My thoughts (Brent Walsh):

If you grew up in Sunday School, you’re surely familiar with the story of Samuel who mistook the voice of God for the voice of Eli, the high priest with whom he lived. After some initial confusion, Samuel acknowledged the voice of the Lord.

This is where the familiar lesson I heard as a child ends. But if we read on, we will see “the rest of the story.” We see the words of the Lord as he vows to punish the house of Eli for the blasphemy of his sons. They would all die before they had a chance to reach old age! Samuel lies in bed all night, and I can imagine him tossing and turning with this burdensome news. He was afraid to tell Eli what God had said. But in the morning Eli insists that Samuel tell him everything.

Imagine how much courage it must have taken for Samuel to be honest about what the Lord had said! Samuel probably loved Eli and his family, since Eli was the closest thing to a father as it appears he had. Wouldn’t he have wanted to spare the old man the bad news? Wouldn’t he at least have wanted to soften the blow by omitting some of the details? But the text says that Samuel “told him everything and hid nothing from him.”

So many times we find ourselves tempted to hide the truth from someone we care about. Maybe we fear that our loved one will think that we are wishing ill upon them. Maybe we fear that the honest truth will tip poor granny into the grave, considering her heart condition and all. Or maybe we hope that if we say nothing, nothing will happen.

But if we look to Samuel as our example, we see that speaking the truth brings about trustworthiness in the eyes of God and our community. If we speak words of honor, God will honor our words.

Thought for the day: What honest, honorable words — even those that are difficult — do I need to speak?

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the guidelines on the How to Pray page.

A message from Pastor Jeff for those who live far from our Church

My thoughts (Brent Walsh):

In my fifteen years as a truck driver, I have seen many a bug-filled windshield! I’m usually meticulous about cleaning the windows. It annoys me to have to peer through bug splatter and road grime to try to see the highway! After a few years of struggling, I finally learned a little trick about how to clean a windshield quickly and easily. If you use dish soap as the washing medium on your squeegee, your windows will be bug-free, grime-free, and streak-free! It works great! (Try to make sure you do this when you have someone in the car you want to impress. Your date will marvel at your genius!)

Most of my experience with washing windows has been in the early morning hours after a long night on the road. When driving at night, it’s surprising how little you notice on the windshield. You may notice a few bugs, but the darkness does a great job of making a dirty windshield appear to be relatively clean.

When the sun starts coming up, though, your windshield is saturated with light and it looks horrible! You see where the windshield wipers tried to wipe away the grime, but only smeared it more! What happened? It’s not like it didn’t exist before — it’s just that now everything is revealed in the light of the sunrise.

I was talking to my friend Doody at church one day about this very subject. She pointed out that this is the same thing that happens to us. Before we knew Jesus, we might not have worried too much about all the shady dealings we engaged in. We might have justified our lying and cheating and manipulation because everyone around us was doing the same thing. When we live in darkness, everything looks pretty clean. We are good people, after all, compared to those scoundrels we hang out with!

But when Jesus comes in and the Son starts to rise, the grime in our souls and the crud in our hearts look dirtier and dirtier until we can hardly see through it! We can see where the wipers of justification tried to clean everything, but it’s all too clear now that nothing was cleaned at all — everything just got distorted. Now we look at things differently and we wonder how we ever got along in life that way!

Thought for the day: When the windshield on your car starts looking like a bug cemetery, take a moment to reflect on how our lives looked before the Son came up and how much clearer we can see now that Jesus has used some heavy-duty dish soap to wash us clean!

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the guidelines on the How to Pray page.

Today’s scripture: Ecclesiasticus 6:14-17 (NRSV) What might God be saying to me?

My thoughts (Brent Walsh):

Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter: whoever finds one has found a treasure.

There have been times in the past when I’ve been single and “looking” and some well-intentioned person would ask, “So, what do you look for in a girl?” With a dreamy look in my eye, I would run down my list of qualities I would want in a potential life partner. Things like kindness, loyalty, trustworthiness, faithfulness, communication, and honesty would top the list followed by the more shallow but still important attributes. Creating a list like this is a well-known technique for finding your “perfect match.”

Have you ever made a list of desirable qualities like this when buying a car? Looking for a new career? Making wedding plans? Choosing a travel destination? What about when evaluating a friendship?

Now, I know you might be thinking — sometimes friendships just form out of nowhere, and sometimes with people you might never have expected to become friends with. But they don’t have to begin with chance encounters. I think we can increase our odds of finding faithful friends if we begin by looking in the right places.

Kindness, loyalty, and honesty are a starting point in my own friendship compatibility list. So where do I find folks like that? Though you can certainly find people with those qualities in volunteer groups, community organizations, and other worthwhile places — maybe even at work or just down the street — I think the most natural place to look would be at church. People who share my faith, which is so central to me and is the basis for the kindness, loyalty, and honesty I seek, would be the first I’d try to connect with.

And that’s not easy. I have to be willing to put out the same honesty, loyalty, and kindness that I hope to find.

At Jesus MCC (and I hope in your church, too, if you’re not in central Indiana) there are all kinds of groups — ministry teams, Oasis, classes — that give us places to find this kind of connection, to offer acceptance and kindness to others as we receive it back.

Thought for the day: Where will you find those connections that will sustain you — and allow you to help and encourage others?

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the guidelines on the How to Pray page.

Today’s scripture: Luke 14:25-27 (NRSV) (KJV) (The Message) What might God be saying to me?

