Tag: spiritual growth

Beginnings and Endings

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Pastor Tim's Ponderings2 Comments
Forest Sunset, by James Naughton

I’ve always thought it strange that we have New Year’s celebrations on January 1 at midnight when the year begins. The year hasn’t even happened yet, and we’re celebrating it. I understand celebrating a live birth and all the possibilities of a new baby in a family; but having worldwide blowouts about an upcoming New Year just strikes me as weird.

For some reason, we don’t celebrate the year we’ve just lived. We “take a look back” at the significant events and happenings. But there’s certainly no party around it. I suppose it’s because a lot of terrible things happen in a year. Yet, a lot of good things happen, too, that we could center some joy around.

What I’m getting at, in a round about way, is that we humans don’t do well with endings. And then we quickly become discouraged with our new beginnings – likely because we put little to no thought and preparation into how important and necessary our endings really are.

This is yet another roundabout way of saying that I (and we together) are experiencing something of an ending. For the past 1,750 days, I have provided a daily reflection upon a text from Holy Scripture. And those reflections haven’t been just a few sentences of devotional drivel, nor a measly daily crumb. I’ve written thousand-word-posts which I believe have been thoughtful and truly reflective on the text and our human condition.

However, all things must end. And this is my last post – at least for a while. I won’t be posting every day, as I’ve done for nearly 5 years! Yet, in order for me to have a proper new beginning of my own (one that I neither wanted nor asked for) I must let go of my daily blog posts.

Although I have been blogging for the past 15 years, I started doing the daily reflections at the beginning of COVID, as a way of remaining connected with my then church congregation, and with others. My thought was to give up doing it every day, once things got back to some sort of normalcy – whatever the heck that is.

Yet, when the masks initially came off and we all began seeing one another again, I found that the daily routine of writing biblical reflections had gotten into my spiritual bones. I was no longer simply writing for others; I was writing for myself. It buoyed my own faith to rise early in the morning and put some intentional focus upon crafting some scriptural thoughts on the Bible.

But that is no longer possible. My life can no longer sustain the practice. I intend to keep up the occasional post of maybe once a week. I might not even be able to do that. It might be once or twice a month. I don’t yet know.

Yet, what I do know is that I want to take the opportunity to celebrate the reality that I spent 1,750 straight days writing and posting impactful blog posts! Many of you were gracious to send me private notes of appreciation and encouragement. I especially treasure the ways some of you explained your story of how your own relationship with God has been helped.

When you boil down life to its essence, all any of us really have is our stories. Behind every event, each encounter, and all of the numbers which get crunched and the stuff that gets done and achieved, there is a story.

Stories bring just as much healing to us as modern medicine and surgeries. And they encourage, inspire, and change us in ways we cannot imagine.

The Bible, at its core, is a collection of stories. It seems God has created us as story-driven people, and so, in order to reveal something of God’s personhood and nature, we were given a grand and unfolding story of redemption.

I love reading and meditating on Holy Scripture, mainly because I love the Holy God of whom I belong and gladly serve.

I’ll continue writing the occasional post, but I will miss the daily meetings I’ve had with the Lord and with you in these past few years. Thank you for your faith, and for listening to God’s Word. What’s more, you can always avail yourselves of the nearly 2,700 blog posts on the website.

I pray that we all may learn to end things well, so that we might begin new things with some needed wisdom, humility, and grace.

May you live this day compassionate of heart, gentle in word, gracious in awareness, courageous in thought, and generous in the love of God through Jesus Christ our Lord and in the strength of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

First Sunday after Christmas Day – Where Is Jesus? (Luke 2:41-52)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
The Boy Jesus In the Temple, by He Qi

Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents were unaware of this. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey.

Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 

When his parents saw him they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously looking for you.” 

He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. 

Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them, and his mother treasured all these things in her heart.

And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years and in divine and human favor. (New Revised Standard Version)

Luke is the only New Testament Evangelist who included a story of Jesus’s childhood. It provides us some interesting biographical information. Yet, more importantly, the story gives us a sense of Christ’s destiny, of why Jesus grew up to  engage in his unique earthly ministry.

In many ways, Jesus was a typical Jewish boy, in a non-descript pious Jewish family. The family was careful to be observant, and annually made their pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover.

Joseph and his family traveled in a large caravan of people, which was common for that day. They were on their camels an entire day before they discovered Jesus was missing.

Mary likely assumed Jesus was riding on the other camel with Uncle Zechariah and his cousin John. 

But Jesus was neither with them nor with Aunt Elizabeth. So, the second day, Joseph and Mary backtracked to Jerusalem, hoping and praying they wouldn’t find Jesus in the ditch, like in the story of the Good Samaritan.

