Author: pastorpete51

The Eye of the Artist

/ pastorpete51 / 10 Comments 
But immediately, when Jesus perceived in His spirit that they reasoned thus within themselves, He said to them.
Mark 2:7b NKJV

“It’s the eye of the artist, Bobby” my friend’s 91-year-old grandmother replied to his protestations. “That window you installed just isn’t straight.”

“But grandmom, I checked it with the level,” Bob replied

“Check it again,” she answered with a smile. Bob sighed, set his level back on the windowsill, and was shocked to see that grandmom had been right!

How a writer sees things, or in Jesus’s case, how He perceived them, will govern what is written. My step-dad, who was a commercial artist used to tell me, “You can’t paint what you think you see, you have to paint what you really see.” Picasso’s famous painting “Guernica” was far from the realism. Instead he utilized a style that was called “Cubism.” Guernica was a small town that suffered a devastating bombing during the 1937 civil war. Though his painting misses the details that the wartime photographs revealed, it was a perfect representation of how Picasso saw its horrors.

Every writer, for better or worse puts pen to paper and paints what they see with words. While artists from da Vinci to Andy Warhol have plied their trade with red, orange, yellow, and the rest of the rainbow, writers put on paper the shades of infinitives, participles, and adverbs. Every good novelist had learned how to structure thrilling plots, write flowing dialogues, and paint vivid pictures of their characters, but those of us calling ourselves Christian writers have the added duty to do more than entertain. God calls us to see what He sees. He gives us the awesome responsibility to share what He sees, especially in seemingly hopeless situations. He asks us to level the window that the world is looking through and to notice glimmers of hope in dark places.

Just as when Jesus saw in His spirit the hearts of the Pharisees, He gave words of forgiveness for a paralyzed man, we can point to God’s grace in failure, refreshing for exhausted neighbors, laughter, and joyful stories in frustrating times. God calls us to paint more than we think we see, and even more than we truly see. He hands us a torch and asks us to shine His light on the paths of others to show the hope that He, the Master Artist, has helped us see today!

A Certain Man

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Then Jesus answered and said: “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Luke 10:30 NKJV

The parable of the Good Samaritan is a story that even non-believers know and love. There are Samaritan hospitals, charities and even a national Good Samaritan day! (March 13th). Who doesn’t want to rush in to save a helpless child, an abused widow, or an innocent bystander being robbed? But what we miss about the guy being rescued is that he was just an ordinary person, who Jesus calls a “certain man”. Maybe he cheated on his taxes, was unfaithful to his wife or wiped his nose in public. When Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus isn’t saying, “Love your nice neighbor,” or “Love the sweet old lady next door who gives cookies to all the kids on the block.” Jesus is commanding us to love the pain-in-the-neck neighbor who doesn’t always pick up after his dog, doesn’t mow his grass and who plays loud music late at night. Yes, that neighbor!

And did Jesus tell us it would be nice and easy? Absolutely not! Loving your certain man neighbor is going to cost you something. It cost the Good Samaritan, two-day’s pay, a long walk to the inn and a half a bottle of wine and another of olive oil. It might have cost him his reputation among other Samaritans for stopping to help a Jew. Yes, being a good neighbor to that “certain man,” who God puts in our path today might cost us a lot. But when being a good Samaritan or a good neighbor seems unreasonable, expensive or even dangerous, just remember that it cost Jesus everything including His death on the cross for you and for me!

And in Every House!

/ pastorpete51 / 4 Comments 
And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, Acts 2:46 KJV

"And daily in the temple...and in every house
And in every house
And in every house
And daily in the temple...and in every house
They ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ!"

Last week one of our elderly ushers had a fall and passed away not many days afterward. He and his wife Joyce have been members of our church for decades, and every Sunday as we made our way down the aisle, Hal would shake hands with us and anyone who was not too busy to pause for a moment. Though I remembered their names, I really did not know them and was amazed at how few of our friends even remembered them at all. Yet, week after week they stood out in the aisle, greeting folks and ushering late comers into open seats. Do we have a bad church? Well, yes and no. Though the preaching is quite biblically sound, we are far from a perfect church, because people like Joyce and Hal can slip through the cracks all the time. That is why our leadership emphasizes small groups. In China, they call them, “House churches”, while here in the U.S. they go by names like small groups, grow groups, life groups and many others. By early church standards, the leaders of these small meetings are pastors and the person we call our senior pastor would be the bishop. Today I wanted, not to focus on church structure, but on how we all need connection. Without connections, we are just hermits meeting together once a week, then returning to the comfort of our modern caves. We plunk away at our cell phones, laptops and iPads, but rarely have opportunities to love and be known as a part of God’s family. This week in our men’s study we finished Colossians and noted that before Paul closed, He greeted a long list of people by name. They all mattered to him and more importantly to God. One verse the stands out to me this morning is:

 Give my greetings to the brothers and sisters at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house. Colossians 4:15 NIV

Does the church meet in your house, or do we meet in someone else’s place? Without a doubt, our brother Hal is now shaking hands with Jesus and though Joyce is left alone, she knows that one day they will be reunited. We all know this, but only people close enough to them to really know them will be there to comfort, encourage and listen. Being in such fellowship makes us uncomfortable, gives us responsibilities we may not want to have and opens us up to being hurt by others. These are all valid reasons to be careful of who and where we fellowship, but none of those is valid enough to keep us isolated from the life and the love of the body of Christ. Find people you can commit to, serve with and break bread with in your community, so you can have that gladness and singleness of heart that God intends for all of His children!