Birds and Lilies

Give us this day our daily bread… just like the other 6,772,894,934 people on the planet.…

I guess I don’t typically picture Heavenly Father as part of the daily grind, but His daily feeding of the 6.8 billion is just as miraculous as the distant feeding of 5 thousand. He is more constant and less fleeting than I typically consider.

Believe

Southern hospitality means taking in someone who is filthy, exhausted, broken down, and not “deserving” and providing abundantly for them. When I provide abundantly for another, I offer the opportunity to believe that God will also provide abundantly.

Prayer

Matt. 6: 9-13

“Heavenly Father, You are the Best.

I want do everything I can today to help Thy kingdom come.

I want to do Thy will on earth as if I was already in heaven.

In the day in front of me, I’ll work, mess up, get hurt, and be tempted.

My work doesn’t help anyone without Thy help; Give us our daily bread.

My messes are bigger than the best clean-up efforts; forgive us our debts.

My hurts are too deep to get to the bottom of; forgive our debtors.

My temptations find me wanting; deliver us from evil.

I want to work for Thy kingdom, Thy power, and Thy glory, come what may. Amen.”

Job Description

May I do what the Lord does: deliver and enlarge.

Drop Your Weapons

To be armed with God’s power, I need to drop all my typical weapons— feigning disbelief, declaring someone incompetent, getting angry; anything that I grasp at in an effort to pierce my opponent—and extend God’s out-stretched arm of mercy.

Raw Humanity

"We can't become more like Jesus by becoming less human, less physical, less emotional, less involved with our families, less associated with socially or morally undesirable people. We don't become more spiritual by becoming less human."—Eugene Peterson, Tell It Slant (2008), p 45

Example

1 Tim. 4: 12
Let no man despise thy youth; and despise no man’s youth,
nor his lack of cleanliness, morality, or social uprightness.
but be thou an example of the believers, loving as God loves,
pouring out rain and sun on “good” and “evil”;
nurturing, nourishing, especially when they are far astray
in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.

Worship Him in Spirit and in Truth

Christ warned equally against the worship of God via the body only (outward ordinances) or spirit only (inward intimations). What a beautiful redemption, to know that my worship would be incomplete without the faulty efforts of my corruptible body! God loves me, both body and spirit.

Beyond teaching me about my nature, God’s nature is reflected in righteous worship. Worshiping God via my body/actions only is wrong because it ignores God's Spirit. Worshiping God via my spirit/faith only is wrong because it ignores God's Body.

“Spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy”.

Reality

“Heavenly Father has arms. Do you have arms? Show me your arms.

Heavenly Father has hands. Do you have hands? Show me your hands.

Heavenly Father has a face. Do you have a face? Touch your face.

You are a real person. Heavenly Father is a real person.” (source)