Having not found their son along the road, Joseph and Mary spent the third day scouring Jerusalem in search of Jesus. 

It seems to me that far too many people go about their daily lives without realizing Jesus is even missing. They simply assume he’s here. But he isn’t.

So, let’s search for him. And in finding him, may we see Jesus as we have never seen him before, so that our faith in God might be strengthened, and so that we do not end up losing him yet again.

Turns out, the entire time, Jesus was at the temple. As a parent and grandparent myself, I’m not a bit surprised that a twelve-year-old stayed behind and thought nothing of it. 

Jesus was curious and inquisitive with the rabbis at the temple. Those ancient teachers taught in a different way than Christians preachers today. They gave instruction more like a modern day counselor or therapist.

The rabbis didn’t just impart information; they asked questions to help people discover truth for themselves. And the rabbis were amazed at Jesus’s ability to discover truth.

Keep in mind that Jesus was not a thirty-year-old adult in a twelve-year-old body. Christ was sinless, indeed; but still immature.

The human experience involves growth and maturation. Jesus shared fully in our humanity, not partially. When Christ was born, he was not a fully aware adult looking through the eyes of a baby.

Because Jesus is fully human, he had to grow up just like us and learn in every way, just like us. (Hebrews 4:15; 5:8)

Staying in Jerusalem was not a rebellious act by Jesus. It was typical. Twelve-year-old’s do all kinds of things without saying anything to their parents.

There’s a world of difference between defiant rebellion, and just plain old garden variety immaturity. It’s unwise for adults to expect adult behavior from adolescent kids.

Jesus felt a deep need to stay and talk with the rabbis. As a human boy, he had to go through the process of self-discovery… of finding out that he was the Son of God… of reading the scriptures for himself and learning… and finding that he was reading about himself! 

To say that Jesus simply knew everything because he was God is to fall into a heresy the early church condemned at the Council of Nicaea called Docetism – a belief that Jesus is fully God and only appeared to be human.

No, the Nicaean Council said, Jesus is really a human being and did not simply appear to be one. He is like us, in every way, except sin.

Well, of course, Joseph and Mary finally found Jesus. And Jesus got the third degree from his mother: “What do you mean putting your father and I through this? I gave you birth, and you treat us like this?  What were you thinking?  What part of meeting at the two-humped camel at 9:00 don’t you understand!?”

Since Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and others, how much more do we need to put ourselves in a position to grow and learn and develop and mature? 

There is no spiritual machine in which God miraculously zaps into our brains all the wisdom and knowledge we need.

Rather, emulating our Lord, we must learn, grow, read, pray, ask questions, struggle, and dialogue about the good news of Jesus Christ with each other. In short, we must discover the truth of God.

Perhaps Jesus is asking us, as he did to Mary and Joseph, “Why were you searching for me?  Didn’t you know that I had to be in my Father’s house?” 

The answer of Jesus to his parents’ anxious searching of him points to Christ’s growing self-awareness about his messianic mission. The story centers around Jesus, as all stories do in the Gospel narratives, and not so much around the others.

Since Christ is the proper middle to everything for the Christian, we will, like Joseph and Mary, struggle to know where in the heck Jesus is, and why he is where he is, whenever we find him.

But it isn’t really all that hard to find Jesus, at least, once you know where to look, and where he typically hangs out.

When looking for Jesus, he will be doing the things of his Father. In the Gospel of Luke, those things are clearly connected to the prophet Isaiah’s description:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
        to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
        to set free those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19, NRSV; cf. Isaiah 61:1-2)

The ones rejoicing at Christ’s birth, and why they were filled with such joy, is very much connected to the messianic mission of Jesus. They understood that freedom and deliverance had just been born.

O God, from our mother’s womb you have known us. You call us to follow you every single day of our lives. And you seek us out whenever we wander from you. As we grow up and grow older, clothe us with your love, so that we may mature in grace and find favor in your sight; through Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord. Amen.

Watch Out For the Millstones (Mark 9:38-50)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year B1 Comment

John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.

“If any of you cause one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell.And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell,where their worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.

“For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” (New Revised Standard Version)

Weird encounters and exorcisms, hard words and sayings, and enough metaphors to creep out the visual learners among us, were all regular staples of Christ’s earthly ministry.

For me, this makes sense. Christ coming into a world of great need, filled with all sorts of disturbances and disturbing people, will create spiritual headlines. The ministry of Jesus does not involve idyllic pictures of beautiful butterflies, and bunnies without bowel movements.

The world needs real saving, which is why Jesus showed up in an incarnational invasion that nobody saw coming.

Christian discipleship is not for the faint of heart. It demands an embrace of robust moral teaching, along with a cross to carry.

Following Jesus involves lots of servitude, and only a little bit of leadership. It requires radical humility to do anything.

