First Presbyterian Church of Salida

Make Life Holy

Staff — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:57:17 +0000

The gift of this day announces itself without fanfare; I simply arise to a new morning and its promise. I can, if I choose, touch something deeper than the continuing, outward movement of events. I can move past the ups and downs, the details. Clarissa Estes observes that the ego screams at us to fix things, to straighten out the untidy scraps of life that are in disarray. But the soul has a different perspective. It challenges us to make life holy.

(from Love That Beckons: Lenten Reflections by Paula D’Arcy)

Lend Your Voice to Life

Staff — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:05:51 +0000

Catherine of Siena admonishes us to speak with a million voices because silence kills. Lend your voice to life, she is saying: Grant life with the life you’ve been given. Jesus said, “I came that they may have life . . . (John 10:10). The words are a call to rise up with exuberance and know life fully.

(from Love That Beckons: Lenten Reflections by Paula D’Arcy)

Revealed as Love

Staff — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 21:45:19 +0000

When you pray, you open yourself to the influence of the Power which has revealed itself as Love. The Power which has revealed itself as Love, gives you freedom and independence. Once touched by this Power, which has revealed itself as Love, you are no longer swayed back and forth by the countless opinions, ideas and feelings which flow through you. You have found a center for your life that gives you a creative distance so that everything you see, hear and feel can be tested against the source. Christ is the man who in the most revealing way made clear that prayer means sharing in the power of God which has revealed itself as Love.

(from The Lord is New: Advent Devotions “With Open Hands”)

Prayer is Not a Last Resort

Staff — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 18:52:48 +0000

Prayer requires that we stand in God’s presence with open hands, naked and vulnerable, proclaiming to ourselves and to others that without God we can do nothing. This is difficult in a climate where the predominant counsel is “Do your best and God will do the rest.” When life is divided into “our best’ and “God’s rest,” we have turned prayer into a last resort to be used only when all our resources are depleted. Discipleship does not mean to use God when we can no longer function ourselves. On the contrary, it means to recognize that we can do nothing at all, but that God can do everything through us. As disciples, we find not some but all of our strength, hope, courage, and confidence in God. Therefore, prayer must be our first concern.

(from The Lord is New: Advent Devotions from the works of Henri Nouwer)

The House of God

Staff — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 20:32:00 +0000

As prayer leads us into the house of God and God’s people, so action leads us back into the world to work there for reconciliation, unity and peace. Once we have come to know the truth we want to act truthfully and reveal to the world its true nature. All Christian action – whether it is visiting the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, or working for a more just and peaceful society – is a manifestation of the human solidarity revealed to us in the house of God. It is not an anxious human effort to create a better world. It is a confident expression of the truth that in Christ, death, evil and destruction have been overcome. It is not a fearful attempt to restore a broken order. It is a joyful assertion that in Christ all order has already been restored. It is not a nervous effort to bring divided people together, but a celebration of an already established unity. This action is not activism. An activist wants to heal, restore, redeem and re-create, but those acting within the house of God point through their action to the healing, restoring, redeeming, and re-creating presence of God.

(from The Lord is New: Advent Devotions from the works of Henri Nouwer

What is Left Behind?

Staff — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 18:25:05 +0000

Many who would not claim the Christian faith, very often find themselves looking at Jesus with great admiration. One of the more thoughtful comments I have read by someone who didn’t call himself a Christian was from H.G. Wells. He wrote: “1900 years later, a historian like myself, who doesn’t even call himself a Christian, finds the picture centering irresistibly around the life and character of this most significant man. This historian’s test of an individual’s greatness is, ‘What did he leave (behind) to grow?’ Did he start men to thinking along fresh lines with a vigor that persisted after him? By this test Jesus stand first (in my mind).”

(by H.G. Wells)

Bring Back Our Troops

Staff — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 18:37:04 +0000

“If we’re going to cut programs for children who need milk in the morning, if we’re going to cut programs for seniors who need a sandwich at lunch, if we’re going to cut veterans benefits, then, for God’s sake, let‘s bring back our troops from Afghanistan.”

U.S. Representative Walter B. Jones, is from a staunchly Republican district in eastern North Carolina, which is home to the Marine Corps’ Camp Lejeune. He argues for a rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Republican said his Catholic faith led him to oppose the war.

(from New York Times, June 6)

Prison Sentence for Parents

Staff — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 21:06:49 +0000

An Oregon county judge delivered a clear message to a controversial faith-healing church Mach 8^th when two parents were sent to prison for criminally negligent homicide: If you fail to properly care for your children, a similar fate may await you. Judge Steven L Maurer sentenced Marci and Jeffrey Beagley to 16 months in prison after they were convicted in December in the death of their 16-year-old son, Neil, of complications from a urinary tract blockage in 2008. Although children in the Followers of Christ Church have died of treatable medical conditions in the past, this was the first time church members have been sent to prison for failing to provide medical care. “This has to stop,” said the judge from the bench as some 80 church members and supporters attended the hearing. The church members shun doctors, believing that seeking medical help shows a lack of faith. Instead they rely on prayer, fasting, anointing with oil and the laying on of hands.

(from Christian Century, April 6, 2010)

Never Say Die

Staff — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 20:06:39 +0000

Casey Fulp dreamed of being a Green Beret but was nearly killed in a motorcycle wreck in July 2008. He had a ruptured spleen, damaged lung, torn stomach, broken bones, and brain trauma – and, as a result, was dropped from the Special Forces training program. Today he’s gearing up for a 2,176 mile hike of the Appalachian Trail to support other disabled veterans. It’s the same spirit I see in Steve Baskis, who lost his eyesight in an explosion in Iraq in 2008. Baskis went on to climb a volcano in Mexico, and last year he ran a half Ironman. These people teach by their example: There are a lot of good reasons to give up – but none trumps the reasons to raise our ambitions even higher.

(from Outside Magazine 2009, by Eric Greitens)

Free Meal

Staff — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:13:13 +0000

The challenge for the church, says Sara Miles, author of Jesus Freak, is to become a permeable body so that all kinds of people are coming in and going out. “Church is actually a place for people to experience we,” says Miles. She says she needed “to be knocked around in the great rock tumbler of the church with people I didn’t choose – because left to my own devices I’m gonna choose people like me.” One of the remarkable things about the church is that it serves a meal – communion – that you can’t buy, earn or deserve. It is just given away.

(from interview on religiondispatches.com, February 23)