Chris Yaw

We all knew she was going to die.
It was Grandma, for Pete’s sake.
She was well into her 80’s, her health was not good, and she’d begun to get snappy these past few years. She was angry, uncomfortable, and had told us more than once that she wanted nothing more than to see her husband, her parents and her Savior.
Yet we did not want her to go.

For a week she hung on, after her sudden collapse on the bedroom floor.
She had a single room at St. Joe’s.
We took turns visiting.
She slept mostly, moved a bit, but we couldn’t be sure if it was she or the medicine doing it.

She was no Lazarus, struck down in the prime of life, to the awe and surprise of family and friends. But we were Mary and Martha asking similar questions - saddened, mourning, crying. Why did grandma have to go now? I know others, alert and vibrant, who live, work even drive well into their 90s, why couldn’t grandma be one of them? There were great grandchildren to meet, stories to tell, advice to give and holidays to round out. What would it be like not to have that familiar presence – that voice, that laugh, that touch – that had been with us ever since any of us could remember?

We came to the Master’s feet with our Lazarus-tomb questions: ‘Why her?’ ‘Why now?’ ‘Only if!’ And we imagined the myriad of alternative scenarios.

Oh yes, the Master did finally come. Jesus had heard us. God knew how out of sorts we were. And He showed up on the scene. But in the end, He was too late. Grandma died. And Jesus joined us. He stood there in room 717 and wept right along with the rest of us. We were not the only ones grieving.

It is a pain relived at this time every year as we lift up this memory, and countless others - of all the souls and all the saints who have touched our lives, who indeed are here, but here no more. The miracle we look for is not that of a man wrapped in burial cloths arising like some haunted house mummy, rather it is one that carries every bit as much meaning as did the miracle witnessed by Mary and Martha. For we are assured, by the testimony of Scripture, the promises of our fore bearers, and the strange warming of our hearts that this life is not all there is. Our miracle is the promise and reality of new life.

All Saints’ Day reminds us of this. It tells us that a thin veil is all that separates those who live on this side of eternity or the other. And the miracle of Lazarus raised reminds us that we will all be raised. We will reunite with loved ones one day. Death has been overcome. God has that kind of power.

In what ways can we remind ourselves of God’s eternal plans for us?
How can we better convince ourselves that God is in control of our destiny?
What things can we let go of, knowing that God, ultimately is in charge?

Reading
Mixed Blessings – Barbara Brown Taylor
A People’s History of Christianity – Diana Butler Bass
World Without End – Ken Follett

Don’t we all wish it was just that easy…

“Hey Jesus, it’s me, ya the blind one… or the poor one… or the one without a job… or the one with the goofy nose.” (You can fill in the blank however you’d like.)
“And I have faith and I want healing, food, employment, plastic surgery.” (Again, fill in the blank.)
“Go ahead, wave that magic wand!” we say, “We heard you did it for blind Bartimaeus in Jericho, It was so simple for you. All he did was call your name, tell you what he wanted and bingo! So have at it, do your stuff! I’m waiting!...”

And wait we do.
In the doctor’s office, the bread line, the unemployment line…
Drumming our fingers, furrowing our brows, taking another hit of Maalox…
Sure we pray… till we’re blue in the face… in a lot of different ways… in special places… to special people.
Visit the Pentecostal Revival tent. Bury a statue of St. Joseph in the yard.
And when we don’t get what Bartimeaus got we react in a number of different ways.

Some of us get angry. We no longer talk to God. We boycott church, refuse to pray, anything to get back at that capricious charlatan who obviously doesn’t think I’m worth listening to. Sure, our anger doesn’t help matters, but it makes us feel better.

Some of us give up on God. We consider our experiences proof that there is no God. So we focus more on logic, reason and rationale, all the while ignoring the mysterious parts of our souls that opened our eyes to faith in the first place. We shun the Spirit’s tugs and tingles. Sunsets become ‘geological phenomenon.’ All is dismissed as fairy tale, innuendo, and the leftovers of a work-in-process evolutionary progression.

This story of ecstatic healing becomes a tale of cold betrayal.
The intimate becomes distant.
Joy becomes pain.

Some of us have been told we need faith like Bartimeaus.
But most of us need faith despite Bartimeaus.

