10w for July 31st, P11, Manna Eyes.

The following is a 10 minute worship for July 31st, P11, Manna Eyes.   You can listen on the flash player below. You now also have the option of receiving these notices each week and on festival days by signing up for the 10W constant contact email list on the right side of the 10W blog where it says "Please Join our Email List or you may text 10w to 2828 to sign up, The song for the day is God of the Harvest by Dakota Road from the CD Boundless Love.    Used with permission, you can find this and other gifts for ministry at Dakotaroadmusic.com

10w for July 31st, NL, For You Are My God.

The following is a 10 minute worship for July 31st, NL, For You Are My God. You can listen on the flash player below. You now also have the option of receiving these notices each week and on festival days by signing up for the 10W constant contact email list on the right side of the 10W blog where it says "Please Join our Email List or you may text 10w to 2828 to sign up, The song for the day is For You are my Lord by John Michael Talbot from the CD City of God.    Used with permission, you can find this and other gifts for ministry at johnmichaeltalbot.com

Opening Litany, Psalm 49

Worship Leader: Listen everyone, listen all who live in this world, those powerful and powerless, those with abundance of things and those with abundance of need for I will speak to you words of wisdom and understanding.

Congregation: We will listen to the message you bring to us from oh high.

Worship Leader: Why should you care when evil seems to invade the world and wickedness surrounds you?

Congregation: We feel lost, empty, abandoned.

Worship Leader: When you trust in wealth and support only the ways of those with great riches, you support emptiness.

Congregation: We know that no one can redeem the life of another or pay off God for ours or anyone else’s salvation.

Worship Leader: Everyone, those with nothing, those with great wisdom, as well as those with great fortunes live for a while and then they die.

Congregation: all they accumulate means nothing and what they gain is tombs that will remain their houses forever,

Worship Leader: when we put out trust in God and care for God’s calling, God’s creation, God’s creatures we are remembered as the children of God.

Congregation: But we, despite all we have do not endure it is better therefore that we be remembered for what God did through us than for any striving of our own.

Poem based on Luke 12:13-21

Luke 12:13-21

It’s mine

All mine

I worked for it all

and saved

and slaved

taking what the Lord has given me

and giving only to myself in return

Mine all mine

until someday when I retire

when I rest after seven

days, years, decades

rest on what I have heaped up

in layers

between my fears and I

between my soul and I

It’s mine

but I can’t shake this feeling

that maybe

I lost it

Amo Ergo Sum

Sunday July 31^st, Ecclesiastes 1 & 2: 2 "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher.   "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." 12 I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid on men! 14 I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.  You can look at this two ways.  One, either this guy needs his meds, or two, maybe he just has discovered what we all need to discover in life, that if all we are after is our own gain, what we gain is nothing.  Looking at knowledge, learning, pushing to do better, these are all good things.  It is the basis of the Book of Proverbs. 80% of the time it works and life turns out well, although, in the end, meaningless.  I am glad my cell phone is a hundred times the computer my computer in seminary was.  I am glad research is being done on solar cells, electric cars, batteries and environment, all of humanity will benefit greatly from these endeavors.   The difference is between the pursuit of knowledge for the “I” verse the pursuit of knowledge for the “we.”  Descartes used the term, I think, therefore I am (Cognito Ergo Sum).  What God calls us to is I Love, therefore I am (Amo Ergo Sum).  Thinking is being for the self, whereas love extends that thinking, or whatever else we do to the “us” which includes ALL of us.  It is not the unexamined life that is meaningless, it is the one which is lived only for the self.  When you are done, all you have left is the empty shell of yourself filled with empty knowledge.  God calls us into relationships.  We are called to love one another.  John even connects it with the promise, this is what will make your life complete, the opposite of meaninglessness, to love one another as I have loved you.  