My thoughts (Brent Walsh):

When I was a child, I idolized my father. He was the pastor of a small church in central Illinois and he could do no wrong in my eyes. I would sit in the pew and watch his every move, telling animated stories to illustrate his sermon points. I would imagine myself up there making the same motions and expressions. Surely the crowd would love me just the same as they loved him and laugh at all my clever quips. They would surely wipe tears from their eyes when my inspirational stories touched their souls. My dad was perfect! I wanted to be just like him!

As I grew older, I shifted my focus from my father to my Savior. I studied Jesus’ work on earth and decided that I wanted to be just like him. I paid attention to the teachings of Jesus and strove for a better understanding of what it means to follow Christ. I knew it was more than just reading about Jesus. It was a daily choice to follow his example and do what’s right, focusing less on the temporary and more on the eternal.

When The Passion of the Christ came into theatres, I went with a church group to see it. I left the theatre depressed and on edge. I was a hard movie to watch.

Yet over the next few weeks, I allowed those difficult feelings to turn toward introspection. In all my striving to be like Christ, I had spent more time thinking about his public ministry in the spotlight than on the reason he came in the first place — to offer himself for the sins of the world. I have to admit it was hard to think of him treated so badly in his final days on earth. I do realize that being like Jesus does not necessarily mean we have to bear the weight of the world’s sin on our shoulders or die a torturous death. On the other hand, I know some people (and have been part of this crowd from time to time) who proclaim their discipleship from the mountaintop when things are easy, but then retract it when the going gets a little too difficult.

We say we want to be like Christ, but to what extent? We may not be asked to die, but we are called to live for him. How far will we go for that? Are we willing to withstand some ridicule for our faith? Are we willing to stand up for what we believe, even when it’s not popular? Are we willing to defend the weak and stand up for those with no voice?

Discipleship is not always hard, but it’s also not always easy. It requires commitment and sacrifice. It’s usually our time, our money, and our reputation that are at stake for what we believe. But Jesus says that unless we are willing to give up some things — even relationships with friends or family members — we cannot be true followers of Christ.

Thought for the day: We say we want to be like Christ, but what does that mean? How much like Christ are we really willing to be?

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the guidelines on the How to Pray page.

My thoughts (Brent Walsh):

I don’t like New Year’s resolutions.

It’s not that I don’t think I should strive to improve my life through exercise or reading the Bible through or taking a class or volunteering. The problem is that I rarely live up to my own expectations. Inevitably this list of resolutions has been constructed while I’m still on a high from the holidays and it’s full of things I think I should be doing. But when life settles down and I introduce this list to my already overloaded work and school schedule, all I hear is the faint sound of laughter coming from the pages of my pocket calendar. “Let me know how that works out for you,” it seems to say.

But what if my New Years resolutions did not consist of more things to do, but rather more ways to rest? I just finished my first semester of seminary where the word “busy” took on a new meaning! I had more books to read and papers to write than time to do them, so taking a rest was peppered with a feeling of guilt — the feeling that I should be doing something productive. Fortunately, one of my classes made it mandatory to quiet myself for a period of time each day so that I could engage in a worshipful experience of my choice. Admittedly I did not follow through with this practice as often as I was supposed to, but when I did, it seemed I had more time to do the other things I needed to do!

Our society doesn’t often put a high value in doing nothing. “I’ve just been so busy” is a great catch-all excuse, like the junk drawer that holds anything from rubber bands to flashlights. Throw it out in a pinch and you can be forgiven for a wealth of infractions. But consider Paul’s advice not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. How do we renew our minds? Is it through doing, doing, doing? Or is it through allowing your body and mind to relax and rejuvenate?

Thought for the day: “A good rest is half the work.”– Yugoslav Proverb

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the guidelines on the How to Pray page.

My thoughts (Brent Walsh):

Did you know that the popular Christmas carol Joy To The World has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas? Consider the lyrics:

Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King!
Let every heart prepare Him room, and heaven and nature sing!
He rules the world with truth and grace and makes the nations prove
the glories of His righteousness and wonders of His love.”

Does this sound to you like a Christmas song? Sure, we’ve always known it as one, but at Christmas we celebrate the humble beginnings of a baby who was born to an unwed mother and then pursued by a king who wanted to kill him! The purpose of Jesus’ first coming was not to rule the world or to judge the nations. No, this is a song of anticipation as we await the second coming of Christ!

So why is it that no one seems to realize the true meaning of this popular song? It’s one of the most popular hymns in the world, and even people who have never stepped foot in a church can sing parts of it word for word. Did they know they were celebrating something that hasn’t even happened yet?

This is a perfect example of how we as humans can completely, wholeheartedly believe something, just because it’s what we’ve always been taught. It is not uncommon for us to resolutely defend an idea without ever deciding for ourselves why it’s true — and that’s often true for religious beliefs, too. For decades we have been hearing things preached from the pulpit that we believe because someone we trust is saying them.

A woman is told it’s a sin to marry outside her own race, so she breaks off her engagement to the love of her life. A man is told it’s a sin to be gay, so he disowns his gay son. A man is told that if he were to change his gender, he would be “playing God,” so he simply endures the humiliation of his wrong-gendered body. A woman is told it’s a sin to divorce, so she stays married to her abusive husband. If we would only look at the words of Scripture, we would see that what we are being taught is not always what we should believe.

Thought for the day: How many things do you believe just because you were taught them by someone you trust? I challenge you to take an independent view of your belief system to see which things need to be reevaluated. Don’t be afraid to ask tough questions. Read books and consider opposing views. If you end up back where you started, then at least you’ll know WHY you believe what you believe. What do you have to lose?

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the guidelines on the How to Pray page.