Merry Christmas...

as the holidays approached, my blogging fell apart! Keep reading through the transformation journal, and I hope to be back to writing more regularly about the scripture readings soon! Advent is a very busy time in the church, and preparations for Christmas Eve services are huge! Blessings to you all during these 12 days of Christmas. Please keep the families and friends of John, Pauline, Dick and Doug in your prayers, as they grieve the loss of these people in their lives. There is a time for every season under heaven, and it's difficult when a time we equate with birth becomes a time of death as well.

Ruth

Pious people sometimes drive me nuts, because sometimes they seem fake. We don't get that impression with Boaz. His piety seems real, natural, and just a part of who he is. He didn't have to treat Ruth as anything other than a resident alien whom he was required to allow glean from his fields, along with the rest of the resident aliens in the area. Instead he takes a compassionate interest in her, having heard what she did for her mother-in-law. One good turn deserves another... it's nice when things in life follow that way.

-Melanie

Most challenging...

to me is the beginning sentence of Matthew 7. "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged." It's so easy to fall into the mindset of seeing only the logs in other peoples eyes, and thinking we have barely a splinter in our own. Of course, we don't see it this way with people we love, but think of someone you really have a bone to pick with. Then it seems more likely that we see the problems as theirs without our own role in it. I connected this teaching from chapter 7 to the chapter 13 parable of the weeds amond the wheat. The workers immediately wanted to pull up the weeds from the wheat, but the master said, hold off. The master determines the what is weed, what is wheat, when it gets pulled, and what is done with it, not the workers. This is a good reminder, as I think of the conversations I've had with people where either I or they have said, "If I was the President, I would do this..." or "If I was in charge of that program, I would do that..." and how confident we are that we'd do something much better than the actual person trying to do the work. Some days we need the mantra, "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged."

-Melanie

p.s. Safe travels tonight with this next round of snow!

Advent begins...

I'm happy to have a break from the Hebrew Scriptures to explore Matthew this week. Yesterday's scripture reading offers a description of Jesus' birth - I encourage you to compare Matthew and Lukes versions - they are both unique. Matthew's version isn't used as much, perhaps because it has rather violent undertones as Jesus' family flees to Egypt.

In Matthew chapter 5, we are ambushed with a series of lessons from Jesus that one after another, challenge the way we usually look at things, perhaps even our instinctual way of looking at things. The one most challenging to me is the last challenge he puts forth, to love our enemies. He has a point, it is easy to love those who love you. It's a lot harder to love those who are hateful, hurtful, or malicious towards you. It would be a lot easier to avoid those who don't like you. Everytime I read this, I get a knot in my stomach, because the list of people who I don't feel like loving pops up into my head, and I have to struggle with the question of how to live out this challenge from Jesus. I do try to love those who are hard to love, but my humanness makes it a continuous struggle. But we are called to struggle and keep trying.

-Melanie