Furthermore, Jesus was anything but a narrow-minded exclusivist. He encouraged his disciples to have broad and open-minded attitudes and approachs toward those who do good and provide help, outside of the disciple circle.

Whether following Jesus, or not, Christ commended, and did not condemn, those who squish evil like a grape, and offer cold water to others on a hot day. Why? Doesn’t this seem antithetical to the demands of discipleship within the disciple group?

Maybe. Maybe not. Frankly, it seems paradoxical (two things that seem contradictory but nevertheless are equally true). On one hand, only the disciples bear the name of Christ; but on the other hand, everyone who does justice and mercy has Christ’s name invisibly emblazoned on their heads.

Anybody who remotely conforms to the character of Christ, upholding basic morality and human kindness, receives a divine thumbs up from Jesus.

And conversely, anyone who acts the bully and trips up a little one who believes – whether they have a label of disciple or not – are in for a world of divine retribution.

It all hinges on how scandalous we can be; or rather, what sort of scandal we stir up with our lives.

The good kind of scandal is going against the grain of injustice and doing good when no one else much cares; and the unjust ones need a big obstacle of righteousness in their way.

The bad sort of scandal is putting a stumbling block between God and those trying to come to the Lord. It’s the wicked who need to be tripped up and set straight, and not the faithful who need to run an obstacle course just to get a peek at the good life as defined by God.

Just so you know, millstones were usually the heaviest objects in a village – weighing up to a ton (2,000 lbs.) or more. We can perhaps understand Jesus talking of perpetrators getting a millstone necklace; but it’s a real tragedy whenever someone puts one on for themself.

You’re harming yourself if the choice is to be irresponsible, hateful, unloving, or unjust. I’m not talking about the inevitable mistake, white lie, or unconscious bias. I’m talking about a deliberate choice to get in another’s way of happiness; tear someone down with verbal violence; or harm a person by any means you can do it.

All of us have a responsibility to protect and promote the common good of all persons, and the social good of the community.

Nobody is helped whenever a person comes down hard with judgmental criticism on a coworker who was just trying to do their best but failed. Everyone loses whenever a relative spreads gossip throughout the family system.

And no one is built up whenever a neighborhood association leader or condo board chair creates unnecessary roadblocks to community well-being, but then railroads a pet personal project through for their own advantage.

Feet end up walking in dangerous places. Hands reach where they shouldn’t. Eyes look with a sinful gaze. There are times when it is warranted to amputate a limb in order to save the whole body; to perform a surgery in an effort to save a life; and to remove an eye before it creates serious sickness.

But I am talking metaphorically and spiritually – which is no less real than the physical and tangible. Gangrene happens not only to the flesh and blood body; it also happens to the diseased soul.

When it happens, the only the way to deal with it is by getting rid of gangrenous part. Otherwise, death is around the corner, as well as the coroner. Both body and soul suffer. And it will do no good to feign healthiness and pretend as if everything is “just fine.”

Some salt, therefore, is good. It acts as a preservative against expiration; and promotes the good taste of obedience and fidelity to God.

All your grain offerings you shall season with salt; you shall not omit from your grain offerings the salt of the covenant with your God; with all your offerings you shall offer salt. (Leviticus 2:13, NIV)

Let’s consider hard whether we want to be lame Christians who offer nothing but a tepid discipleship and spirituality to the church and world; or whether we will spiritually support one another by building bridges to provide needed supply lines, instead of walls to keep out the people we don’t like.

You already know what Jesus wants, and what Christ advocated and agitated for. So, let’s avoid a future with millstones in it.

Almighty God of redemption and mercy: Help us to be at peace with one another: not clambering for positions; not being fearful of those who we do not know in the kingdom, but honoring, loving, and serving them. Enable us to increase peace among ourselves by being aware of sin and its effects, and choosing to deal with it. May we be seasoned with salt as we live for the cause of Christ in a world of conflict. Amen.

Consider Wisdom (Proverbs 1:1-19)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
By Peter Max, 2008

The proverbs of Solomon, son of David and king of Israel.

Here are proverbs that will help you recognize wisdom and good advice, and understand sayings with deep meaning. They can teach you how to live intelligently and how to be honest, just, and fair. They can make an inexperienced person clever and teach young people how to be resourceful. These proverbs can even add to the knowledge of the wise and give guidance to the educated, so that they can understand the hidden meanings of proverbs and the problems that the wise raise.

To have knowledge, you must first have reverence for the Lord. Stupid people have no respect for wisdom and refuse to learn.

My child, pay attention to what your father and mother tell you. Their teaching will improve your character as a handsome turban or a necklace improves your appearance.

