Meditating on today’s Gospel I found myself loving my late father. The 91st anniversary of his birth was this week, and it’s been 21 years since he died. However flawed, however complicated the relationship, he taught me many things. One was that I could be anything I wanted to be. In today’s Gospel, Joseph got the word that it was important to stick with Mary, to be a father to Jesus and Joseph trusted God. In my life, I successfully shot for the stars, I thought that was what I wanted, but I only found emptiness. I finally trusted God and he tells me everyday through Scripture what matters and what doesn’t. It turns out that I CAN be whatever I want to be, and that is a child of God. I miss you Dad.

 

My Dad as a boy

Matthew 1:20-21 

But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

Matthew 1:20-21 ESV Bible Gateway link

I have been blessed with steadfastness. My family calls it stubbornness, willfulness, self-absorption. I get that, I am humbled by my manifold human failings. I also know that when I meet trials of various kinds, my faith saves me.

James 1:2-4 - 

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

James 1:2-4 Bible Gateway link

When we want things that seem impossible, we are filled with resentment and self-pity. We close the door and just get angrier and angrier that others have something denied to us. We get to choose; anger or love, impossible or possible, resentment or acceptance. God will do what he does, you can be on his side or not. Personally I choose God, I am home, I am barren AND a joyous mother.

The Lord is high above all nations, 

  and his glory above the heavens! 

Who is like the Lord our God, 

  who is seated on high, 

who looks far down

  on the heavens and the earth? 

He raises the poor from the dust 

  and lifts the needy from the ash heap, 

to make them sit with princes, 

  with the princes of his people. 

He gives the barren woman a home, 

  making her the joyous mother of children. 

Praise the Lord!

Psalm 113:4-9 -Bible Gateway link: Psalm 113:4-9

I grew up in an old growth forest on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. I love trees. I wrote poems about trees. This verse from Ezekiel is a foreshadowing of Christ and it is a reminder that God is in charge. I love the idea of being a tiny flitting bird nesting with my family in Christ’s shade.

Ezekiel 17:22-24 -

Thus says the Lord God: “I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar and will set it out. I will break off from the topmost of its young twigs a tender one, and I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain height of Israel will I plant it, that it may bear branches and produce fruit and become a noble cedar. And under it will dwell every kind of bird; in the shade of its branches birds of every sort will nest. And all the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord; I bring low the high tree, and make high the low tree, dry up the green tree, and make the dry tree flourish. I am the Lord ; I have spoken, and I will do it.”

Bible Gateway link: Ezekiel 17:22-24

In the past when I heard Bible readings in church, the words would alight and then fly away. Now in my continuing study of the Holy Bible, I try to digest God’s word, really metabolize it into my being. I am more humble now. I am wiser. Nothing has ever nourished me more or kept me healthier.

 Ezekiel 3:2-3

So I opened my mouth, and he (God) gave me this scroll to eat. And he said to me, “Son of man, feed your belly with this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it.” Then I ate it, and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey.

Bible Gateway link: Ezekiel 3:2-3 (ESV)

This is a vital New Testament verse for me. Sobriety first, but resisting the devil is KEY. He is a coward. When you face him down, he will flee. Plus the promise comes true: suffering (“a little while,”) restoration, confirmation, strength and establishment. To all: the devil is prowling, be watchful.

1 Peter 5:8-10

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.

Bible Gateway link: 1 Peter 5:8-10

I once gave up, or tried to give up gossip for lent. I was stung by how often I found myself gossiping. I also noticed how demoralized it made me feel, “down into the inner parts of the body.” God helps me stay away from gossip. He also helps me to pass on this universal wisdom.

 

The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels; 

they go down into the inner parts of the body.

Proverbs 26:22 - Bible Gateway link

There is so much talk. Talk, talk, talk. Does anyone actually do anything? Jesus says the word and it is done. He heals us. He saves us. We rejoice at “all the glorious things that were done by him.”

 Luke 13:10-17 - Gospel lesson 10-25

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And behold, there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your disability.”

And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God. But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, “There are six days in which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.” Then the Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” As he said these things, all his adversaries were put to shame, and all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by him.

Luke 13:10-17

I cried when I read this again. A few years ago I felt just as Elijah did. I asked God to let me die. God knows whether it was depression or world weariness or a blessing. But also as Elijah did, I heard a still small voice. It said, “I need you to live.” From there I have become a better person, spouse, and neighbor. I am closer to God. I share the joy of my salvation. It is enough.

But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” And he lay down and slept under a broom tree. And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, “Arise and eat.”

1 Kings 19:4-5 Bible Gateway Link

(For context) 1 Kings 19:4-18 - Biblegateway link: RSVCE

God blessed me with a dramatic conversion. I never had a moment’s doubt that he saved me and changed my heart. On the road to Damascus, the risen Jesus changed Saul’s heart. Saul went from killing Christians to “preaching boldly in the name of the Lord.” When I pray, I try not to ask God to solve my problems. I ask him, if it’s his will, to change my heart.

 And when he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples. And they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles and declared to them how on the road he had seen the Lord, who spoke to him, and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus. So he went in and out among them at Jerusalem, preaching boldly in the name of the Lord. And he spoke and disputed against the Hellenists. But they were seeking to kill him. And when the brothers learned this, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus. So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.

Acts 9:26-31 - Bible Gateway link. ESV

Solomon’s benediction overwhelms me with gratitude. Through the centuries, think of all the people who have kept us connected with our Great God. He is ours and we are his. Impossible if God were not God. Even I, a breath in time, can know God personally and receive his blessings when I “walk in all his ways.” When I fail, he forgives me. I am so humbled.

Now as Solomon finished offering all this prayer and plea to the Lord, he arose from before the altar of the Lord , where he had knelt with hands outstretched toward heaven. And he stood and blessed all the assembly of Israel with a loud voice, saying, “Blessed be the Lord who has given rest to his people Israel, according to all that he promised. Not one word has failed of all his good promise, which he spoke by Moses his servant. The Lord our God be with us, as he was with our fathers. May he not leave us or forsake us, that he may incline our hearts to him, to walk in all his ways and to keep his commandments, his statutes, and his rules, which he commanded our fathers. Let these words of mine, with which I have pleaded before the Lord, be near to the Lord our God day and night, and may he maintain the cause of his servant and the cause of his people Israel, as each day requires, that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no other. Let your heart therefore be wholly true to the Lord our God, walking in his statutes and keeping his commandments, as at this day.”

Bible Gateway link: 1 Kings 8:54-61 (ESV)

What is peace worth? Jacob tricked his twin brother out of everything. He had to run away from home to keep from being murdered by him. He worked in a foreign land 7 years for a wife he didn’t want, and another 7 for the wife he loved. His family was in strife his whole life. God blessed him and never abandoned him, but Jacob suffered and sacrificed, aching for peace and home. For me, suffering and sacrifice are part of being human, but the very act of reaching for God is the road home to peace.

 Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God, and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God's house. And of all that you give me I will give a full tenth to you.”

Genesis 28:20-22 - Bible Gateway link

Let them eat meat! Who knew? Humans ate only green plants until after the flood. Then God gave us food from “every moving thing that lives...” I promise, as you read through the Bible this year, you will discover wonderful things.

 And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered.

Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.

Genesis 9:1-4 (ESV) Bible Gateway link

Since I was a child of divorce, and of my culture, I always thought the Adam and Eve story was fanciful and just a little sexist. Now, while enjoying my successful marriage, I’m open to the idea that my man is missing a rib. I try every day to be close enough to him to make us both whole.

Genesis 2:20-25 -  

The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Genesis 2:20-25 (ESV) Bible Gateway link