Rise and Dine! January 6, 2019

Dear Friends

Happy Day of Epiphany! On the way to church this morning, I drove by our local Sonic Burger and saw this wonderful visual aid:

Instead of  "Arise, shine for your light has come" (Isaiah 60:1), the theme for my children's talk, this balloon (which looked to me like a light bulb) declared "Rise and Dine! Open at 6 am". I can't wait to show up for breakfast tomorrow and thank the manager for his or her great, if perhaps unintentional, Epiphany Day message which I, of course, added to mine. Not only should we arise and shine on Epiphany, we should rise and dine every Sunday morning, rise and go dine, go have a special meal we call Eucharist. 

In any case, I told the children that of all the seven "I am" messages that Jesus spoke..."I am the Bread of Life", "I am the Good Shepherd",  "I am the Resurrection", for example... only one

---"I am the light of the world"---is transferred to us: "You are the light of the world". (I found myself when distributing the host this morning saying "You are the light of the world".)

To help us remember one way to be the light of the world, I suggested 5 words: 

                    Listen  Inquire  Give  Help  Thanks  

The first letters of the five words, as you can see, spell LIGHT. When we meet other people, we listen and inquire so we can give help and then give thanks to God for the opportunity. 

And while I'm thinking of thanking, thank you God (and Sonic Burger) for providing this surprise and timely visual aid, while driving to church this morning.

John

Some words/notes for the New Year, January 1, 2019

Dear Friends

I hope you have been enjoying the Rose Parade and this year's theme,  "The Melody of Life". I don't know any of the 21st century songs or lyrics of this year's Grand Marshall, Chaka Khan, but I do know these 17th century Slovak words translated by Jaroslav J. Vajda from our hymnal, #250:

I especially like verses 2 and 3:

His love abundant far exceeds
the volume of a whole year's needs;
rejoice, rejoice with thanks embrace 
another year of grace

With such a Lord to lead our way
in hazard and prosperity,
what need we fear in earth or space
in this new year of grace?

I used this Celtic saying in a sermon on Christ the King Sunday a few weeks ago:

The King is knocking! If you would like your share of heaven on earth, open the door and let in the King!

I would now add these words by Henry David Thoreau which I found on my 2019 planning calendar this morning:

"Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads"

And those words made me think of these words by Isaac Watts from Hymn #398:

I especially like this line: 

Lord how thy wonders are displayed, 
where'ere I turn my eye
if I survey the ground I tread
or gaze upon the sky!

HAPPY NEW YEAR, wherever you look in 2019!

John