Monthly Archives: March 2015

Unknown's avatar

“Be Still My Soul”

by

Lake“O LORD, I am not proud; I have no haughty looks. I do not occupy myself with great matters, or with things that are too hard for me. But I still my soul and make it quiet, like a child upon its mother’s breast; my soul is quieted within me.” —Psalm 131:1-3

Many among us engage in a kind of “activist spirituality” which is big on moving and shaking, planning and doing, and making things happen. And much that is good comes out of this style, but in time it can leave the constant doer a bit threadbare around the edges of the soul.

Today’s passage is a humble little one I have never really noticed before. I love that about Scripture, when new gems previously overlooked shine for us.

This one seems the perfect antidote to the dangers of an “activist spirituality.” The Psalmist approaches God humbly, with no claims or complaints, asking for nothing except a still and quiet soul “like a child upon its mother’s breast.”

There is a time to move and shake, a time to plan and do. But there are also times in our faith journey when it is important to wait quietly and let God still our tattered souls, refreshing us for whatever comes next.

Prayer: O God, amid our busy lives grant us some Sabbath moments when we ask for nothing but You to quiet and still our souls, in Jesus’ name.

((This my Daily Devotional for today in Re-Lent, the 2015 Lent Devotional from the UCC STILLSPEAKING Writer’s Group)

(Photo: R. L. Floyd. Rocky Mountain National Park, 2010)

Unknown's avatar

What I Love about the Gospel of Luke

by

St LukeFor our Lenten adult study we have been looking at each of the four Gospels and Brent (our pastor) has asked me to share briefly with you what I love about the Gospel of Luke.

Each of the Gospels has features about it I love. Like many Christians my idea of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a mixed-upped conflation in my mind of all four Gospels.

When I started studying the Bible as a young man I began noticing how each Gospel tells the story in a somewhat different way, and something about that bothered me. I wondered, “Where they differ what is the truth of the story?”

One of my teachers helped me with this by having me imagine a beloved mother with four children, and upon her death each child wrote a remembrance of her. Each child’s remembrance of their mother would be different, but they would all be true.

Another helpful analogy I heard was that the Gospel is like a diamond, when you turn the diamond the light catches different facets of the precious stone. Each of the four Gospels is a different facet of the one Gospel of Jesus Christ.

It was in the Christmas story where I first noticed the differences in the several Gospels. Mark and John say nothing about the birth of Jesus. Only in Matthew do we hear about the visit of the Magi, their meeting with Herod and his slaughter of the innocents, and Mary and Joseph’s flight to Egypt.

But it is especially Luke we think of most often at Christmas time. Only Luke has the annunciations to Elizabeth and Mary, Mary’s Magnificat, and only in Luke do we have the choir of angels addressing the shepherds.

And so these early chapters of Luke might be a good place for me to start to tell you what I especially love about Luke. Continue reading →

Unknown's avatar

“Just as I am”

by

ABBY“Our iniquities you have set before you, and our secret sins in the light of your countenance.” —Psalm 90: 8.

Having the light of God’s countenance shine on us sounds like a good thing, but today’s passage has the unsettling implication that we have no secrets from God.

Who among us can feel entirely comfortable with that kind of scrutiny? Is God really like a Santa Claus character who “sees you when you’re sleeping” or a prying parent who stalks your Facebook page?

The Scriptures again and again refer to God’s closeness and intimacy with our lives. Psalm 137 asks rhetorically, “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?”

I don’t know about you but I do a bit of hypocritical compartmentalization in my spiritual life. I want God to be close, but I don’t want God to see the less pleasant aspects of my life, what the Psalmist calls “secret sins” (and some are not so secret.)

I once saw a prayer that said, “O God, help me to be the person my dog thinks I am.”

But the good news is that God doesn’t love just our idealized selves, the dog’s view of us, or our well-crafted on-line persona. God loves us just as we are, and loves us too much to let us stay that way.

Prayer: You have searched me and known me, O God. Let your unconditional love change me into the person you want me to be.

(This my Daily Devotional for today in Re-Lent, the 2015 Lent Devotional from the UCC STILLSPEAKING  Writer’s Group)

Unknown's avatar

“The Message of the Cross” A Sermon on 1 Corinthians 1:23-25

by

Iona crossA minister friend and mentor of mine, Herb Davis, once told me that every preacher has only one sermon in him, or her. According to Herb, every Sunday the preacher serves up that one sermon in a variety of ways. It may look like a different sermon, but at the heart of it, there’s just the one!

When I was growing up my family always had some sort of a roast at Sunday dinner, which was usually served in the middle of the day after we came home from church. Then the remains of that roast would reappear in various guises throughout the week. For example, let’s say it was a pork roast. The roast might reappear on Monday night in a soup, and on Tuesday night as my Dad’s signature roast pork chop suey and so on. So is that really the way it is? Do the people of God get fed leftovers every Sunday?

I hope not. I think what Herb was saying is that every preacher’s one basic sermon provides the core convictions out of which that preacher delivers the Gospel. And if Herb is right about the one-sermon theory, than I suppose today’s epistle lesson would have to be the text for my one sermon. Let’s hear it again: Paul writes, “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger that human strength.” (I Corinthians 1: 23-25)

This is what Paul calls the message of the cross. Paul believed that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah and that God raised him from the dead. The cross on which Jesus had died became for him the symbol of that Good News of God’s vast unconditional love for all humankind. Paul believed that in Christ’s dying and rising two important new things had occurred. First, there was now a new age of God’ activity, and, secondly, there was now a new community, the church, made up of both Jews and Gentiles. Continue reading →

Unknown's avatar

“Cymru am byth!” A Blessed St. David’s Day to You!

by

Wales

Today is St. David’s Day.

So who was St. David? He was a sixth century bishop who became the patron saint of Wales.

My surname, Floyd, is Welsh. My dad always told me his people way back came from Wales.

Along the way I discovered that Floyd is the same name as Lloyd, which is a variation of the Welsh word llwyd or clwyd, which means “grey.”

The double-L represents, and I quote: “the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative of Welsh,” and was sometimes also represented as fl, yielding the name Floyd. It is not a sound you can make in English. It sounds something like a soft cough or gently clearing your throat.

When we first lived in the UK we saw many signs on offices for people named Cloyd, which was yet another attempt to capture the strange Welsh sound of the name.

So I am related in some way to all you Lloyds and Cloyds and Floyds.

I wish all of you in the tribe (and everybody else) a very blessed St. David’s Day. And I share with you one of St. David’s graceful admonitions:

“Be joyful, and keep your faith and your creed. Do the little things that you have seen me do and heard about. I will walk the path that our fathers have trod before us.”

In 1989 we visited the charming cathedral named for him in St. David’s, Pembrokeshire, UK.

Typically cathedrals were built on a hill so that their architectural  glory could shine upon the surrounding countryside.

Not so for St. David’s Cathedral. Rather, it was built in a hollow near the sea so the Vikings couldn’t see its spire from their ships.

It is worth a trip.