The "Frowning Glory"

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  • December 7, 2024 – 17 Days Until My Head Explodes, Or Devotions to Prepare Us For Christ’s Coming

    17 Days Until My Head Explodes, Or Devotions to Prepare Us For Christ’s Coming

    December 7, 2024 – 17 Days Until My Head Explodes, Or Devotions to Prepare Us For Christ’s Coming

    “Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram went, as the LORD had told him” Genesis 12:1-4

    Well, Cranky Reverend is lost here….another Christmas ornament that makes you scratch your head. CR has received a lot of different Christmas ornaments in his life, but if someone gave CR a toilet plunger as a Christmas favor, CR’s head would explode. Oh, I have some thoughts about what I might tell the gift giver to do with their plunger, but those thoughts are not so “Christmasy”.

    Abram receives a “Gift” from the Lord: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” Like the golden plunger, many of us might not consider G-d’s command a gift – having to leave our home to travel to who knows where. But without saying a word, good ole Abram moves from his homeland to a land as yet determined without anything more than a promise from the Lord that the Lord will show him his new “home” sometime in the future – and then will promise that his offspring will be as numerous as the sand on the beach. What bothers CR the most is Abram’s silence. He says nothing. If CR just asks his daughter to put a dish in the dishwasher CR gets a load of sass. But not Abram. He just cleans his dish and puts it in the proverbial dish washer and moves on.

    Are you feeling as if life has been asking too much of you lately? Any change in our lives, a job change, a change of churches, or a change in social status can leave its mark on the psyche.

    Though Abram says nothing as a complaint or a concern to G-d, we have one avenue that is open to us at any time, anywhere: Prayer. Prayer is our active conversation with G-d that helps us purge the soul, mind and spirit of negative feelings and fears.

    CR wants to remind you though that any conversation should always involve a two-way street: speaking and listening. So in our prayers we need to set aside time to listen for that still small voice of G-d to lead us to and through our greatest challenges and rewards.

    Pastor Dave

  • December 6, 2024 – 18 Days Until My Head Explodes, Or Devotions to Prepare Us For Christ’s Coming

    18 Days Until My Head Explodes, Or Devotions to Prepare Us For Christ’s Coming

    December 6, 2024 – 18 Days Until My Head Explodes, Or Devotions to Prepare Us For Christ’s Coming

    “And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. A windstorm arose on the sea, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him up, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a dead calm. They were amazed, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” Matthew 8:23ff

    Cranky Reverend was searching for the perfect ornament to place on the Cranky Tree, and here is one of his finds: ET holding flowers. Now, if you were born after 1999 you have no idea who this is – so Google the movie ET and you will find out. Anyway, ET is trying to phone home, but all he has are those flowers he brought back to life and brought along to the Christmas party. I guess flowers are the gift that keeps on giving, and if you are ET you do not have to ever buy another vase of flowers – you can keep bringing these back to life.

    Of course all ET wants to do is return home – so ET should just put the flowers down and buy a cell phone? Oh wait, there were no cell phones in the 80’s when this movie came out. Sure, he can make a universal device that will contact the cosmos using the MacGyver-esque contraption of a record player and other bits of tube, tape, and bubblegum. Look, he is an extraterrestrial being — he can’t mock up a cell phone to get a response from “home”? Really? I thought life from the cosmos was supposed to be “intelligent”?

    This text from Matthew gives us an interesting response to Jesus’ teaching, miracles, and calling to follow him. In verse 27, after experiencing Jesus calming the storm, the disciples say to one another, “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” Their question just highlights how little the disciples know about the true essence of Jesus. For all they know Jesus is another ET who might one day fly into the heavens on a “fiery chariot” like Elijah.

    Of course Cranky Reverend (CR) wants to know how you would respond if you ran into ET carrying flowers coming out of the grocery store? You most likely would respond in the same way: “What sort of being is that – and why is he carrying flowers?”

    What burns Cranky Reverend’s coffee beans these days is the fact that more people believe in ET than there are people who  believe that Jesus was G-d – or that there is any G-d at all. What CR wants to remind you of is if you believe in ET, than you have to believe that someone or something created ET – and that someone is G-d.

    So we may not know why ET is carrying the flowers – perhaps he has a date. But we all have a date with our creator – that day when we will leave this earth for good. So perhaps we should stop complaining about everything and begin working on our relationship with G-d through Jesus Christ. After all, G-d doesn’t need anymore cranky people in heaven.

    Pastor Dave