Eastertide

May 7, 2020

Scripture Reading: 1 Peter 2:2-10

Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. –1 Peter 2:2-5

Are we nurturing others with our lives through action and words illustrating that the Lord is good?

My mother was born in 1908 during the heyday of hell, fire, and damnation preaching. Children of all ages were expected to attend worship and behave or suffer a spanking. She shared that when she was a little girl, Mom would run as fast as she could to and from the outhouse, particularly after dark. She feared that the devil was going to reach up, grab her by the leg, and pull her straight down to hell.

I cut my teeth singing Jesus Loves Me This I Know, Jesus Love All the Children of the World, and What a Friend We Have in Jesus. Children were required to attend worship and behave. One Sunday, a good friend and I sitting on the front row of the church spent the entire sermon practicing the sign language we had learned in school that week. At the close of the sermon, Dr. Keller, our pastor, announced that he would like to have Peggy and Marilynn take up the offering, and we immediately knew we were caught. We did take up the offering, nothing else was ever said, and we never practice sign language or anything similar in church again.

What messages are we sending to our children and others for whom Christ is a new thing? A colleague shared with me how stunned she was when her sister-in-law asked her to explain the worship aspects of her mother’s funeral to her eight-year-old nephew because he had never been in church, and his mother feared he might not understand all that was happening. For many, I fear, in our culture, Christ is just another pawn in the game of politics. They have never tasted that the Lord is good.

Prayer: Lord, create in us clean hearts so that what others see in us is the love of God as exemplified in the life of Jesus Christ. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.