Ponder-worthy...

"We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy. You, a man, are making yourself God."
John 10:33

This reminds me of one of my favorite stories about St. Edith Stein.  Remember her? She was the Jewish woman who was a philosophy scholar in Germany, pre-WWII.  As a result of her studies (of St. Teresa of Avila) and the influence of Catholic friends, she became a Catholic and later a Carmelite nun. She was killed at Auschwitz in 1942, at age 50.  My favorite story is when she finally told her Jewish mother that she was joining the Carmelite order. She had just been living with the sisters while teaching at their school. She told her mother that she was actually going to join the order and be a Carmelite nun. Her mother was quoted saying, "Why did you have to get to know him (Jesus)? He was a good man--I'm not saying anything against him. But why did he go and make himself God?" ("Edith Stein--A Biography," by Waltraud Herbstrith). Isn't that fascinating? We have  two thousand years of history and the deep faith to know that Jesus is God. The people of his time and even Jewish people throughout history see it so differently.  So ponder-worthy, this last weekend before Holy Week. And as we ponder and pray, let us remember that the Jewish people are, and always have been, so richly and completely loved by God. They are our brothers and sisters under our father Abraham. Love, heidi

Praiseworthy!

"Blessed are you, O Lord, the God of our fathers, praiseworthy and exalted above all forever..."
Daniel 3:52

Pray-as-You-Go had a lovely little exercise surrounding this today...inviting us to think about what we would praise God for on this day.  That's easy for me, having just spent a fabulous weekend with three out of four of my kids! I was thinking how funny it is: I did a good deal of pondering and nourishing my relationship with God in my early twenties. Then busy family life began and I was caught up in a whirlwind of all of that for thirty years. Now, here I am again, on my own pondering and nourishing my relationship with God. These God-times are like bookends of my life--times of awareness, while the years in between are somewhat of a blur to me.  I spend time this late-Lenten Wednesday praising God for it all.  I relish each phase, each period of life, as I look back.  I see how God was there through it all, even as I was so caught up living a busy life.  The constant through it all is God...who is definitely praiseworthy and exalted forever!  Let's all ask ourselves today...what do we praise God for this very day? Love, heidi

Alone. With God.

"So they said to him, 'Who are you?'"
John 8:25

I love that the people just come right out and ask Jesus, "Who are you?" Indeed, it's a good question for us to pray with these last two weeks of Lent. Who IS Jesus in our lives? Is Jesus an historical figure who lived in a confined period of time and place? Is Jesus still alive in our lives today or do we relate to him only as he was then? Is Jesus someone we think about Monday through Friday or only on Sunday? Is Jesus merely symbolic to us or is Jesus real to us? If we haven't really gotten into Lent this year, we can spend the next couple weeks praying and pondering these questions in our own lives. Who, exactly, are we celebrating on Easter? And what does this whole deal mean in our own work-a-day lives in 2017? We're in the home stretch, Friends...let's spend some wonderful, peace-filled time with alone. With God.  Love, heidi

Get outside!

"The great brightness, the Son of God, appeared for the health and salvation of humanity, taking on the poverty of a human body, but shining like a burning star amid shadowy clouds."
Hildegard of Bingen, as quoted in "Give Us This Day"

As March blows out of here tomorrow and Lent begins to wind down, it is so wonderful to read the descriptive prose of one of our church's finest, Hildegard of Bingen. She was a mystic who studied the word of God in nature as well as scripture. This time of year is full of nature! The weather changes in east Idaho by the hour, it seems. But in that changing, that bursting forth from the recently frozen earth, new life is coming for all of us.  This weekend, let's all take some time to read what Fr. Richard Rohr refers to as the First Bible...let's get outside! No matter if it's raining, windy, sunny or still, God is recreating the world...and us along with it.  Love, heidi

Nudge me out of the way...

"I know where I stand...in theory. I'm FOR Jesus. But I can get around that by leaving Jesus out of some real-life issues...
Am I for Jesus or against Jesus?"
The Little Black Book

Oh that question is as easy as "Do you want to get well?" from yesterday! Isn't it?  I sat and thought about which real-life issues I may be excluding Jesus from in my life.  What about my unattractive tendency to judge others harshly? Where is Jesus in there? Those hardest to love in my little kingdom ARE actually Jesus and how do I treat them? Looking at it that way I look to be quite against Jesus and that is the last thing I'd ever want to be.  The solution for that is for me to yield to God who resides in my heart and let God love through me.  God is very happy to love all those I find difficult to love. I may need to just step out of the way so God can do just that.  Gracious and Forgiving God, my judgments, prejudices, and just general ickiness about others prevents me from truly loving Jesus well.  Give me a nudge out of the way so you can love others with your heart. Hopefully, my heart will learn from yours to love better!  Amen. Love, heidi

Jump onboard the healing train!

"When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him, 'Do you want to be well?'"
John 5:6

I remember my dad had a friend who (as Dad described it) "enjoyed" ill health.  When I was finally old enough to realize the inconsistency of that I asked my dad what he meant by that paradoxical phrase. "Oh, he enjoys ill health because it gives him something to talk about." Ah, yes, I get it.  Some of us, frankly, resist getting well, as Jesus knows already in today's Gospel.  We may be so uncomfortable with change that we stay in our own little sicknesses because the absence of them would take away our unique us-ness. Where would we be without our internal stuff? Who would we be? What would we talk about? Jesus doesn't inflict healing on someone who doesn't really want to be healed. That's why he sometimes asks the obvious question. He asks us today, too.  Do you want to stay crabby with your coworkers? Do you want to perpetuate the gossip in the teacher's lounge? Do you want to walk by the guy with the sign without as much as a prayer for his needs? We need to be onboard with Jesus' healing within us. Do we want to be well?  Love, heidi