VBS FUN!

PLAY TIME!!!

"If a country is governed wisely...
People enjoy their food, take pleasure in being with their families,
spend weekends working in their gardens,
delight in the doings of the neighborhood."
- Tao Te Ching

This week at Vacation Bible School I have had the joy of leading kids from 4 years old all the way up to adults in outdoor and indoor games. We have had a blast with things like water, balls, balloons, coke bottles, pool noodles, blindfolds, Mentos candy, newspapers, Toilet Paper, beachballs and hair dryers to name just a few. In a word we have gotten to know each other and Jesus better by "PLAYING." For some adults and maybe even a fews kids, play is almost a lost art. But is something our spirit needs to thrive in today's to busy, crazy world.

In today's world, even for we Christians the stress is always there to be a success!
Listen to Lorraine, an independent businesswoman, as she speaks about the cost of a "Successful" life: "You have to give up something to be a success in business. There's not tome for everything. Me, I have very little time for my spiritual life. I don't have a civic life. And I do very little with friendships--anything that doesn't have to do with business. I don't have time to cultivate relationships that aren't profitable." In Wayne Miller's book I am reading entitled "Sabbath," he says, "The problem for most of us is not simply that we work too much, the problem is that we are working for the wrong reward. We reward the fruits of our labor and the sweat of our brow with money, goods, and services." We need to seek a balance he says between money and stuff and time. Especially time to just PLAY. You know, things like, take a walk int he park, grab a nap, play with your kids or grandkids, read a good book, dance, dig in the dirt, cook, visit with friends, play a game just for fun, paint, sing, meditate, journel, or just look deeply into the eyes of someone for whom you care deeply.

After all what really matters? What is success in God's eyes?

Whata' Play?

In Him,
Rev.Richard

The Messiah Changes Lives!

This week I was reading a article about the life of George Fredrick Handel.
For much of his life he wrote Italian music as a German-English composer. He ran an opera hours that became unpopular and failed. Suffering from overwork and exhaustion, in 1737 Handel had a stroke and became paralyzed. Money problems soon followed, and just as all hope seemed gone someone sent him a libretto, in English, drawn from the bible, about the Savior, the suffering servant of all whose stripes make us whole.
Something about those texts energized him, they gave him heart and purpose once again. Day and night he worked, forgetting to eat or sleep. One friend visited Handel as he was setting the music to the words, "He was despised and and rejected of men," and found him sobbing deeply. After composing the Hallelujah chorus, Handel wrote the words of St. Paul in his journal, paraphrased from 2 Corinthians. "Whether I was in my body or out of my body as I wrote it, I know not. God knows!"
This exhausted and beaten man, completed the entire Messiah in three short weeks! How could this happen? What literally, Got into him?
Without a doubt it was the power of the Holy Spirit working through the words of scripture that moved the heart of Handel in amazing ways. Listen to what other great composers had to say:

Frans Joseph Hayden - When he heard the Hallelujah Chorus "wept like a child."
Mozart - "Handel understands effect better than any of us - when he chooses, he strikes like a thunderbolt."
Beethoven - "Handel is the greatest composer that ever lived....I would uncover my head and kneel down at his tomb."

You see Handel's real Messiah heard the cries of a broken German composer-musician, as he lay sick, broken and pennyless and lost. He took a sick old man and made him holy and redeemed.
This was not just another work of music, but a transformation of the man.
Maybe the Messiah wants to take the jumbled, tangled mess of our daily living and bring it all together with the unpredictable workings of the Holy Spirit and create another masterpiece in us!

Hallelujah, Hallelujah!

Rev. Richard

Cheering for the HOME Team!

This last week I had the privilege of attending my 18 year old Daughter's High School Graduation. It was an exciting time to see Kristin walk across the stage ranked 8th out of 550 students. We were not the only family that was thrilled to see our offspring get a diploma. The stands at the football stadium were full of people who arrived an hour early to support the young persons of their families.

One of the frustrations of this evenings festivities, was that the sound system was so ineffective that you could not hear anything that was being said by almost any of the various speakers on the graduation program. This made the whole event seem even longer than the almost 3 hours we sere there.

But it was fun to watch families, wait sometimes 2 or more hours till there young boy or girl stepped up to get there diploma, and when they did, what a celebration!

Cheers, handmade signs, giant balloons, screams,, yells, fireworks and especially air horns were used to announce that Jessie, or Amber or whoever had arrived. In many cases 2o or more family and friends would stand or jump up and down and yell the name of their graduate.

I thought how if I were a kid down on that field it would make me feel to have such a wild party break out on my behalf! I would know how loved and cared for I was. I would have to feel pride and excitement at my shared accomplishments. I would be filled with joy that so many persons were cheering for me. I was reminded of the words of the writer of Hebrews that reminds us that we are running the race of life and their are a "Cloud of Witnesses" who are watching and cheering us on so that we can stick with it to the end.

As I sat in the stands with a couple of thousand other parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends of the graduating Class of 2008 of Del Rio High School, I felt great pride and joy for my daughter and for another 540 or so young persons. And I hope and prayed that at other times in their lives they would hear and feel the cheering and shouting and the pure glee that God our heavenly Father has for each of them.

In Jesus,
RevRick

PRAYER REALLY WORKS!!

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - It seemed like an almost literal answer to their prayers. When two New Zealand pilots ran out of fuel in a microlight airplane they offered prayers and were able to make an emergency landing in a field — coming to rest right next to a sign reading, "Jesus is Lord."

Grant Stubbs and Owen Wilson, both from the town of Blenheim on the country's South Island, were flying up the sloping valley of Pelorus Sound when the engine spluttered, coughed and died.

"My friend and I are both Christians so our immediate reaction in a life-threatening situation was to ask for God's help," Stubbs told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

He said he prayed during the ill-fated flight Sunday that the tiny craft would get over the top of a ridge and that they would find a landing site that was not too steep — or in the nearby sea.

Wilson said that the pair would have been in deep trouble if the fuel had run out five minutes earlier.

"If it had to run out, that was the place to be," he said. "There was an instantaneous answer to prayer as we crossed the ridge and there was an airfield — I didn't know it existed till then."

After Wilson glided the powerless craft to a landing on the grassy strip, the pair noticed they were beside a 20-foot-tall sign that read, "Jesus is Lord — The Bible."

"When we saw that, we started laughing," Stubbs said.

Nearby residents provided them with gas to fly the home-built plane back to base.