For at the very moment of heightened doubt, when we are convinced God has done nothing and once again left us out in the cold, let us remind ourselves that God, indeed, has done something. God has come among us. God has become one of us. And God has not simply come down to our level - God has gone lower. From the peaks of heaven to the pit of hell, Jesus came to endure for us what we would never want for our worst enemy. No, we never, ever suffer alone. There is no place on earth where you and I must look up to Jesus, for He is always right next to us.

And lest we think we are alone in our suffering, desperation and abandonment, let us remember that whatever’s happened to us has also been experienced by God in the flesh. No matter how bad things are, how angry, depressed or forgotten we feel, God knows what it’s like to go through that, and worse. Because when you and I think that at least God hasn’t killed us, we also remember, oh yeah, he saved that for Jesus.

The Road to Daybreak – Henri Nouwen
The Source – James Michener
Jesus - Borg

OK, I’ll admit it, for ambitious people like me this Sunday’s reading, about the demands of James and John to, “grant us to sit one at your right hand and one at your left” is more than a bit off-putting. After all, I never had an ambition to be ambitious it just came to me.

Maybe the great psychoanalyst Alfred Adler was right in positing ambition as humanity’s dominant impulse. While Sigmund Freud contended that sex was our governing urge, Adler argued that the quest for recognition, our desire for attention, is the basic drive of human life.

Perhaps that’s why Jesus didn’t come down too hard on the brothers Zebedee for their incredibly self-centered and obnoxious request. He didn’t even call them on the carpet when they immediately agreed, ‘Yes Lord, we’ll drink the cup you drink and take the baptism you’ll take!’ It’s as if they’re 4-year-olds demanding a Golden Retriever from Mom and Dad, and just as willingly agreeing, ‘Sure I’ll take him for a walk three times a day, play fetch till it’s dark and donate all my allowance to feed him until I’m 17!’

No, Jesus let James and John down ever so gently – he did not fault them for being ambitious, rather he sternly corrected them for being ambitious about the wrong things.

How many times have you and I been ambitious about the wrong things? How many relationships, possessions or experiences did we spend incredible energy to acquire only to find out it was not what we thought it was?

Check out this video to see what I mean (especially if you’re the parent of a teenaged girl).

Misdirected ambition is arguably humanity’s biggest fault. We think we know what we want, we go for it, and we find that in taking the lead we would have been much better off to have followed. And when we finally agree to follow, we find that Jesus does not take away our ambitions, He simply realigns them.

For human ambitions are often God-given, God-directed, and are at their best when they find their fulfillment in service. It is often seen when millionaires use their business acumen to clean up urban schools, good parents open up their homes to foster kids, and when you and I realize that our gifts were not given to us solely for our own pleasure and boasting, but to do God’s work.

Do any of our ambitions need redirecting?
How might the Lord be calling us to redirect them?

Reading
Among the Lilies – Ronald Rolheiser
Eventide- Kent Haruf
Microtrends-Mark Penn

There she stood, as still as a sentry, as observant as any FBI agent on Presidential Guard Detail – our friend Carolyn, manning her post alongside my wife and our new baby on his first day in church. As so many people tried to make their way to the baby’s side found out; before you could get to baby, you had to pass by Carolyn, who was armed and ready with a big old bottle of Purell. ‘Wash your hands before you touch mine!’ reads the little red hexagonal sign pinned to baby’s car carrier. In these days of flu shots, viruses, random germs, N1H1, Mad Cow, Hanta, you name it - new parents take every precaution. We all understand this, and we all dutifully obey.

Yet this scene carried out in of all places, a church, couldn’t help but make my mind wonder… When Jesus bid the little children, ‘Come!’, as Mark 10 tells us, which of the disciples would have been the designated Purell holder? Would it have been Thomas who doubted Jesus’ divinity nearly until the end? Would it have been John, ‘the beloved disciple,’ who would’ve been more concerned about a child giving Jesus a cold rather than vice versa? Would it have been Judas, who would have bought the generic brand and pocketed the difference?

What’s more, would Mother Mary have taken Joseph to task in that smelly manger, reminding the new (old) father that no shepherd, angel or drummer boy could approach this pastoral setting without, first, a squirt of cold gelatinous antiseptic? And would these parents have been as obsessed with cleanliness as we are? Or would there have been the few waivers issued by dutiful parents who give a free pass to Popes and mothers-in-laws? And would Jesus have shared their concerns for cleanliness? Would Jesus have requested a Purell Sentry through which everyone would have to pass before coming in contact with Him?

