WHAT'S THE PLAN?

WHAT’S THE PLAN?

            In Jessamyn West’s Friendly Persuasion, Quaker farmer Jess Birdwell wonders, as he takes flowers to a funeral for an orphaned boy who had been beaten to death by his foster father, if this simple gesture is the whole reason he was born?  And, in doing so, has he fulfilled God’s plan for him? 

That passage has stuck with me for years.  After all, how do we really know what God’s plan for each of us is? What makes us think there is one?   Oh, we can string events together and build a broad outline, but no one can guess what the truth is.  Wise parent that He is, God has given us all the tools and guidelines it takes to follow and then sets us free.   But it seems too scary out there on that limb all alone!  One of Jesus’ goals was to convince people that God is ever present and no one is actually alone. With Jesus as our companion, things become clearer - not less scary maybe - but clearer. 

            

All the great adjectives, phrases and descriptions of good, honest, loving people apply to Jesus.  He was compassionate and tolerant, but he was not a fool as the moneychangers in the Temple discovered.  He drew people to him because he smiled and looked right at them, acknowledging their existence, which didn’t happen often to the poor. Still doesn’t, by the way.  He went wherever he wanted and fit in wherever that was; because he was absolutely sure the love of the Father was with him.  We have both, the love of the Father and the companionship of the Son.  We can’t worry about what will define our purpose, but live our lives in Christ, making every encounter count for something. We have to learn to forgive ourselves when we mess up and trust in the loving grace of God to strengthen us to persevere.  

Blessings and a Happy New Year, 

Carol Lemelin, OPA

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

When asked by the Pharisees why Jesus associated with sinners, he replied,

“Those who are healthy have no need of the physician, but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”  (LK 5:31-33)

Its no wonder Jesus stopped going to Jerusalem and other towns.  His detractors seemed to be everywhere.  Their questions were not innocent.  They all had a secret agenda behind them.  But, we are the beneficiaries of those questions.  All the answers Jesus gave defined his message, both to the disciples and to us.  

Jesus was asked 116 questions during his public life.  Brigham Young University has separated the questions into groups of questioners and subjects.  What interested me most were the answers Jesus gave.  Some of the answers are very familiar, such as, “You who are without sin cast the first stone”, but others not so much.    

The one that caught my eye was what followed Jesus’ response to the Pharisees’ complaint that the disciples didn’t follow the hand washing custom.  After he told them that what goes in the mouth isn’t the important thing, a disciple said to Jesus, “You know, the Pharisees were upset by your answer.”

Can’t you just imagine Jesus’ response? If Jesus lived in our time, it might have been, a sardonic “Really?”   But Jesus, seeing the disciples concern, realized they were afraid of the backlash. In so many words, He said, “ Don’t worry about this. They are blind and they are leading the blind.  When the blind lead the blind, they both fall into the pit.” He was drawing them away from the hierarchical structure driven by manmade laws, which paralyzed their ability to know God fully. 

My point for bringing this up is that most people only know the Scriptures they hear on Sundays.  The wealth of information about the life of Jesus available in the New Testament will enrich your life. We are given insights there we didn’t know existed.  

We see him as a person.  We gain a much deeper understanding of his life.  We begin to see him more deeply human and find in him a kindred spirit.  Then, living a life in Christ becomes second nature. 

Think of it as an adventure. You don’t know what you don’t know until you know.  God gave you the intellect to explore this incredible life.  Try it, you’ll like it!

Blessings,

Carol Lemelin OPA 

WHAT WE DO

WHAT WE DO 

What we do is very little, but it is like the boy with a few loaves and fishes: Christ took that little and increased it. He will do the rest. What we do is so little we may seem to be constantly failing, but so did Christ fail. He met with apparent failure on the cross. But unless the seed fall into the earth and die, there is no harvest. And why must we see the results? Our work is to sow. Another generation will be reaping the harvest. (Dorothy Day)

That is a really good question.  Why should we be able to see the results?  We would be wasting a lot of valuable time worrying about the results instead of moving forward and doing what we do. 

Our work is to sow.  That’s such a simple phrase to encompass a life’s work.  Once we dedicate ourselves to following Christ, it does become our life’s work.  Consider the original 12 Apostles, then the many disciples, St. Paul, Barnabas, Mark, Luke, Priscilla and her husband Aquila, Timothy and his mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois, all who took on this work for the rest of their lives. What they did probably seemed little to them.  They talked about Jesus. They encouraged people to see the beauty of his message and they helped wherever they were needed. The result was the foundation of the Church.  I’m quite sure they didn’t know that.  

