I like this story. It gives me hope. Because like many people (even ‘Pastor’ people) I find that faith does not come easily. I struggle with the inconsistencies of what I believe. I listen to the arguments of those that see no need for God and often find myself agreeing with what they say. I struggle with the actions and mistakes that the church has made and will make. I struggle, not only with my own beliefs, but to recognize as genuine the beliefs of others that also claim the name Christian.

That is why this story gives me hope. Because Jacob’s struggle is very physical and very real.  It involves his whole being. This is not some early morning prayer on a beautiful mountaintop just as the sun is rising and the birds are singing. This is hands on struggling to find a way through the darkness and grappling with the unknown.

And the reason I like this story so much is that in the midst of the struggle is God. A God representation that does not seek to justify itself or explain itself or rationalize itself, but a presence that gets hold of Jacob and challenges him; “Go ahead. Make my day”. A presence that will not let him pass by.

And when Jacob does walk away, he limps. He is hurting. Yet he also has a new name. Israel.  A name that indicates the striving of God. The God who will seek to bless us even as we seek to usurp His place.

So, I guess where I’m going with this is to say; “Don’t be afraid of the struggles. Believing was never meant to be a breeze.  Faith is fire. “

Prayer: “Lord, we come before You with all our doubts and struggles. In the midst of them, help us to find Your presence. We thank You that You are the God who strives to bless us. And even though our walk of faith can truly be quite lame, let us never give up our seeking after truth.  Amen.”

At the heart of the story is the love that Jacob has for Rachel. It is an experience of human love and longing that seems to transform Jacob. Instead of getting mad or getting even (as he previously seemed inclined to do in situations of conflict) Jacob is prepared to sit it out and accept that sometimes landing your dream girl took longer than you expected.

Such seems to be lesson that applies to many areas of our lives. We all have our hopes and dreams. But we are nor masters of our own destiny. We need patience. We need to accept that things may not turn out exactly as we had expected.  We need to keep trusting that God is on our case and for that reason, whatever transpires is ultimately in God’s hands!

That is never easy. Jacob learnt that lesson the hard way! Affairs of the heart have a tendency to be complicated. Circumstances can change in a heartbeat. We never quite escape our past. We can never be sure of the actions of those around us.

For our part the best we can do is trust in God, and prayerfully seek the guidance and leading of the Holy Spirit in the different situations that come our way.

Prayer: “Lord, we do not always understand Your ways! Stories from the past challenge us and invite us to rethink our attitudes. Yet Lord You blessed Jacob, and You blessed both Rachel and Leah. Help us to understand that You desire  only our best, no matter what others do to us or the mess we get ourselves into! Amen.”

One of the phrases from the story that resonates with myself is Genesis 28: 16 when Jacob ponders “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it”

Finding God in the midst of our everyday lives can take us by surprise. I know that as Christians we give lip service to grand theological phrases like ‘omnipresence’ (meaning ‘always there’) but it still throws us a curve ball when that presence is discovered in tangible ways.

As summer congregations dwindle and folks have more significant things to do with their time than attend church services, it can raise all sorts of questions in a pastor’s mind.

But then I remember, thank God, that it’s not about me.  It’s about that presence of God that often we don’t recognize. Jacob had a deep sense of awe when he awoke from his dream. God was going to bless others through his compromised life.

Remembering that ‘The Lord is in this place’ can save us from feeling our efforts are futile or insignificant. We love because Christ first loved us. We serve because Christ came to serve. We believe because God believes in us.

And though attendance may well be down during the summer months the most important focus of any worship service remains our Lord Jesus Christ, who promises that wherever even two or three gather in His name, He is going to be in the midst of it all.

Prayer: ”Lord remind us that it is never about the numbers, but all about the grace You have revealed to us in and through Jesus Christ. As Jacob dreamt of a ladder teeming with angels, help us to be aware of the unseen cloud of witnesses always surrounding our lives. May we know like Jacob that ‘Surely the Lord is in this place’. Amen.”

