Author: pastorpete51

God’s Arrival Time

/ pastorpete51 / 2 Comments 
The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. Lamentations 3:25-26 ESV

Our oldest grandson flew home last night from a visit with friends back in Pennsylvania. His family went to pick him up at the airport, and while his dad checked for the flight’s arrival, the younger ones milled around looking for snacks, but, the fourteen year-old, with his newly acquired cell phone decided to begin texting, “Are you here yet Amadeo? How about now? Now? Now? Now? Now?”  Since it was a family group text, soon all our phones began pinging like a popcorn machine at the movies.  While Alex was having a blast, the rest of us were left rolling our eyes. But just then God reminded me that sometimes I am just like Alex. In my prayers I have been asking; “When are you going to fix things, bring evil men to justice and give us peace? How about now? Now? Now? Now? Now?” Maybe Alex’s enthusiastic impatience makes me laugh so hard because we are alot alike. In today’s verse the prophet Jeremiah, shares with us what God had taught him after the destruction of Jerusalem. Thousands of soldiers had been killed, tens of thousands of civilians had starved to death during the siege, and most of the survivors were marched off as slaves. There had been no miraculous rescue or escape for God’s people, and yet in the midst of the devastation, God showed Jeremiah that He was still in control. God’s plan for him was to as Kipling once wrote, “keep your head when everyone around you is losing theirs.”  No matter how bad things get, we must believe that God’s “Now!” is way better than ours and that His goodness and salvation extends far beyond the arrival time we are hoping for in our prayers!

Photo by Palu Malerba on Pexels.com

His Footsteps

/ pastorpete51 / 6 Comments

Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known. Psalm 77:19 KJV

If your work is feeling endless 
And your hope is growing stale 
When you lag behind while others run 
And your dreams have seemed to fail 

Remember Jesus in the garden 
Praying while friends were fast asleep 
Choosing alone the cup of sorrow 
To drink there to His promise keep 

And when they led Him to the courtroom 
He stood as silent as a sheep 
Yielding to His Shepherd’s shearing 
And by His death wake us from sleep 

So child remember we are given 
Hope and strength for every day 
His footsteps left to mark our journey 
As it winds upward all the way

His Footsteps by Peter Caligiuri
copyright 2023
All rights reserved



Lifting Up the Serpent

/ pastorpete51 / 3 Comments

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:14-15 NKJV

In today’s digital age, only a few of us remember reading the Sunday paper. For me one of the great luxuries of a Sunday afternoon, was to peruse the headlines, then the sports section and finally the funny pages. My favorite was a comic strip named “B. C.”, by cartoonist Johnny Hart, who specialized in light humor sprinkled with a hint of Biblical wisdom. One of his most memorable scenes was a panel of the club wielding cave woman who had just whacked a dazed snake over the head. It gave us a humorous reminder of the reputation that serpents have maintained ever since Eve took that first bite of the apple. Today’s verse reminds us of a story from the book of Exodus when God sent Moses out into a crowd of folks dying from snake bites, carrying a bronze serpent on a staff. Since those snakes are a representative of evil and sin it makes me wonder why Jesus was willing to become like that.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The answer goes all the way back to Genesis, to a conversation that God had with Adam, Eve and the serpent after the man and woman had sinned. Interestingly, God didn’t begin with Adam or Eve. Instead, He started by pronouncing judgement on the serpent, and ending by saying, “He shall bruise your head, and you will bruise His heel.” So, even before Adam and Eve were given their list of consequences, God set in motion a plan for their redemption. That redemption was pictured in Exodus, when because of the people’s sin they came under attack by a slithering horde of venomous snakes. Then, right in middle of the death and chaos, God sent Moses out into the crowd with that serpent, so that anyone who would look towards it would be healed. That seemed pretty bizarre to me the first time I read it, but I realized later that it gives us a perfect picture of what Jesus did for us. While we were spiritually dying from the venomous bite of sin, God sent His Son out into the crowd of us mortally wounded sinners and allowed Jesus to be lifted up on a cross. On that dark and terrible afternoon, with blood dripping from His wounds, and drunken soldiers gambling for His clothing, He was lifted above the chaos, so that a thief dying next to Him, a Roman executioner and a cowardly disciple named Nicodemus, could look to Him and be forgiven and transformed. Jesus took the poison of sin from our bodies and accepted it into His own. God so loved the world that He gave us Jesus to die in our place, so that anyone looking to Him in faith could be healed. For six terrible hours He hung there, but now for eternity His is lifted up to Heaven offering sinners like you and me eternal life, if we will only look up to Him!