The ways you and I approach God are studded with concerns like this. We have barriers of our own that keep us from Jesus. We skip our daily prayers because we’ve had a spat with our spouse or neighbor and feel hypocritical. We abstain from the Eucharist because we’ve been less than honest with our taxes. We skip church out of guilt over an affair. It seems like there is always a barrier between God and us. It seems like we are always looking out for some sentry that will keep us from approaching the throne of Grace.

If Jesus’ ministry teaches us anything, it is that no such sentry exists. Jesus’ mission was to remove them - every barrier that would keep you and me from God. Jesus turned over the moneychangers’ tables at the Temple and tore the curtain in the Temple in two. And this Thanksgiving season (Canadian is Monday) reminds us that more than a meal and the founding of this great country, you and I give thanks to a Christ who has given us 24/7 access to the Father.

Dear friends, there is nothing that can keep us from coming to Jesus, no sin, shortcoming or human ritual. It’s because, more than anything, Jesus wants us to come – He died to get this point across. And He is bidding us today, as He did the little children, to come.
What’s keeping us?

Reading
Among the Lilies – Ronald Rolheiser
Microtrends – Mark Penn
Where God Happens – Rowan Williams

It happened many years ago but it may as well have been yesterday.
It was the day I realized that all that time I had spent in grade school, high school and college study had not gotten me even one inch closer to the yearning, deep in my soul, to becoming who I was supposed to be. I was 22 and I was lost.

I had just spent four wonderful years enduring and even enjoying that very expensive rite of passage that young people go through (also known as college…), and like so many of them I had a degree and a diploma, but absolutely no idea which way my privileged life was going to go. The inner pain was nearly excruciating, maybe you have felt it (it's not just for college kids). My parents had invested so much in me. My teachers had such high expectations for me. My friends were already leaping and bounding way ahead of me. The pressure was numbing, as there I sat, working in a travel agency, not to fulfill my dream, but to help an ambitious and entrepreneurial friend fulfill his. I had no idea what my dream was.

So in the midst of my lostness I cried out to God, as if a character in the Psalms. I protested to a God whose attention I was incessantly trying to capture: “This is too much,” I remember saying, “Where are you? Do you care? Where should I go? What should I do?"

And then I remember very distinctly that the Lord did not come down from heaven that day and sketch out the next 50 years of my life, binding it in a spiral note book and tabbing all the pages. No, the Lord had something else in mind. You see, I suddenly discovered that on that day, and on every day since, the Lord did hear me. And the Lord did rescue me. How? The Lord came to my aid by changing my faith. The Lord sent family and friends who did not pressure me, but gently held me, and who did all they could to come along side me as I figured out how to make my way through the Valley of the Shadow of Unrelenting Disorientation. The Lord sent me quiet times of prayer and reflection. The Lord sent me those times of Bible reading when certain verses just hit you ‘POW’ right over the head, maybe this has happened to you?

And when I went from working at a travel agency in Michigan to a personal assistant in Colorado, an equally dead-end job, I did not spend long in lament. Why? God had rescued me! My newly re-tooled faith had assured me that I had no standard to live up to but God’s. I am a child of God! I am a man on a divine mission!

Jesus says, in this Sunday's Gospel lesson, that, 'everyone will be salted with fire.' How are we dealing with the fires that burn and test, be they vocation, sickness or loss? Are we lamenting in the face value of them, or are we looking deeper, where God is looking, at the ways our trials shape and mold us into all that God has created us to be?

Reading:
Transforming Stewardship - CK Robertson
For the Sake of Heaven and Earth - Irving Greenberg
Cooking for Baby

The other day my computer went on the fritz.
It started doing things I didn’t want it to do.
It would not obey my commands.
I had no choice but to push ‘reset.’
As I sat there waiting for the computer to restart, I wondered:
What if I could push the ‘reset’ button on my life?
What would I re-program?
What would I build in differently?

One thing I would reset would be my generosity.
Sure, we give our 10% to the church.
And my wife and I support numerous charities.
But we could do so much more if we could push the reset button on our underlying attitude.
Do you know what I mean?

After all, who says we have to live where we live, eat what we eat, buy what we buy and drive what we drive? Do we choose these things based on what we need, or on how much our paychecks allow? A recent study by the National Council of Churches of Christ concluded that, “the main thing blocking church support is simple: it’s an unsurpassing urge for more affluent living.” Just as I think Jesus is shaping my generosity, I discover that it is really rival attractions that gain more of my religious dollar.

