Generosity

Galatians 6:7-10

⁷ Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. ⁸ For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.

I hope these words don’t come as a surprise to you.  It’s actually evident all around us.  The people most susceptible to scams are those who are most greedy.  When I hear of people losing hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of dollars to scams I often wonder how they made all that money to start with?   Seriously, you thought that if you sent $2000 to a complete stranger, they would give you $1.3 million in gold?

You reap what you sow!

I remember one time preaching on tithing and being tempted to pray that God would:

1.    take what each person had given the previous year

2.    multiply it by 10 and

3.    make that their income for the next year…

That is, rather than us giving God 10% of what “we have earned” God would return to  us 10Xs what we had given.

That’s actually the reap/sow picture… 

When you plant an apple seed, you don’t get a tree that produces one apple and then dies.  If it’s healthy you will get an abundance of apples every season…  if every conola or grain of wheat only reproduced itself farmers would go bankrupt and we would starve…

Seeds that are planted multiply…

Not only do you reap what you sow… you reap an abundance of what you have sown!

Based on what you have sowed in the last year or two, what do you expect to reap?

…just sayin’

Love Your Enemies

Death is like a... (Part II)

In Part 1 I suggested that death is more like a curtain than a cave.  That it is passage as opposed to a place.  I suggested that maybe our fears are rooted in the fact that we cannot see what lies beyond.

But I think there’s more…

I think in our hearts we sense that what lies on the other side is somehow more important… more real than what we now call “real”.   I wonder if in our hearts we suspect we are only dreaming and that death is a waking up into something more true, more powerful, more pure than what we are presently experiencing.

What if all our attempts at religion are rooted in this one, almost universal thought that, somehow what we do in the “hear-and-now” is impacting the hereafter.  What if there is an eternity and the way I treated my spouse and my kids and my 3^rd grade teacher impacts what’s behind the curtain?  What if the light I face on the other side is the end of the proverbial tunnel …or an oncoming bullet train and which one is determined not by the roll of a dice but by the choices and actions I am engaging in right now?

…maybe it’s good to be scared…

But there is a writer in the Bible named Paul the Apostle who seems to mock death… 

“Death,” he writes, “where is your victory?  Where is your sting?” 

What made death “sting” - according to Paul - what made death so frightening was the fact that death puts us face-to-face with the God we’ve spent a lifetime rejecting.  The sting of death - again according to Paul -  is the fear of the judgement of God 

…then he writes two words which I so desperately love in scripture, “But God!”

“But thanks be to God who has given us victory through the gracious work of the Lord Jesus Christ!”  Because of Christ’s forgiveness made available through His work on the cross we no longer have to fear death!   Death is no more than a wasp without a stinger for those who have been set free from sin!  For us, death brings not judgement but grace. 

Curtain, doorway, gateway… death is nothing more than the passageway into eternity.  A doorway that Christ passed through and then walked back out! 

This is why in His letter to Philippian believers, as the apostle Paul contemplates death, he could write – If I live, I live faithful to Christ.. if I die, I gain!  If I had to choose laying down my life for the faith, or going on in service, that would be a tough decision.  You see, I long to be with Jesus… but there is so much work for me still to do.

For those who fear death… call on Jesus…

For those who are called by His name… there is work to do…

…just sayin’…

Death is like a ... (Part I)

It is a remembrance, unique I think, among the religions of the world. 

Good Friday.

You can’t really monetize it.  Nobody is getting rich selling Good Friday greeting cards.  I don’t recall getting any gifts or ever hearing, “Happy Good Friday!” cheerily called out by neighbours.

The Creator dies for His creation…  at the hands of His creations.. .  Who then, eventually, commemorate this event annually.

We get the whole resurrection celebration thing – but death…

Death terrifies us…

It’s a Killer…

Death…

So final…

So cold…

So inexorable... 

It’s a common fear… death.  I think we fear it because we are unable to control it.  I think we fear it because if death is a cave, we don’t know what it holds. 

…but what if it is not a cave?

…what if death doesn’t hold anything?

…what if death is nothing more than a curtain… a veil? 

Of course this doesn’t deal with the source of our fears – we still don’t know what is behind the veil.  Our fears are rooted in the unknown.  Cave or curtain we fear drawing near because it hides what’s inside… or on the other side.

We fear because we still don’t know how to control it… 

Of course, maybe there is good reason to fear death… cave or curtain…

…just sayin…

(Part 1 of 2)