Just exactly what would sowing look like?  It’s when someone sneezes and you say,” God Bless You” and you mean it.  You stop someone who wants to spread gossip.  You avoid joining in any conversation that denigrates someone’s character.  You smile even when you don’t feel like it and you help whenever you can for whomever needs it. You forgive.  You praise.  You say, “I love you”.  You speak with courage in the sure knowledge that God supports you.

The most important thing you can do be effective, is get to know Jesus better.  Approach him in prayer the way you would approach any friend.  Never think God is far away.  Get over the idea that God must be called to attention or worse, nagged to hear our requests.  Jesus said it and it bears repeating; “The Father knows what you need before you ask.”

The farmer does not usually plant each seed individually, but scatters it, confident that seed falling on good soil will thrive.  So that is how we sow the Word.  Throughout Scripture, both Hebrew and New Testaments, God assured us that we must not worry about what we are to say, because the Spirit is always with us.  In order to be successful at sowing, we must trust the Spirit. What happens after that is up to God. 

Blessings, 

Carol Lemelin OPA

THE EVER PRESENT WHY

THE EVER PRESENT WHY

11/20/19 

The author asks the question,  “Why it is that those who seek God do not see God in the creations of God?”Wisdom 13: 1-9

These verses concentrate on the wonders of nature and the obvious fact, to him anyway, that the wind, the rain, the flowers, the animals, and the oceans are right there, but the seekers miss it all. They are searching for God while surrounded by his glory. He asks how can they call these things gods and not wonder where they came from in the first place. 

I don’t know how many people in the world believe that God created it.  But those who say a creator is impossible, counter those who say random creation is impossible. I can’t watch a hummingbird or examine a Queen Anne’s Lace blossom then attribute their existence to randomness. But some people do. 

Maybe that is why some people can ignore the existence of, or the rights of, other people.  If they decide that other humans are somehow not exactly like themselves, they then feel free to hate them, resent them, abuse them or even kill them. 

There are differences such as skin color, religion, language or culture, which can and do create divisions among us.  However, the fact remains that each person is a creation of God.  That God loves each person in the same measure.  That is very hard to keep in focus when we are dealing with the actions of other people.   Still, that is what God expects from us.  From the communication with the earliest people, to the present, God has called on us to love one another.  It remains the hardest thing to do.  

God is not unaware of our struggle, however.  The struggle to follow his command even though our emotions run high is tough.  Our prayer should always be that God would give us the strength and the will to do what he commands in spite of our inclination to do the opposite.

God is love, but if we stay that level of pious thought without identifying our everyday experiences of goodness and caring with God’s presence, we are like the people raving about the glories of nature while ignoring the creator of such glories. God is with us at all times and all good comes from the presence of God within us. 

That alone should be enough for us to follow Christ’s example with confidence. 

Blessings

Carol Lemelin OPA 

KEEP THE CHANGE

KEEP THE CHANGE

11/13/19

If there were one thing most people could agree on, it would be the strong dislike for change.  Changes happen all the time, but the ones that upset us are those, which happen without our consent. Those are the changes that take us out of our comfort zone.   However, the changes we make ourselves aren’t always the best either, but then we only have ourselves to blame.  If we look back through time we will see a zigzag pattern of changes. Some of those changes will be wonderful to recall, because they were the right ones. 

What made me think of this was considering the life of the early followers of Christ. 

They were faced with a choice following the death of Jesus.  They could just go back to their lives and forget the whole thing, or they could stay with the Apostles and see what the descent of the Spirit, promised by Jesus, would mean to them.  Certainly this would mean a complete change in their lives. Some probably took the first choice, but many others took the second.  Jesus warned that making a change this dramatic would lead to much grief. For many it did. Still, they accepted the change that following Him would mean. 

Take Paul of Tarsus, the firebrand defender of The Law. He believed that those who followed Jesus were traitors to the ancient faith and deserved to be destroyed. By the time he was writing his letter to the Romans, he had done a total about face. It is hard to imagine what his mindset must have been like in those early days. But, I’m guessing the Holy Spirit worked overtime to effect this change. St. Paul’s exposure to Christ through His followers made such an impression that he was willing to make the change from The Law to the Word. In his letter to the Romans, Paul makes a statement that defines this change, but might have made his hand shake as he wrote it. 

