Sermon on the Mount

Lilies of the Field

/ pastorpete51 / Leave a comment

Matthew 6:28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin.

If you are like me maybe you been doing more some worrying off and on during this pandemic. We wonder if our family members will get sick or what is going to happen to our nation. We worry about going to the grocery store and wonder when we can go to church again.

The people listening to Jesus were not so much different than us. They had plenty of their own troubles – like corrupt government officials extorting them for money – the threat of getting leprosy that could put you in social isolation for life and a strict religious system that might get you kicked out of the synagogue for even listening to Jesus. So Jesus didn’t just say; “Don’t worry; Be happy!” Instead He talked about lilies. These weren’t the lilies we associate with Easter or the garden lilies we are familiar with but were flowers that grew wild in the fields of Galilee.

That kind of blossom reminds me of the wild flowers in the farm fields. Generally they were unnoticed while the hay was tall since they grew in the shade of the taller grass. But once the fields were mown and the hay made into bales their tiny yellow, purple and red blossoms put on quite a show. My job being to stack the bales I got the delight of a great view of them from my perch high atop the hay wagon as we road we back to the barn.

Since Jesus said to consider flowers as a stress reliever I thought that today it might be fun to just share some flower photos from my morning walks. Have a blessed and unworried day safe on the top of God’s hay wagon as he steers us slowly back to His barn!

This Little Salt of Mine

/ pastorpete51 / Leave a comment

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. Matthew 5:14 ESV

Being the salt of the earth gets a lot less attention than being the light of the world. After all when was the last time you heard anyone singing, “This little salt of mine!”? When people think about the salt of the earth they vaguely picture plain and ordinary folks. On the other hand, when my mother used to say that sailors were using “salty language”; she meant something quite different. Then what exactly is there about salt that Jesus is urging us to understand?

It may help to remember that salt comes up from mines deep in the earth. Its uniqueness is that it is totally different from the soil around it. In the same way, when we became Christians God dug us up by His grace and brought to the surface for a special purpose. His grace has transformed us and so He asks us to let that grace flow through us to transform our own little part of the world. Every day He gives us the opportunity to demonstrate the difference that grace has made in our lives; not to try to fit in and become like everyone else. When Jesus prayed that we would be in the world, but not of it He was asking that His grace would flavor everything and everyone around us. We are on earth for such a short time, so why don’t we start singing, “This little salt of mine; I’m going to shake it out!”

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