Lookin' out my window

It's one of those gray Monday mornings when I really don't feel inspired to creative work. Sermon ideas don't generate. Poems do not prance through my mind. The Newsletter seems a formidable challenge. It is very tempting to just find a nice computer game and play it until its time to go home. So I find myself looking out the window of my office at a world traveling by at break-neck speed. People going places I don't know to do things I don't care. Then an ambulance and the firetruck race by siren's blaring and lights flashing, and I wish I did know where they were going.

Instead I turn back to my computer and begin doing the mundane kinds of things. Update my calendar. Add some tasks to my "To Do" list. Add some folks to my address book. When I look down at my watch, it is nearing noon, and I have been at this for almost four hours. I cannot believe that time has passed by so quickly, doing what I think is nothing. I wonder what it would have been like if I had been on a creative speedway, with fresh, bright ideas coalescing into a brand new sermon or poem. Probably still be almost noon, and almost time to go out into that world and run some errands.

Maybe creativity isn't always necessary for our lives to make progress--but it sure would be more fun.

Think about the routine times that make life move along in between the times of inspiration.

Only 36 more ??? Days 'til Christmas

It's not Thanksgiving yet, but my neighbor has Christmas lights adorning his home, and three big wreaths on his garage, and up on the bluff across from our home, is a huge evergreen tree adorned with multi-colored lights which are on 24/7 until sometime after Christmas, I am sure. At our house, we have decided it is about time to get out the 8 Christmas trees that will be in various places throughout the house, and to put away the fall color stuff--but we will wait until the end of the Thanksgiving weekend to do that.

And somewhere in the midst of all of that, we will pause for a moment to Say Thanks to God for the manifest blessings we have received during the past year. The blessing of a new home; the blessing of a new church; the blessing of new and old friends; and most of all the blessing of being able to communicate with so many via something called the internet.

But in the still, quiet times of this weekend, we need to also think about those who are not the beneficiaries of the comfort blessings that we enjoy. And we need to find ways to reach out to them and make them a little less unblessed than they are. I can think of a few ways: 1) volunteer at the food pantry where you can meet them; 2) donate a used coat to the clothes closet, so someone will have a warmer winter; 3) be part of the Christmas Miracle that will occur at Community of Joy this December. And there are many more.

So--what do you think you might do for someone this Holiday season?

Thanks-giving

Good morning COJ!! In just a week or so, many of us will sit down to a huge meal prepared by loving hands in kitchens filled with wonderful aromas, and we will watch traditional (and not so traditional) football games, and little children will run through the house having a great party time. At least that is how most of us will fill that holiday. But close by, there is a family that is living out of the back seat of a car. Sleeping at night wherever they can park, and trying to find warmth in public buildings during the day. They will eat whenever someone is kind enough to feed them or if they can find their way to a Food Pantry. A little further away, a family sits around a small fire in a refugee camp in Darfur, celebrating nothing more than the fact that they are alive on this day, having missed the attack of a genocidal army on their village.

Friends, before we take Thanksgiving for granted, we really need to look outside our warm and comfy homes and see the rest of the world. Then, we can give thanks not for what God has given us, but we can give thanks that God has given us to care for those folks outside.

Think about it--but more than that, act on it!

Can we wait 'til tomorrow?

In the Broadway musical "Annie" the little redheaded heroine sings a song in which she exclaims, "Tomorrow, you'e only a day away." Tomorrow, to her is the day when everything will be OK. The sun will come up, the flowers will bloom, and she will be an orphan no longer.

Today, the church sings the same song. Tomorrow, everything will change. Tomorrow the world will suddenly recognize the good that we do and Tomorrow, we will no longer be on the outsidel looking in.

But Tomorrow is never going to come, at least not on its own. For when we wake up in the morning it is "Today" and tomorrow is still a day away. It will not come if we simply wait for it to come. We must become pro-active, stepping out into a world that ignores us and make our voices and our actions heard. Our ministries must be visible and vibrant. Our evangelism must be effective and timely, or there never will be a tomorrow.

Can you and I afford to wait for tomorrow, or should we step out and shape it ourselves?

What do you thinik?