Advent Devotionals
My friends and I over at Cruxifusion are writing daily devotionals for Advent this year.
Feel free to pop over and check them out! So far they’ve been great, and I expect many more wonderful ones being written!
Review: Thanking God with Integrity
World Vision Canada asked me to review a book for them. It seemed like a good idea to support the organization in this way, so I agreed.
The book, Thanking God with Integrity by Willard Metzger, is a book full of table graces you can use with your family.
For us, we pass the book around the table, each family member taking a turn to find a grace to read each evening. And it has been well received. There are shorter, simpler prayers for our children (who are in elementary school) so they are able to find something they can read out for us, sometimes with a little help with bigger words.
The prayers also cover a wide variety of circumstances and needs of the world, as you would expect a World Vision resource to do. Hunger, poverty, and other causes are all prayed for in this book.
If you are looking for something to share with your family, or with your church, I would recommend Thanking God with Integrity.
It is an accessible book for the whole family and you’re helping support a worthy cause. Seems like a good thing to me.
Leadership
I’ve been thinking lately about leadership.
In part because of discussions I’ve been involved in. In part because of what I observe in the church as I engage in ecumenical and denominational conversations. In part because of what we see being done by our elected and appointed politicians. In part because it’s just something I have an interest in.
How do we lead?
What does a good leader look like?
What does leadership mean?
Over the last few months we’ve been looking at various leaders in the Old Testament in our church. People like Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Samuel, David, Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah. A number of these names may come to mind when you might think of great leaders of the Old Testament.
But I’m not sure you could actually call them leaders.
Sure they did great things. Sure some of them led. Sure many of them changed the course of life for those who walked with them. But were they really leaders?
When you look at their stories closely, you see these were men who responded. Some of them even resisted when being asked to step into the position of leadership.
Abraham was an old man. Jacob was on the run for his life. Moses was in exile, hiding from the Egyptians. Samuel was a young boy who was living with the priest. David was a shepherd, another young man. Amos was a prophet with no background or connections to the “expected” professions where a prophet might emerge. Isaiah confessed he was a sinful man. Jeremiah thought he was too young.
Yet God spoke.
And they all listened.
They weren’t leaders. They were servants. Servants of God, called to listen to His voice. Called to speak to His people. Called to help. Called to lead, yes, but also called to serve.
And so are we.
We are called to be leaders in the world today. But we are called to lead by serving.
We are called to serve the needy in our community. We are called to help those who struggle. We are called to share the love of God with our neighbours, just as Jesus did.
Jesus Christ is our leader, our example, and we are his followers, his disciples.
We are indeed called to be leaders, but we are also called to be servants. Following the call of God, the leadership of Jesus Christ and the prompting of the Holy Spirit, we serve God and our communities to bring His Kingdom here on earth.
We are called to make the world a better place.
All leaders, political, business, church, family, urban, rural, young, old, we should remember this: Leaders change the world for the better.
And it’s easier to change the world when you serve.
C. S. Lewis
Today is the 50th anniversary of the death of C. S. Lewis (wikipedia). Once an atheist, who became a well known Christian author who’s works crossed boundaries into the secular world, particularly with the Chronicles of Narnia series.
Here is my favourite C. S. Lewis quote:
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
His books were a great impression on me as an early Christian, especially these prophetic words from the 1940s which warn us of things being said far too often in our churches today.
Jesus is indeed Lord and God.
Thank you God for speaking through C. S. Lewis to Your people.
reflecting on “soul camp”
Last week I went to Moncton for a regional gathering for Cruxfusion we dubbed “Crux East”
There were about 20 of us in attendance, not a big crowd, but enough for fellowship and to make new friends. This, after all, is just our first regional gathering, so I didn’t expect it to be overflowing with people. I’m not sure we could have handled a big crowd for our first time, to be perfectly honest.
However, it was life-giving, freeing, uplifting and hopeful.
It’s nice to be able to sit among a group and share openly thoughts about Jesus and the church without fear of being judged or chastised. As we sat around the restaurant tables during one of the meals, one colleague commented, “It’s nice to not have to self-censor.” We all agreed.
It was nice to not have to carefully select our words when we talked about our faith in Christ. It was nice to not feel like we had to be silent because we worry someone might jump all over us for what we might say.
It was nice to be “ourselves.”
Without worry. Without fear. Without feeling the need to put up walls and defences because we were talking about Jesus Christ, only begotten Son of the Father, the Saviour of the world, the Lamb who’s blood washes away my sin, the Messiah.
I’m sure people with other beliefs in this church also appreciate the same opportunities when they arise. I’m glad they too have the chance to share.
Nothing fills my soul more than being with people who share a belief in Jesus Christ, fully divine, fully man, and can share openly about how he has impacted our lives and the lives of our churches forever.
It is my prayer, that if you believe in Jesus Christ as Lord of all, and are connected to the United Church of Canada, you will find a place to be inspired by others, a place to share in story and testimony, and a place where you can be open with your beliefs. Maybe even Cruxifusion in a place where you can find it.