Sure, there are lots of factors that, over the years, slowly bent my attitude out of shape. Like fish living in water, we are immersed in an acquisitive culture. Most of the important things in my life depend on me, and everyone else, buying things. Nearly every moment of every day, someone is trying to convince me to buy something that I more than likely don’t need. The average American will spend two years of her life watching television commercials. And living in this fishbowl takes its toll. I don’t know how, but I’ve become utterly convinced that I need most of the stuff that I have. Maybe you have felt this way too.

I know I can’t push the reset button and change overnight. But I do believe that every day I am called to be more like Jesus. This means I am called to be more generous. I believe I can make small changes that add up to a much larger change. I’ve done it before by refusing desserts for a long period, and cashing in on the results on the bathroom scale. One place to start would be pausing to contemplate this simple saying from my childhood:

“Just think, God gave us everything, and we get to keep 90% of it!”

In other words, instead of thinking that everything is mine, I remind myself that it is all God’s, and one of God’s gifts to me is to help distribute it. Now I will let you in on a secret. When someone sends me an email requesting donations for a walk-a-thon, help meeting the mortgage bill, aid a needy child in a foreign country, or for a contribution to church, I absolutely love saying ‘yes.’ I love getting out my checkbook. I like helping people in need. I really like being generous. You probably do too. Pushing the reset button on generosity means getting more in touch with this feeling. How might we do this in our lives today?

Reading:
The Road to Daybreak - Henri Nouwen
For the Sake of Heaven and Earth - Irving Greenberg
Transforming Stewardship - CK Robertson

I got a phone message this week from one of our parishioners, a longtime member who I had not yet met. The tone of the message was urgent so I returned the call right away.

My new friend used calm and steady words to describe the eye-opening experience so many of us have had when our vocabularies are forced to expand and include technical and medical jargon, especially words that have life-threatening connotations. After some time describing the severity of the affliction, the treatment and the prognosis my friend began to make the kinds of connections so many of us make when we face similar circumstances: How does this turn of events play out in the wider space of my life? How is God involved in all this? All of a sudden, the possessions, experiences, goals and plans that were all set and sound are not so firm and immovable. We are in a new place, a scary place, a painful place. But if everything happens for a reason, albeit, reasons we rarely know or understand, then what could God be up to here?

And as my friend so eloquently, wonderfully, and inspirationally described, she intends to use this challenge to move closer to the kind of place Jesus describes to us this in Sunday's reading -"If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me."

Perhaps the biggest temptation you and I face in contemporary society is to simply allow life to pass before us, with all the tragic and happy colors of an Independence Day parade. And as life spins before us and through us and by us we are tempted to simply hold on, unable and unwilling to step back and let it all in. Serious health issues provide us with the kinds of opportunities many of us secretly crave, the chance to get off, step back, and look at our lives for what they are: Gifts from God, given us to enjoy, to share and to give away. And most of the people you and I have known who have gone through serious medical challenges would probably tell us that the opportunity it afforded them to re-think and renew turned out to be greater than they ever imagined, perhaps even life-saving.

Anthony DeMello has noted that pleasant experiences make life delightful, but they rarely, if ever, lead to growth. What leads to growth is painful experiences. Suffering points us toward areas where we have not yet grown, where we need to grow, and be transformed and changed. You and I have probably always suspected that if we knew how to use that suffering- boy, how we would grow.

Reading
Awareness - Anthony DeMello
Imitation of Christ - Thomas a Kempis
My Struggle with Faith - Joseph Girzone

Not far from my house is a stretch of Woodward Avenue that attracts heroin-thin women who wear their clothes like Saran Wrap and hairstyles like Medusa. They sport brash attitudes and colorful vocabularies that would make rugby players blush. They strut and wave and shout into the wee hours of the night in desperate hopes of attracting the attentions of the drivers whizzing by in a 50 mile per hour zone. Most of them are feeding drug habits. Some are feeding children.

I see them in rare instances when my morning run begins before dawn. There they are, giving shout-outs to their associates, heckling for customers, keeping up the neighbors. They’re obnoxious, immoral and rude, and so it’s hard for me to believe that the only place in the Bible where Jesus is bested in a debate, is by someone like this.