I admit to enjoying these Old Testament stories of family conflict and rivalry. They seem to ring so true to contemporary life and appear to be mirrored in every age. From the rivalry of Emperors’ of Rome, to the struggle of European monarchies, from Popes to Reformers, maybe even in the conflicts of Republicans and Democrats, there are those underlying structures of family and power.

And then in our own lives, as so well expressed by Paul, there are our personal struggles. The singer/songwriter Garth Brooks comments, “The greatest conflicts are not between two people but between one person and himself.”

As I read these stories I am reminded of our urgent need for the Grace of God to redeem us and for the Holy Spirit to recreate our lives. And I don’t mean just in some abstract way, but in a daily way that touches on the way we approach our routine tasks and how we speak and act with one another… in the present.

Thankfully the promises of God’s grace towards us are universal in application. Let us reach out and make them ours this week!

Prayer : “Lord, help me find my way in Your way! Amen.”

Yet, the wonder of it all is that the grace of God wins every time. This gives me some hope. I see the mess we often make of things, and realize that over and again we display a great inability to rightly discern the voice of God.

These Old Testament stories carry the simple truth that God is greater than we are.  As we face problems both at an individual and corporate level, we do well to remember that!

Prayer: ‘Lord, it is often the simple things that we fail to grasp. That we do better when we follow Your leadings. That though we mess up, You offer forgiveness and a chance to get it right through Jesus Christ. That Your Holy Spirit is there to be the strength in the midst of our weakness. Remind us often of these simple truths we pray. Amen.’

Every denomination structures itself in different ways… and even those churches that claim to be independent often form alliances with like-minded brethren (or their female equivalent) somewhere along the line. For myself one of the things I enjoy about belonging to the P.C. (USA) is that we do have a larger body, in our case the Presbytery of Long Island, that we relate to. You can find out more about the Presbytery, and the work that is done with our support, by following this link.

For myself it is great encouragement to meet with other ministers and elders from around the Presbytery and share our concerns. As we do so we often find we are facing the same struggles and problems. Our Presbytery meetings, though sometimes beset by the tedium that any governing body experiences, can also be truly inspiring. A high point can be the stories shared by those who feel newly called to ministry as they tell of their faith journey. It is fascinating to hear how the Spirit is at work!

I have to confess that the word ‘committee’ is not one that fills me with hope. Yet as I participate in the work of different Presbytery Committees I can often sense that God is guiding and leading us in unexpected ways.

Being connected is important. The Church is about more than what happens in our local congregations. It’s good to remind ourselves that we are not alone and that it’s not all about us!

Prayer: ‘Lord, we are thankful that the work of Your church goes far beyond what happens in our pew. We are aware that there are things we can accomplish together that we cannot achieve alone. We thank You for the privilege of sharing in ministry through the connections we have. Most of all we are thankful for the connection we have with You, through Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior. Amen.’

Meanwhile, getting back to that Trinity thing.  It seems to be a stumbling block for many. Claims that it was an invention of early theologians and that it isn’t in the bible abound. Other religions tend to misinterpret it. In certain passages of the Koran, the Trinity is pictured as being the Father, the mother (Mary) and their son Jesus. Such a construct is entirely lacking in the Christian Scriptures!

Whilst the phrase ‘Trinity’ nowhere appears in the Bible, the New Testament certainly does speak of God as a Father, Jesus Christ as ‘Son of God’ and the Holy Spirit as being an essential part of the nature of God. All three are spoken of in close relation to one another, and none of the three acts independent from the whole.

Analyze it too much and you end up weaving knots.  Ignore it and you seriously omit a big part of the New Testaments understanding of who God is, what Jesus was about and how the work of God continues to impact our world through the Holy Spirit.

Personally I have room for mystery. I am grateful to those theologians who dig deep and seek to explain it.  But I also notice that the New Testament authors did not the feel the need to do so. They just lived it.

