Where Does One Begin?

Where Does One Begin?

13Good Morning Friends,

Late last night we got back from Disney World’s Animal Kingdom where I spent a day with my family and the experience was interesting for we took in the experience with about 30,000 other people from around the world. It was an international bird migration day of sorts on the very day our attention is called to its celebration. One of the things that is interesting about the Park is how those involved in its planning explicitly link nature with art by finding natural metaphors with which to express ideas about the power, things of importance and quality, and the ultimate effect of aesthetic expression. Quotes of poets are posted around the park in preparation of the nearly one billion dollar expansion of a section dedicated to the movie Avatar. And as I contemplate the experience this morning on Mother’s Day, I am drawn to God who is so much more immense and amazing and absolutely into so many things that is impossible to describe the wonderful experience of this love that we perhaps first experienced, in part, through our mother’s love. And that draws me to a question. Where Does One Begin?

Scripture: Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. ¹⁴Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. ¹⁵The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. ¹⁶Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. ¹⁷Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. ¹⁸Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest.

James 5:13-18 (NRSV)

In the beginning when God created^* the heavens and the earth,

Genesis 1:1 (NRSV)

For this is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.

1 John 3:11 (NRSV)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning with God.

John 1:1-2 (NRSV)Top of Form

Bottom of Form

¹⁷So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NRSV)

³Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’^*

John 3:3 (NRSV)

²⁶She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.²⁷ She looks well to the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness.

Proverbs 31:26-27 (NRSV)

Message: Friends, the beginning point for our hope in heaven is the mystery of our new birth. It is the focal point of the Gospel message…the good news of the power of living a new life. Here in our desire to learn more about Jesus we end up like Nicodemus learning more about ourselves. Here we find the importance of personal faith and decision in attaining the life God intends for us to live. We like Nicodemus are challenged by Jesus to begin a new life. As we search for what Jesus has attained, we too are challenged to have a relationship with God….we too are challenged to be remade by the power of God so we might live in the rule and reign of God.  That is where we must begin on this Mother’s Day…a day about birth of something new.

Pray this day we begin with a prayer for mothers. Pray in it we have the courage to hope in the hope of our mother’s. Pray we realize how the power of mothers is linked to the omnipresence of God. Pray we feel the sincerity of a mother’s kiss. Pray we experience beginnings found in the life of mothers. Pray we respond to that inner appeal of God that brings the transformation of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Pray we repent and begin living a life reborn by God’s Spirit. Pray we begin to love the will and the way of God. Pray we find a great prayer life. Pray we realize that God has everything planned out from the beginning. Pray we pray for a heaven on earth birthed and rebirthed in the Spirit of love that gives back what was and is God’s from the beginning.

Blessings,

John Lawson