a blessing

Monday August 1^st, Ecclesiastes 1&2: 20 So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. 21 For a man may do his work with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. 22 What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? 23 All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless.  All too often, our view of life becomes too much like a clothes line, we start at one end and hang things on it until we get to the end, and hopefully, at the end God will reward us for all the things we hung on the line, all the things we have done.  Instead, God calls us onto a path, one where we are surrounded by others and by the God who always comes down and walks with us.  If all we do in life, all our accomplishments, is for some selfish end goal, we above all creatures are to be pitied.  In the end all we are left with is a big pile of stinking stuff that relatives and others fight over while we lie alone dying.  If life is lived as part of the body of Christ, full of give and take, sharing with one another and seeing in every blade of grass and every child’s eye, the presence of God, seeing in everything we have a blessing with which we can bless others, then we are living the kingdom life right here and now.  In that Kingdom life there is meaningfulness, there is fullness, there is life. The others who receive the blessing of our blessings do not automatically become gracious children of God, just as it most likely took us a while to figure that out in our lives, but it is not about their outcome, it is about who we are.  Our maturity depends upon our ability to give from what God has given us.  Those who can freely give are rich, those who can’t freely give are poor, and it has nothing to do with wealth.  

focused on the kingdom

Tuesday August 2^nd, Colossians 3:  1-2 So if you're serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don't shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that's where the action is. See things from his perspective. I am getting older and the physical work I do around the house takes a bit more of a toll than it used to. There are times when I get up full of excitement at what I will get done and then reality sets in. Consequently, I tend to look at the ground right in front of me rather than the world up ahead.  As I loosen up I begin to see the world up ahead and my spirit as well as my countenance brightens.  God created the world and said it was good.  God created humanity and said it was good.  As we travel on the path of life, surrounded by the saints of God (though some would not consider themselves as such) if we are blessed our eyes are focused on the kingdom.  If we are still burdened down by all we have done and all we have left to do it is not our back alone that aches as we shuffle along looking down.  The final chapters in Revelation have a world ahead vision for us.  It is the holy city, coming down, open to all, all peoples refreshed by the water of life, healing for all nations, gates to the city always open.  Head down living builds border fences, kingdom living builds Kingdom parties and welcome gates.  It is the difference between “I” and “We”.

Jesus is on the other side

Wednesday August 3^rd, Colossians 3:  9-11 Don't lie to one another. You're done with that old life. It's like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you've stripped off and put in the fire. Now you're dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ.   Every time we draw a line in the sand, Jesus is on the other side.  Every time we build a fence, whether it be literal at our borders with Mexico or with the new building material for border fences, paperwork, to keep people out.  When we build these fences, we not only do a poor job of shutting others out, we do a good job of shutting ourselves off from the savior who is on the other side of the fence.  The absolute saddest site in the world is the prison wall Israel erected with U.S money around the birthplace of Jesus, Bethlehem.  Every time we go to war, the ones killed, on both sides, are the children of God.  Every weapon that is produced steals bread from the mouths of hungry.  Every time we enact vetting policies designed to keep “those others” out, we are doubting the love and the divinity of Christ.  On the other hand, every morsel of bread that is shared, is shared with Christ.

fix it

Thursday August 4^th, Luke 12:  13 Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me."  14 Jesus replied, "Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?" 15 Then he said to them, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." Too often we want Jesus to solve our problems, and the problems we want solved we want to be solved in our favor.  Instead of a “fix it for me Jesus” approach to life, we are called instead to a life of living and loving relationships, and we are not always on the receiving end.  Jesus asks us the question, how are you going to handle this and every other situation in your life in a kingdom way?  How are you going to solve this problem with your brother or sister in Christ?  Step one is obvious, yet the hardest, it is to see the other as you brother or sister in Christ.  Military spending, which makes up well over half of all spending is opposite of where we need to go.  Security measures and fences and strict immigration laws are the antithesis of God’s love.  More tax cuts for the wealthy who make their money off the labors of the poor is an anathema to God’s grace.  Yet these are the directions we go because we secretly hope that someday we too will reap or rape the financial rewards of such policies.  It is however a rape.  It has nothing to do with love and leaves only victims in its path.    

