A Manual for Living

Proverbs 1:1-2 (A Manual for Living) These are the wise sayings of Solomon. David's son, Israel's king--Written down so we'll know how to live well and right, to understand what life means and where it is going; (The Message)

Someone gave me a cookbook today called, 'Be Healthier, Feel Stronger- A Vegetarian Cookbook'. On page 15 it lists 6 different kinds of vegetarians -
1. Almost-vegetarians eat dairy foods, eggs, poultry & fish, but avoid red meat.
2. Pesco-vegetarians eat dairy foods, eggs & fish, but not other animal flesh.
3. Lacto-ovo-vegetarians eat dairy foods & eggs, but exclude animal flesh.
4. Lacto-vegetarians eat dairy foods, but no eggs or animal flesh.
5. Ovo-vegetarians eat eggs, but no dairy foods or animal flesh.
6. Vegans eat no animal foods of any type.

Web MD sent an email last week - Find a diet that Works for you! 12 diets demystified (3-Day - Atkins - Blood Type - Cabbage Soup - Detox - Glycemic Index - Grapefruit - Mediterranean - South Beach - Spectrum - Weight Watchers and Zone), then it goes on as to what we can do about making changes and lists 10 diets rules meant to be broken.

How overwhelming!! Which diet to choose, which book to read, do this or do that. I could go absolutely insane trying to figure out the 'right' way to eat or live healthier just with the media material alone.

I call my Bible my guide for daily living, but maybe I should call it my "Be Healthier, Feel Stronger-My Guide for Daily Living Cookbook' because it's so chock full of the recipes (wisdom) that I crave. Ones I can eat whenever I need to be sustained and ones that will keep me on the right road to understanding what life means and where it is going.

Nancy

Matt 27:62-28:1

I've read the story about the tomb and resurrection many times, but recently I heard the words 'the stone was rolled away for the disciples to see, not for Christ to get out.

Jesus kept telling people that after three days he would be raised. The Pharisees told Pilate that the tomb should be sealed until that third day because the disciples might come and steal Jesus so to prove that he had risen. Something they didn't want.

So the tomb was sealed and a guard was posted. On that third day, the two Mary's were at the tomb when an earthquake shook the ground and an angel from heaven came and rolled back the stone. It was empty. He told them that Jesus wasn't inside, that he had risen like he said and for them to run and tell the disciples.

When I was in Israel, I went to the Garden and saw the tomb. It was a small cave with a short stone bench on the inside and putting a rock over the door way would definitely keep a person from getting out. The only way to see if someone was still inside would be to roll the stone away.

I never thought about Jesus rising from inside the tomb and never really thought about why the stone was rolled away. I knew it happened, but never did it ever strike me that Christ actually rose up from within that sealed cave until now.

Nancy

James 1:1-4

James 1:1-4 Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way. If you don't know what you're doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You'll get his help and won't be condescended to when you ask for it.

The introduction to James in The Message says, 'When Christian believers gather in churches, everything that can go wrong sooner or later does.

Sounds familiar in 2007 at UBC. Yesterday I picked up the Annual Report to read because I wanted to see in print how the year was. A lot of changes took place with testing and challenges and a budget crisis.

Our Associate Pastor, Donna, (thankfully) is remaining on staff as Pastor of Visitation and Counseling and our Youth Pastor, Mark, resigned his position to pursue other ventures. (thanks Mark for your gifts with the youth) Downsizing has been tough and these changes have been more difficult for some than others.

For me, 'considering testing and challenges as a gift' is very hard to handle. It definitely would be easier not to have difficult challenges because it forces my faith into the open and shows my true colors (vs 3). And showing my true colors is embarrassing because it shows sides of me that I don't like, never mind my friends seeing it. Often I don't have control over my colors, but the friends God put into my life help me to understand them and accept me where I am and they encourage me to 'hang in there' and stand me up when I can't.

God wants me to stick with him and not give up. He wants me to become a 'mature' believer and believe him, not just believe in him. It's a challenge to 'not try to get out of anything prematurely'. My friends remind me of the words God said in Joshua 1:5 - 'I'll be with you, I won't give up on you; I won't leave you.' I know God won't leave me or give up on me and my true friends won't either. I trust him and I trust them.

Maybe someday I will be able see how challenges and tests are gifts and I will be able to see how my faith grew because of them.

Nancy

Galatians 5:1

Galatians 5:1 Christ has set us free to live a free life. (The Message)

Donna has a young active dog named Kesia who loves to run. At home she is confined to a fenced in yard to play in, but when Donna takes her to the river, she is free to run and play with all her dog friends with no leash, no fences, no nothing... Picture her ears flapping, the excitement on her face, the big smile - ahhhhh, that's freedom!! Can you see it?

An article I read says, 'many fear freedom, anxious that people will take the removal of restrains as a license to sin. That was a real concern as long as man was like an animal. Christ changed the believer's 'animal' nature and gave us His own Spirit. We're free from the Law, not because God no longer cares about righteousness, but because we have been changed into righteous persons.'

Even though Kesia has freedom running at the river, she still has some restrictions. She must come when she's called and be obedient to her master.

2 Corinthians 17-18 in the Message says, 'And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We're free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful
as God enters our lives and we become like him.'

We have the freedom to run like Kesia, all the time, not just when we 'go to the river' and like her, we must come when we are called and be obedient to our Master. One big difference: not only can we choose to come to our Master (God), we will want to come and Keisa, may not want to come, but really has no choice because she has the law (Donna).

Nancy

Luke 6:27-28

Luke 6:27-28 To you who are ready for the truth, I say this: Love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer for that person. (The Message)

The Bible is filled with many reasons to pray and when I saw this today, I thought, 'ok, this is a reason why I need to pray, big time and all the time'.

