhaps create a home?
How do we build a successful society in such radically changed circumstances?
Such a time might be awful, of course, with economic depression and empty houses.
Of course, we might decide to use such a time to build better communities. We might begin programs to buy empty houses and replace them with community gardens or even farms. We might emphasize inter-generational housing and smaller, close-knit neighborhoods. We might encourage small businesses, many of them family owned.
Change could be seen as an opportunity rather than a catastrophe.
One of the things I admire about our country is the humor and enjoyment we are sometimes capable of, even in the middle of political conflict. No Kings Day was one of these times. We’ve seen much heavy political fighting in the past few years. Nice that we could just gather and enjoy peaceful gatherings, in a light-hearted way.
I hope we never lose the ability to laugh at ourselves. Not mean humor, just joking the way close knit families do.
A nation with the ability to laugh gently and not take life too seriously promises the gift of overcoming our disagreements and the continuation of building on our past accomplishments.