This Sunday’s gospel reading, about Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician woman drips with irony. Jesus has just finished cutting the Judean Elite down to size for their judgmentalism regarding hand washing. And here Jesus is, allowing the exact same rules to keep him from helping a woman with a legitimate need – the healing of her daughter. Sure, she’s a Gentile, some say a hooker, who has violated all sorts of taboos like being out alone, talking to a man and talking back to a man. And Jesus seems well aware of this, ‘Let the children be fed first,’ he says, surely not expecting any back talk. But here it comes; ‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’ It is a retort that sends Jesus, backpedaling; ‘Go- the demon has left your daughter.’

Grit, determination, courage, willpower, fortitude. The Gospel writer is willing to paint Jesus in a bad light so that a greater point can be made: dogged determination goes a long way. Many of us are sitting around, wallowing in self-pity and inertia, and need to wake up to the importance of getting up and doing what we’ve been called to do. We need to drop the apathy, lethargy and indifference and find out what’s really burning inside – what do we really want out of life? And perhaps more importantly, what does life want out of us?

The poverty that plagues the majority of the world, the stupid disease that kills thousands of children every day – were the body of Christ to harbor a prostitute’s desperation toward the suffering of the world, there is probably no social ill we could not conquer. Jesus did not come to save individual souls, but to save the world. What role is Jesus calling us to play in this divine plan?

Reading:
The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It – Paul Collier
The Limits of Power – Andrew Bacevich
Mere Christianity – CS Lewis

When Michigan drivers head up north on I-75 and see that flashing yellow merge arrow, most everyone moves over and forms a single file line. This, even though traffic engineers have determined that if everyone stayed put and gently merged at the point of obstruction the time it would take to pass could be drastically reduced. Sure, engineers have tried, with huge signs, 'Merge AT THE ARROW' but Michigan drivers, in fact, American drivers, are much more swayed by their ingrained sensibilities to form a cue as quickly as possible (and coerce others to do this as well) even if there is no traffic law governing this. It is clear that the rules that govern merging traffic on our freeways have less to do with the most efficient way of getting us from Point A to Point B, and much more to do with upholding shared societal rules of right behavior.

And this is what puts you and me in the same boat with our friends the Pharisees in Sunday's gospel reading.

This is where we hear the most important of St. Mark's 'purity' texts, as Jesus goes head to head with the Jewish elite regarding food purity. He and the disciples have just ordered a meal at McDonald's, forgotten to wash their hands and say the blessing, when they get called out as ungodly people because they don't obey, 'the traditions of the elders.'

For their part, these Pharisees understood these traditions not as an attempt to bury the commands of God in trivia, but to apply the torah to every facet of life. They were as well-intentioned as every Michigan driver that gets over as soon as the flashing merger arrow appears. And they were as judgmental as those drivers who always play cop and block other drivers from using the open lane. And they found, as we do, that sometimes our dogged determination to follow all the rules has us missing out on what those rules were established to do: make our lives more fulfilling, spread love and compassion on the earth, and ultimately bring us closer to God.

This exchange reminds us that Jesus came to announce the end of religion (humanity's attempt to find God) and the arrival of love (God's attempt to find us). And loves means reserving judgment, walking in humility and being very long on compassion, which is in stark contrast to what rule-making can do to us. In what ways do we put rule and ritual before basic love for ourselves and others?

Reading:
The Four Hour Work Week -Timothy Ferriss
The Art of Being Together - Francis Wade
A Passion for the Possible - Wm Sloane Coffin

For the few who have asked and the little one who might one day inquire, here is a brief account of that most joyous of August days on which James Christopher, still tucked safely inside mother's womb, decided it was time for a jail break.

After a restless night with a restless belly, mom awakened dad and they headed to the hospital where the doctor declared that six days past 40 weeks was long enough. In short order mom was hooked up to an IV that ensured an imminent delivery, surely by the evening of this feast day of Jeremy Taylor, a 17th century English theologian, intellectual and writer whose best-known work is entitled 'Holy Living, Holy Dying,' which not inappropriately would describe mom's impending experience.

Mom and dad spent this warm day in Room 17, a sun-drenched space, complete with a veteran nurse named Pattie. We were soon joined by a man with a very long needle named Dr. Mansfield whose meticulous aim and precise prescription momentarily speared away the Legion that had been tormenting mom's tummy. Outside our window, Woodward Avenue weighed heavy with one million vintage cars, drivers, spectators, noisemakers and lookie-loos on Detroit's annual 'Dream Cruise' weekend. A few miles down the road, between Six and Seven Mile, the stretch outside our neighborhood, the mayor unveiled some nifty spray paint on the roadway: 'M-1' markers to signify this day as the 100 year anniversary of the first paved road in the world.