It's telling me to love a person who can't stand me and who says hurtful things about me. Am I letting that person bring out the best in me? No. Should I be? Yes.

So how can that happen, how can I love someone like that? How can that type of treatment bring out the best in me and make me stronger and more forgiving? It's something I don't know, but God does.

I am going to have to make a deliberate choice to focus my thoughts on that Scripture as it's too easy to dismiss it and too easy to say, 'how can that happen' or 'no way can that happen' or even worse, 'no way, I'm going to let that happen'. Because of those phrases, I know this Scripture needs to play a much bigger role in my life.

I'm always asking God for help to see what I don't see. Today, it's clear that Luke 6:27-28 is what I'm not seeing either advertently or inadvertently. The first thing I need to do is ask God to help me with the right words. Words that aren't empty words just made up of letters, but words that come from my heart.

I'm not there now and I don't know if I ever will be there. I need to pray for strength and courage because I have none and loving this enemy will be a never ending uphill battle for me, but if I believe the Scripture (which I do), I have to keep trying.

Nancy

Psalm 5:3

Psalm 5:3 Every morning you'll hear me at it again. Every morning I lay out the pieces of my life on your altar and watch for fire to descend. (The Message)

This made me think about going to Lectio on Tuesdays starting at 6:45 in the morning. On some mornings the sky is pitch black, but this past Tuesday, pink and grey stripes were dispersed through out the sky. Several of the women were noticing how beautiful the colors were and how it made them feel.

In Lectio, we take a Scripture and over the period of an hour, read it out loud four separate times with shared responses and personal thoughts dispersed through out (only if you are comfortable) and it ends in prayer for one another.

Driving to Lectio is a time for me to see the quiet darkness of morning or the sun starting to rise or the snow falling and covering the road or the colored clouds taking their place in the sky.

It's a time when I can, as the Scripture says, 'lay out the pieces of my life on God's altar.' During that time in the car, I can talk to God like he is sitting beside me listening intently to what I have to say. And when I get to Lectio, I am ready. Sometimes with emotional and somber feelings of inner angst, but even with that, I need to be with that group of strong women who share a love for God and who want to learn His Word so to apply it daily to their lives. It's a time for us to come together, a time to praise God for what he has done, is doing and will do.

Nancy

Hebrews 11:1-31

Hebrews 11:1-31 is a story entitled, 'Faith in What We Don't See'. Hebrews 1-2 (The Message) says that the fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It's our handle on what we can't see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd.'

These are some people listed who lived by an act of faith -

Abel - brought a better sacrifice to God than Cain, it was what he believed, not what he brought that made the difference. Enoch - skipped death completely, 'they looked all over for him and couldn't find him because God had taken him.' Noah - built a ship in the middle of dry land. He was warned about something he couldn't see and acted on what he was told. Abraham - said yes to God's call to travel to an unknown place that would become his home. And at the time of testing, offered Isaac back to God. Sarah - was able to become pregnant because she believed the One who made a promise would do what he said. Isaac - reached into the future as he blessed Jacob and Esau. Jacob - on his deathbed blessed each of Joseph's sons in turn, blessing them with God's blessing, not his own. Joseph - while dying, prophesied the exodus of Israel. Moses - parents hid him away for three months after his birth. Moses - when grown, refused the privileges of the Egyptian royal house. Israel - walked through the Red Sea on dry ground. The Egyptians drowned. Israelites - marched around the walls of Jericho for seven days and the walls fell flat. Rahab - a Jericho harlot, welcomed the spies and escaped the destruction that came on those who refused to trust God.

These people really had little knowledge of God and yet they had faith. They didn't know Jesus and yet they had faith. They trusted God with their lives, they knew he was in charge and had a plan for them.

I have all the facts on both God and Jesus right in front of me as I can read it in my Bible and I can hear it in my church. The people of the Old Testament didn't have the avenues I have and I'm thinking - was it easier for them to have trust and faith because of that? Knowing facts doesn't mean we believe and doesn't mean we have faith and trust. And just knowing the facts isn't pleasing to God, but living them is.

My pastor said, 'It's a matter of walking day by day through the desert God has me in and knowing that He has a purpose for it and He will never leave me.' Stuff I need to be reminded of daily.

Nancy

Ezekiel 47:6-9

Ezekiel 47:6-9 He said, "Son of man, have you had a good look?" Then he took me to the riverbank. While sitting on the bank, I noticed a lot of trees on both sides of the river. He told me, "This water flows east, descends to the Arabah and then in the sea, the sea of stagnant waters. When it empties into those waters, the sea will become fresh. Wherever the river flows, life will flourish--great schools of fish--because the river is turning the salt sea into fresh water. Where the river flows, life abounds. (The Message)

Ezekiel is talking about the catastrophe of the invasion of Israel by Babylon. The people there were unwilling to see anything other than what was right before their eyes, but Ezekiel saw what they couldn't see. He showed them that God was at work in their wreckage and was using the disaster to create a new people of God. (The Message). He used the river to illustrate healing water to the people and the land.

In the newspaper this morning, there was an article and picture of a bald eagle spotted at the Hannah Dustin park & ride in Penacook, NH. A full adult male-the white head and white tail. Right now, eagles are spending their time near open water, places like major rivers, NH's largest lakes and tidal areas on the coast. They do that because they like to eat sea gulls and fish and where this eagle was seen, the Merrimack and the Contoocook rivers come together and there is a small dam which creates open turbulent water. Nourishing food for everyone.

Maybe the rivers that have changed course over the last few years during spring flooding is a good thing. The officials can't figure out why, but maybe like the people in Ezekiel's time, there is something they can't see. Maybe we just need to accept it and wait to see what God's plan is.

Nancy