Love is the fulfillment of the Law.  (Rom: 10-13)

Christ calls us to make changes, too, changes that fulfill our calling. We are called to fight racism, discrimination, false judgments, and injustice.  If we need to change our long-held opinions to achieve this, so be it.  It’s important to take stock of our faith life and be sure it is in line with Christ’s message. If it isn’t, we need to change. 

Abide with me Lord, Thou who never changes, Abide with me.

Carol Lemelin OPA

THE WAY

THE WAY

11/6/19

In today’s world situation it is essential that here and there among people there continue to exist rays of light and hope, spiritual realities by which the unity of God’s peace and the brotherliness of true justice are recognized. This is our only task.

These are the thoughts of Eberhard Arnold who wrote them in the 1930’s as Nazism began its control of Germany.  The world situation as he described it is no different than it was in Jesus’ time or in ours.  The players are all different, but the conditions are the same; people trying to make the world better against people trying to tear it apart. 

And so it was with the earliest followers of Christ.  All of these people, wherever they lived, Jew or Gentile, were different from the rest of the community.  This was a precarious situation.  Jesus predicted that households would be divided because of him.  These people were now living that reality.  They were no longer part of their religious communities.  They were different and for the most part, suspect.  

They did not call themselves Christians.  They called themselves The Way. At the Last Supper, Jesus was preparing them for his death and told them he would prepare a place for them and that they would know the way.  Thomas said they didn’t know the way and Jesus replied, “ I am the way.”

This passage refers to eternal life, but more importantly, The Way means living our lives with Jesus as the main focus.  This is why the early disciples called themselves The Way.  This was a new way to look at the world, their relationship with God and with their fellow humans.

Somewhere along the line we have forgotten what that means.  All Christians should be practicing The Way.  If we had, there would never have been so much division.  St. Paul spent his entire ministry trying to keep people focused on the way of Jesus.  Our final destination is up to God.  We waste a lot of time worrying about how our actions might retard our entry into Glory. Instead we should be spending our energy being The Way for others.

You may ask, “What exactly is The Way?”  Kathleen Hasenberg tells us this: 

Modern life is so complicated and torn, so distracting and disintegrating, whereas The Way is simple, light, and straight. It unifies the whole of life.

To walk the path Jesus trod in compassion for others is The Way. It isn’t just the path to God; it is the path through this world.

Blessings, 

Carol Lemelin OPA

HOW WILL THEY KNOW?

HOW WILL THEY KNOW?

10/30/19

“We do not know how to pray as we should in times of stress.

Then the Holy Spirit prays for us in the very strongest way.

Then the One who searches the heart understands what the Spirit

Is asking.” Rom: 8:26-27

Of all Paul’s letters, the letter to the Romans is my favorite.  I thought it appealed because the people of Rome were more like us city folk and he found it easy to speak to them.  I was wrong about that.  I never knew until recently that St. Paul was not the founder of the church in Rome. What is more interesting is no one knows exactly who was responsible for bringing the message of Christ to Rome. 

My late son, who in addition to being a military officer, was also a military historian, who reveled in history.  I used to have to pedal really fast to keep up with him in that area.  I did my best and we shared some great conversations.  One thing he was convinced of is that the Centurion who stated at the Cross-that Jesus was truly the Messiah, was the same officer whose servant Jesus cured.  My son also reveled in the fact that one of things that drove the Emperor Nero mad was the knowledge that half of the soldiers in the Roman army were Christians.  Too bad David isn’t here to proclaim that the self-same centurion may have begun the conversion of the Romans.

If that were true, it would be a sign to all Christians that sharing the Good News is everyone’s responsibility.  Albert Camus puts it like this: 

            

            “What the world expects of Christians is that they should speak out, loud and clear; that they should voice their convictions in such a way that not even the slightest doubt could arise in the heart of the simplest person.”

The first thing we must ask ourselves as we consider what this would mean to us, is “What exactly is the Good News?”  I know what it is for me, but we all have to pray to know and trust that the Spirit is there to help. Take the Centurion for example.  He was the leader of men, a very rough crowd of men, so the message had to be strong and convincing.  His presence at the crucifixion of Jesus would be his stepping off point. These men all had been treated heartlessly. Many of them came from places very far from Rome, which they never expected to ever see again.  They were exactly the people who needed to hear how Jesus bore his suffering without condemnation of his executioners who were Roman soldiers.  That God loved them regardless of their link to Rome and was merciful to all people including them.  

That basically is what every one should come to know and as Paul puts it at another time,   “ How will they know if no one tells them?  

Blessings,

Carol Lemelin OPA