Meanwhile we were paving the way for another anniversary. By the dinner hour we were ready to begin the hardest part of getting a little boy into a big world. Our new nurse, Carrie, cheered with all the gusto of a Big-Ten cheerleader as Room 17 swelled to capacity. Dr. Stephen Dean calmly instructed his team, mom focused with determination on the job before her, and dad stood faithfully by, his head swirling with all the emotion of a wedding day.

At 6:52 p.m. the tender cries of a new life had everyone reaching for something; towels, scissors, sutures, note pads, ink pads, cameras and hankies. Eyebrows raised as we wondered just how random our ipod's shuffle really was as Handel's verse announced: 'For unto us a child is born.' Soon the swaddled and swollen one was passed to dad to show mom, baby's eyes searching to match unfamiliar faces with very familiar voices. His ice-cream complexion brought both tears and smiles as the nurse rendered the medical verdict: he's perfect, which we, of course, did not need anyone with any medical training to tell us.

In France we might share a Baquette.
In Israel a bagel or Matzo.
In the Philippines, Pandesal.
Germany, Pumpernickle.
Morocco, Pita.
Italy, Ciabatta or Foccacia.
Soda bread in Ireland, Challah in Damascus, before heading back to the States for Sourdough in San Fran, egg bread in Alabama, or the Midwest’s very own Wonder Bread.

Slice it, toast it, break it or butter it, with anything from margarine to mayonnaise to Marmite (God help us…). Bread was, is, and will always be the literal and metaphorical life-sustainer, the most essential form of nourishment the world knows.

For those with gluten allergies we’re not being literal.
For those on low-carb diets: same thing.
And lest anyone think Jesus had morphed into a giant poppy seed bagel as he delivered these words in John, Chapter 6, you and I are forced to ponder just what he had in mind when he continued to call himself ‘living bread.’

Jesus… the central sustainer and life-giver of our lives.
If this is what we’re meant to live on, then what are we doing with all that other stuff in the cupboard? Why do we feed so regularly off of fickle desires, self-centered appetites and the opinions of others? Sure, that stuff always looks good – scientists say give a chimp the choice between a banana and a Twinkie and he’ll choose the junk food every time.

Jesus is continually asking us what we are feeding on. Are we trusting in our business acumen, market metrics, or a generally favorable gene pool? Whose expectations are we trying to meet? What does it mean to us to put aside everything else and feast on Him?

Reading…
Life Together – Francis Wade
Religious Literacy –Stephen Prothero
The Year of Living Biblically - AJ Jacobs

In the Hebrew Scriptures the prophet Nathan tells the philandering King David this extraordinary tale we all know so well as it has become enshrined in Western literature as the consummate ‘Gotcha’ story-
The ending of ‘The Sting,’ the middle of ‘The Crying Game,’ have nothing on this 3,000 year old tale which eloquently and elegantly takes a turn -and stops the King in his tracks, laying his motives and actions as bare as Bathesheba’s shapely bum.

“Can’t you see what we all see?” Nathan seems to be saying-
What you are doing is so obviously wrong. It is sin and sin is a rebellion against God. But it is also a rebellion against us, the people you’ve been chosen to serve - and ultimately it is a rebellion against yourself.

When you sin, Nathan seems to be pointing out, you are betraying your own self-hood by taking part in this sin that is original to the world. And it is this: the insistence on being what you are not, a desire for a life other than your own.

The Shepherd boy, David, was chosen by God to fearlessly lead and unite the 12 tribes of Israel. Yet once he was anointed King, given the security code to the palace, the cars, bodyguards and expense accounts, he began to fancy himself not in the tradition of an obedient Abraham, hopeful Joseph, or faithful Jacob-
But as Hugh Hefner-
-making a mockery of his people and his reputation as he longed to live a life that was not his own.
‘Be our King!’ – was the strong and united call of Israel-
God said no, then yes, all the while knowing it was a hard job to fill, and God did the best that could be done-
However David decided he wanted to be somebody else.

In what ways do we try to be somebody else?
How do we use the resources we've been given toward selfish ends?
How much energy and how many resources do we spend doing this?
How might we more fully concentrate on who we are, who we're called to be and what we're called to do?

Reading:
Choice, Desire, and the Will of God - David Runcorn
An Altar in the World - Barbara Brown Taylor
Cheese - Max McCalman

Chris Yaw

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