Prayer: Lord, sometimes when we seek to explain everything we just muddy the waters. Help us have the kind of faith that is more about living than theorizing!  We thank You for the love shown to us in Jesus and are thankful for the way Your Spirit continues to work His ways into Your everyday world. Amen.

The Baptist Preacher Charles Spurgeon once wrote “Without the Spirit of God we can do nothing. We are as ships without wind or chariots without steeds. Like branches without sap, we are withered. Like coals without fire, we are useless. As an offering without the sacrificial flame, we are unaccepted.”

Our direction and our energy are both dependent upon the action of God’s Spirit working in, through and around our lives. Without the Holy Spirit, Christian life degenerates into a hard slog to attain unreachable ideals. Without the action of God’s Spirit inspiring us and renewing us we maintain a graceless existence.

John’s gospel describes the Holy Spirit’s work as being ‘Living Water’. Already this summer here in Long Island we are experiencing high temperatures and our weather broadcasts are issuing warnings to stay hydrated and seek the shade.

If we feel our Christian life has become dry and lifeless, maybe we need to seek a Holy Ghost refreshing! How do we do that? Through prayer. Through meditating on God’s Word. Through worship, alone and in the company of others. Through reminding ourselves that every day we live, we live in the shadow of an Almighty God whose love is for us in Jesus Christ.

Prayer: Lord, today we seek the refreshing wind of Your Holy Spirit to blow upon our lives. Remind us that our strength lies not in what we can achieve, but in what Your grace can do in us and through us. Fill us with Your Spirit this day. Amen.

My own contribution was a communion song titled ‘Table Talk’. As some folk had asked for the words, this is a suitable place to post them.

‘Lord, I can scarcely understand,
The love here shown to me
The broken bread, the red, red wine,
This sacred mystery

Lord, although my faith is weak,
It’s here my soul flies free
The broken bread, the red, red wine,
Speaking liberty

Oh Lord, my Lord, Such love shown here to me
Jesus, Jesus, Crucified yet free.

Lord, I can scarcely understand,
How death became victory
Your broken body, the red, red blood,
The Cross of Calvary

Oh Lord, my Lord, Such love shown here to me
Jesus, Jesus, Crucified yet free.

Lord, I can scarcely understand the love here shown to me.’

Following worship, in the afternoon, we were treated to a jazz concert by Matt Wilson and guests that served as a fund raiser for ‘Relay for Life’. A most musical and inspiring day!

One of the most startling aspects of Stephen’s testimony is the depth of his courage.  When hauled before the Sanhedrin to give an account of himself, he could easily have softened his message a little, so as to cause nobody any offence. Indeed, if he’d kept quiet about his faith he would never have been on trial in the first place.

There is something burning in Stephen. You can call it the fire of the Holy Spirit or describe it as passionate devotion for Jesus Christ, whom he called Lord and Savior.  However we describe it, Stephen just could not keep quiet about what had been done to Jesus Christ, who had done it and how God turned it all around and had raised Jesus to glory.

That his opponents don’t see things that way, is not so much a cause for despair on Stephen’s part, so much as it is a call to prayer. As they stone him he prays that God will forgive them.  There appears no evidence of malice or hatred in what Stephen has said, rather he just laid it out as he saw it. Stephen is executed through stoning. Barbaric, but sadly not even unknown in some parts of the world today.

What a challenge such actions lay before us! Where is our passion? Why are we not motivated to speak out in such bold terms? What if persecution such as the earliest church faced were to come our way? Would we crumble and keep quiet or would we rise up and keep faith?

Not easy questions.
No easy answers.

Prayer: Lord, the faith of the martyrs is such a deep challenge to our easy going expressions of discipleship. We are complacent and content with not making waves. We are often uncertain in our belief and hesitate to take a stand for what we do not fully comprehend.  Forgive us. But also renew us. Increase our vision. Deepen our desire. ‘Grant us courage for the living of these days’! Amen.