Month: September 2022

God’s Dinner Music

/ pastorpete51 / 14 Comments

I will sing of your love and justice; to you O Lord I will sing praise! Psalm 101:1 NIV

My saying with our family, is “Media and meals don’t mix.” That is with the exception of music. One of my most detailed childhood memories is of my step-dad playing, Beethoven’s Ninth symphony or Benny Goodman on the stereo at suppertime. After 60 years, I can still feel Bababa-boom through my feet and hear the high notes on Goodman’s clarinet.

God invented music long before heaven and earth were created. I believe that the first thing He taught the angels was how to sing Holy-Holy-Holy! Jesus Himself sang after the Last supper and in today’s verse David tells us that the song He sings is of God’s love and justice.

Music is special. Maybe that’s why so many generations, from ancient Hebrew festivals to 18th century English pubs have resonated with songs while they ate and drank. Music has the power to bring our minds and bodies into unity around its melodies and rhythms. We need to ask ourselves “What kind of music are we listening to at our dinner times?” Are we choosing the sounds of football, the boink-boink-boink of video games or the tapping out a reply to some text message, or are we listening to the symphony of heaven? When we do, our hearts our minds can be filled with God’s dinner music and our lips with His praise!

Good News!

/ pastorpete51 / 2 Comments

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who brings glad tidings of good things, who proclaims salvation. Who says to Zion, “Your God reigns!” Isaiah 52:7 NKJV

This Tuesday, I stopped to see my friend Don and his wife Lorna, who recently been admitted to a nursing home in our area. This facility was new to me, and I have never held any services there, so I brought along copies of our weekly newsletter. ,,, Go to Walking With Lambs to read the rest of the story.

Photo by RODNAE Productions on Pexels.com

Rejoicing in God’s Mercy

/ pastorpete51 / 2 Comments

I will be glad and rejoice in Your mercy, For You have considered my trouble; You have known my soul in adversities, Psalm 31:7 NKJV

Every month as the moon orbits around the earth it has an apogee and a perigee. At its perigee it is the closest to the earth and at its apogee the farthest. Every true Christian has come to orbit around Jesus and like the moon we have those times when, as one of my favorite songs goes – I’m…

"So close I believe You're holding me now," Reuben Morgan

But then there are those times when we reach the other side of that orbit. Even though we are still in our orbit around Jesus we feel distant – sometimes because of our own sins, but sometimes because of the sins of others against us.

That is when we can discover as David did, a time of rejoicing, when by the gravitational pull of God’s mercy, He pulls us close again. Jesus was a “Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” Isaiah 53:3. In His orbit, He was once so far from God that He cried out, “My God – My God – Why have You forsaken me?” Matthew 27:47 That is why He, of all people, can know our soul in adversities. He understands what it means to feel far from the Father, but on the third day everything changed. The stone rolled away to disclose that He was no longer forsaken on a cross. He had risen from the dead and He brings for us a mercy, that can know our souls in the very depth of our adversities and our hearts when we feel the very furthest from God. That is when we can break out into the joyful words of this Psalm, “I will be glad and rejoice in Your mercy!”

How is your walk with Jesus Christ today? Whether you at your apogee, in sorrow, shadows and problems, or at your apogee, feeling the wonderful presence of Jesus, God still is holding you by the pull of His mercy and love. Trust Him, because You are His. He has bought you with a price. He has promised to never let you go!