Living in the Spirit

June 9, 2021

Scripture Reading: Psalm 92:1-4, 12-15
It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
   to sing praises to your name, O Most High;
to declare your steadfast love in the morning,
   and your faithfulness by night,
to the music of the lute and the harp,
   to the melody of the lyre.
For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work;
   at the works of your hands I sing for joy.

The righteous flourish like the palm tree,
   and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
They are planted in the house of the Lord;
   they flourish in the courts of our God.
In old age they still produce fruit;
   they are always green and full of sap,
showing that the Lord is upright;
   he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.

I concur with the idea that In old age they still produce fruit. My mother certainly lived this example. I must say I may not always be green and full of sap. But, I hope and pray that I am showing that the Lord is upright. How we live and what we say make a difference. It saddens me that the USA’s percentage identifying as Christian has dropped markedly over the past two decades. I think a significant cause of the decline is we who call ourselves Christian do not live what we preach, and we do not emphasize what Jesus taught.

One of the classes we offered people receiving public assistance years ago included a segment on the fear of change. The teacher encouraged the participants to imagine two paths they could follow. One represents their lives as they are currently living and the other side seems to be a dark, scary, unknown one where one cannot be sure of what will happen. They were asked to consider what was good and not so good about their current life. They were then asked to discern what they would need in that unknown side to reduce the not-so-good. If those things were available on the unknown path, would they choose to take that path?

We stand at that crossroads every day as we practice our faith. I find it interesting how fearful we as a nation are about accepting the fact that our history is not what we were taught. Of what are we afraid? In John 8:31-32, Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’ We can never fully grasp the good news of Jesus Christ if we can only view it through the filters of biased or incomplete history.

Prayer: Lord, give us the courage to see ourselves as you see us. Create in us clean hearts and rights spirits. 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.