“I” trouble

Friday August 5^th, Luke 12:  18 "Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry."   20 "But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'   We have all met someone with “I” trouble when they talk.  Everything is about them.  It is good to note that most of us have “I” trouble with the way we live if not the way we talk, especially when it comes to $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.  Kingdom life is not “I” life, it is “we” life.  Look around and see the world your children and grandchildren will get, will it be as clean and healthy as the one you received?  Look around at the children of God in your community, (remembering Jesus definition of neighbor in Luke 10)  are they better off than before you came on the scene?  Is everyone better off because of you or does the system you support help those with power and possessions more than those without?  Do you work for corporations that hide tax revenue off shore and hope for your chance to suckle at the tit of big money, or do you wish to contribute to the benefit of all of God’s children?  

starts to stink

Saturday August 6^th, Luke 12:  21 "This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God."  Where does your spirit focus?  Salvation is not just “God and “I,” salvation is about the “we.”  In the “Left Behind” series, people are raptured off the earth.  In Revelation, the Holy City, with God a part of it, comes down to earth.  Contrary to the religious right teaching, God Always comes Down to where you and we and thee live our day to day lives.  If your theology is about God and I rather than you and we and thee, you are hoarding up the blessing, and like the manna of old, in no time at all it starts to stink. 

                                                                                                                            

10w for July 24th, for July 24th, Papa God, P10.

The following is a 10 minute worship for July 24th, Papa God, P10.   You can listen on the flash player below. You now also have the option of receiving these notices each week and on festival days by signing up for the 10W constant contact email list on the right side of the 10W blog where it says "Please Join our Email List or you may text 10w to 2828 to sign up, The song for the day is Abba Father by John Michael Talbot from the CD City of God.    Used with permission, you can find this and other gifts for ministry at johnmichaeltalbot.com

10w for July 24th, Buckle Up Buttercup, NL.

The following is a 10 minute worship for July 24th, Buckle Up Buttercup, NL. You can listen on the flash player below. You now also have the option of receiving these notices each week and on festival days by signing up for the 10W constant contact email list on the right side of the 10W blog where it says "Please Join our Email List or you may text 10w to 2828 to sign up, The song for the day is Cry Mercy by Dakota Road from the CD All Are Welcome.    Used with permission, you can find this and other gifts for ministry at dakotaroadmusic.com

10w for July 17th, People of Hope, NL.

The following is a 10 minute worship for July 17th, People of Hope, NL.  You can listen on the flash player below. You now also have the option of receiving these notices each week and on festival days by signing up for the 10W constant contact email list on the right side of the 10W blog where it says "Please Join our Email List or you may text 10w to 2828 to sign up, The song for the day is  Come Thou Long Expected Jesus by Dakota Road from the CD Love Can Break Through.   Used with permission, you can find this and other gifts for ministry at dakotaroadmusic.com

10w for July 17th, Table of Love, P9.

The following is a 10 minute worship for July 17th, Table of Love, P9.  You can listen on the flash player below. You now also have the option of receiving these notices each week and on festival days by signing up for the 10W constant contact email list on the right side of the 10W blog where it says "Please Join our Email List or you may text 10w to 2828 to sign up, The song for the day is Table of Love by Andra Moran from the CD Little Miracles.  Used with permission, you can find this and other gifts for ministry at Andramoran.com

10w for July 10th, Neighborly P8.

The following is a 10 minute worship for July 10th, Neighborly P8. You can listen on the flash player below. You now also have the option of receiving these notices each week and on festival days by signing up for the 10W constant contact email list on the right side of the 10W blog where it says "Please Join our Email List or you may text 10w to 2828 to sign up, The song for the day is We’re Family by the Jay Beech Band from the CD One Body Alive.     Used with permission, you can find this and other gifts for ministry at Baytonemusic.com

10w for July 10th, With a Little Despair From Our Friends, NL.

The following is a 10 minute worship for July 10th, With a Little Despair From Our Friends, NL. You can listen on the flash player below. You now also have the option of receiving these notices each week and on festival days by signing up for the 10W constant contact email list on the right side of the 10W blog where it says "Please Join our Email List or you may text 10w to 2828 to sign up, The song for the day is Kyrie by the Jay Beech band from the CD One Body Alive.     Used with permission, you can find this and other gifts for ministry at Baytonemusic.com