It's all about the numbers...

If you would like to read my reflection for today's scripture reading, please scroll down to Wednesday, October 17th. I wrote about Numbers way back then, when I was all confused. The book of Numbers gets its name from all of the census taking and number counting of the different tribes of God. Since it's Halloween, I was thinking back to when I was a kid, and for some weird reason, we used to count how many trick-or-treaters we would have each year. We would get excited when the numbers were up, puzzled when the numbers were down. Eventually, the numbers went way down, to almost nothing. I think new alternatives to going door to door started up to make things safer for kids. For instance, Zoo Boo. I went for the first time this year and it was great fun to see kids dressed up in all sorts of fun costumes! My first year of owning a home, I moved in on Halloween. I was so excited to have trick-or-treaters come to my very own home, that I went out and bought a bunch of candy, and I only had two people come to my door dressed up - my mom and my sister. No kids. Not much trick-or-treating in my neighborhood. The book of Numbers for my home wouldn't take very long to write, and the counting would be easy. One, two, the end.
What is it about numbers? Why do we count - people, money, worship attenders, trick-or-treaters, members of our family? Perhaps because all of the numbers we count represent stories that have meaning for us. 150 trick-or-treaters represent the story of the year we ran out of candy, it represents the cats, ghosts, supermans, and smurfs that stopped by the house on one night. Counting family numbers tells the story of generations, of who we come from, which is always a part of who we are.
Happy Halloween, and happy number counting/reading over the course of the rest of this week in Numbers~
-Melanie

a tip about blogging

Help! I want to contribute but i'm not sure how!

These are the cries of our people! These may be the cries of you who are reading along with this blog today! You are full of profound and insightful thoughts and long to share them with our online community but you just don't know how to do it! I am here to give you a step by step guide! :)

Step one. read the entry by Melanie or Kelly and ogle at their brilliance! :)

Step two. Below each entry is a place that currently says "0 comments." You'll notice if you move your mouse over that spot on the page it will turn colors and signal a link to another page. Click on that "0 comments" (it may say any # and then comments if people begin to share their thoughts) which will take you to a new page.

Step Three. you don't need to register for anything. Simply type your thoughts in the comments box in the upper right hand part of your screen. Then you will notice a bolded group of words claiming: "Comment moderation has been enabled. All comments must be approved by the blog author." This means that Melanie approves all posts before you will see them, so once you are done, you won't be able to see your comment immediately!

Step four. You will be asked for a word verification. Just type the letters that you see in the box below the letters.

Step five. Finally you will be given an opportunity to "Sign in" as an official blogger. This is where you do not need to register for anything. simply choose the "other" option which will give you a chance to put your name in there if you'd like. Or choose "anonymous" and we will not know who you are.

Tada!! That's it! Now you too can blog with us. We'd love your comments and thoughts. It's nice to know you're out there reading along! Happy blogging!

-Kelly

Prepare the way...

of the Lord, Prepare the way of the Lord, and all people will see the salvation of our God.

I have the simple tune we sing during Advent to these words running through my head. I wish there was a way that I could easily put the tune in this blog! I love these words, as they are hopeful and filled with anticipation for something new and exciting to come from God. Filled valleys, flattened hills, crooked made straight, rough made smooth. Something new is going to happen! No matter what has happened, or what is happening now, there is anticipation for the restorative work that God is going to do. What restorative work do you see God doing in your life?

-Melanie

Isaiah this week!

Oh, if it were so, that the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard with the kid, calf and lion, cow and bear, lion and child! What hope! I find that when our current story, or current life is filled with overwhelming challenges, what gets us through are hopeful visions of what the future might hold. A future different from the present. So after the doom and gloom of being conquered, a future vision of wolf living with lamb would have been a vision the people could cling to, to get them through a difficult time.

I cling to this sense of hope for the future. Especially as I listen to the news, think about the many people dying from disease and poverty, the talks about Iran and anything nuclear. It can be overwhelming. So my hope comes from the new heaven and new earth that will come about in the kingdom of heaven. Sometimes our hope has to lie outside of our current life and reality, and in a reality beyond this life.

-Melanie

Wait and watch

So like a lot of what Jesus says - you read it and go - hmmmm......
What exactly does that mean? We will be looking at Jesus as prophet tomorrow night in worship, and some of what is written in Mark 13 connects with that. Jesus tells his followers not to worry when put on trial before national leaders - the Holy Spirit will give them the right words. The definition of a prophet was someone who had a word from God. He seems to say there will continue to be prophetic voices into the future. But he also warns that just as there were true and false prophets in the past, there would continue to be true and false prophets in the future. It's nice to know when we don't feel we have the right words to say, that the Spirit will have them for us. (at least as a preacher, it's a comforting though!) So what do you make of these words attributed to Jesus in Mark 13?
-Melanie

I'm So Sorry!!!

So here I am, the person who put the whole order together for the weeks we would study each book of the Bible, and then I didn't even read it this week. I just jumped right into Numbers, which isn't something to get very excited about jumping into, when all along I had scheduled for us to be reading Mark, book 41. Whether you are reading Numbers or Mark, I hope that you are finding the readings insightful, and that I haven't brought too much confusion to this whole thing! I initially chose Mark for this week, since we just started our series on Jesus as rabbi, prophet, healer, and savior. So please, do spend time reading through Mark. Matthew is ordered first in the New Testament, but Mark was written first. So Mark is the first written gospel account of the life and times of Jesus! You will notice it's much shorter than Matthew, Luke, and John. I consider it like this: the writer of Mark just wanted to get the basic gist of the story down, then other writers were able to expand and embellish once the primary story had been put into writing. I hope you enjoy, and again, I'm sorry for the confusing reflections on Caleb. You won't find Caleb mentioned at all in Mark, just Numbers :)
Melanie

Prayer

This is an interesting subject in the Western culture. I have been to third world/developing countries and seen what life is like when you actually feel a "need" for God to get you through each day. Prayer is a powerful thing! Prayer, in those places, is what gets people through their hard, agonizing and sometimes terrifying days. And in the end, God is given all credit for answering prayers from daily bread to healing.

Then there is the Western culture. We have somehow replaced prayer with pills, food, doctors, stuff, mortgages we can't afford, a two car garage with 2.5 children a dog and a white picket fence. Who needs prayer? We have all the "daily bread" we need and much, much more! So we find ourselves in a culture that feels disconnected from God. We live as though God is just an ornament we can wear around our necks in the form of a cross. Our ticket into church each week.

So, which culture is the richer one? From my experience living in this culture and realizing how infrequent and inconsistent my prayer life can be and is, but also from spending many weeks in other cultures that are not as "blessed" with stuff as the US, I would quickly respond that our's is the poorer culture by far! We have found our needs met in the world...which is exactly what Jesus warns us against. Harder for the rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to get through the eye of a needle??? I would contend that all of us (at least if we are reading this blog) are the rich man in that scenario. We fill our lives with so many things that we just try to fit God in when there is time. We work and play and pay bills and do so many things that we have to make an effort to have time for our faith! Crazy!

Prayer is the foundation of our relationship with God. That's right, relationship. We were not created to just believe in a distant, far-fetched Creator, cosmic God. We were made to be close and personal with a Savior! How close would you be to your husband or wife, best friend or sibling if you actually never had conversation with them. Would your relationship be authentic if you only talked highly of them to all the people you met, but never actually talked TO them? Of course not. Yet, so many of us...me included, try to have that sort of experience with God. We talk highly of him, even come to church in our fancy clothes and sing with the choir, but in the end of the day, we may not have ever stopped to pray and actually talk with God. So the question arises...how do we change?

Any suggestions?

-kelly