My child, when sinners tempt you, don’t give in. Suppose they say, “Come on; let’s find someone to kill! Let’s attack some innocent people for the fun of it! They may be alive and well when we find them, but they’ll be dead when we’re through with them! We’ll find all kinds of riches and fill our houses with loot! Come and join us, and we’ll all share what we steal.”

My child, don’t go with people like that. Stay away from them. They can’t wait to do something bad. They’re always ready to kill. It does no good to spread a net when the bird you want to catch is watching, but people like that are setting a trap for themselves, a trap in which they will die. Robbery always claims the life of the robber—this is what happens to anyone who lives by violence. (Good News Translation)

“To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.”

Theodore Roosevelt

A proverb is a short pithy statement of experiential truth. Proverbs are meant to teach one how to live a good life. This sort of education requires a lifetime of learning. There is always wisdom to be gained.

In order to have true understanding and wisdom, there needs to be a balance of intellectual knowledge, affective feeling, and intuitive knowledge. Only possessing some of these elements makes one nothing more than a half-wit.

A commitment to virtue, morality, and ethics is a must in the acquisition of wisdom, and thus, a good life. Physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual maturity all take time. Marinading over a long period of time in the wisdom of biblical proverbs will prove to be a life saver. At the end of one’s life, they can look back with gratefulness and satisfaction, instead of sorrow and regret.

So, from the very outset of approaching the Book of Proverbs, the mindset and heart stance must not be one of popping a few proverbial pills in order to achieve a self-centered goal or gain an immediate solution.

Rather, proverbial wisdom demands daily immersion in its wise sayings. It requires implementation and experimentation every single day. There needs to be decisive action, coupled with contemplative reflection. Anything short of this truncates and stunts one’s growth.

There is yet one more necessary prerequisite toward the sagacious and good life. Without this, nothing is possible. But with this, all things are possible: Acknowledgment, awareness, and adoration of the Lord.

A fool is one who stubbornly refuses to take in the full range of epistemic knowledge. Being only book smart is to actually be stupid. To be only a walking heart of emotional intelligence is foolish. And to live only by gut instinct alone is to cut off yourself from wisdom’s teaching.

A wise life includes the head, the heart, and the gut – and to have them all aligned together as an integral whole. To live other than this is to live as a fool who believes they already have the answers and the key to knowledge and understanding.

Furthermore, this means that to take God and transcendent things off of the table, to begin with, is the most foolish decision a person can make. Conversely, to forsake the intellectual life and believe that all one needs is the spiritual, is to betray a woefully foolish approach to the good life.

There are also those who distance themselves from family, especially parents. On some level, this makes sense, if one had a childhood full of traumatic memories and difficult relationships.

However, learning to honor even these parents is to place oneself on the path of wisdom, and to learn what the good life truly entails. And this approach allows the person to see the good, and strain out the bad.

In other words, we discover that good and bad, wise and foolish, smart and stupid, exists within everyone and in every place. Wholesale jettisoning of persons and/or institutions gains us little to nothing.

This distancing from family and/or God is an attempt to assert some control, to effect one’s willpower upon life. But this will lead us away from the true path of wisdom.

That’s because wisdom is not something to be mastered. Wise sayings don’t exist to be collected, and their sagacity harnessed for one’s personal goals.

Yes, we are to avail ourselves of wisdom, yet perhaps not as we may believe or think. We do not capture wisdom, but are captured by it.

The importance of this mental, emotional, and spiritual stance must not be undervalued. We only learn wisdom by means of humility and reverence before powers greater than ourselves. Any vestige of pride in us shall cause wisdom to disappear and slip from our grasp.

Only until we both intellectually and experientially recognize that the essential operations of the universe are beyond us, shall anyone begin to trust and risk in a wisdom greater than our own.

“Without humility, all shall be lost.”

St. Teresa of Avila

Put another way, if we refuse to learn from God and from our parents, then we won’t.

Only by accepting this can anyone discern what to do and don’t do, say and don’t say, when faced with competing voices.

For there is continually a voice of foolishness, of wickedness, enticing us to get what we want quickly, selfishly, without any thought to the consequences or the effect upon others. A group of such voices becomes a gang who tries outdoing each other in competitive evil.

There is also a voice of wisdom, which admonishes us to avoid the fast, fun, and friendly gang of evil speech and behavior. The wise person discerns that what the wicked person does to another, comes back upon them.

The patient and powerful voice of wisdom communicates prudence in all things, that is, to do today what will lead to a better tomorrow.

So then, my friend, what is the thing – the decision, the action, the words – that you can and will do today which will help you accomplish a good, right, and just life for yourself (and others) for tomorrow?

Great God of all wisdom, help me to trust You and follow Your precepts in every twist and turn of my life. Grant me good understanding and guide my steps, so that Your will is done on earth, as it is always done in Your heaven. Amen.