I'm NOT Thankful And Here Is Why....

Hello Emmanuel,

I’m not thankful.  Why would I be?  It’s that time of year when my demise is around every corner.  Everyone is seeking me out for reasons for which I am totally opposed.  I want to be able to think about the future with joy, not with fear and trepidation.  I don’t want to be paranoid about every person who looks at me with anticipation.  This is simply a deplorable time of year and there is nothing much I can do about it.

You might think I am being irrational, but no one is chasing you around wanting to cut your head off.  No one is seeking to twist and pluck and stuff and bake you.  It isn’t pleasant, I tell you.  It’s easy for you to sit back and relax.

So I’m NOT thankful and don’t tell me differently.  You can talk all you want about God and blessings and grace and unconditional love.  It makes me little difference, as I’m sure you’d understand if you were in my shoes…. Or feathers.

So leave me along this Thanksgiving.  Let me enjoy my existence.

Sincerely,

Mr. Turkey

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P.S.  Don’t be a turkey.  Be thankful.

Why? 

Because…..

God is Good,

Pastor Joe

Cry Babies

Hello Emmanuel,

 My cat is a cry baby.  She didn’t always used to be that way.  When we first got her, she never meowed.  She sauntered around the house like she owned the place.  We gave her the driest, cheapest, cat food and water and she considered life as good and appropriate.  This went on for years…..

…. And then one day we ran out of cat food.  Instead of going to the store, we took the lazy way out and opened a can of tuna.  Our lives have forever been changed.

Now every time she hears us get the can opener out, she fully expects to get tuna (and since then, we have actually bought canned cat food.  Don’t ask.  I don’t know why.).  And she lets you know what she fully expects because she is the loudest meower I’ve ever met.  In addition, she winds herself around your feet as you try to fix your own breakfast.  I would get irritated with her, but it isn’t really her fault.  We have conditioned her to expect certain things.  Her standard of living has gone up.  And when it doesn’t stay up, we hear about it.

Sadly, humans are not much different.  We expect the world to meet our expectations based on what we have learned in the past.  What we forget is that circumstances are constantly changing.  We don’t live in a static world.  The uncertainty of every day can, in fact, slap us in the face.  Just ask the common ‘Joe’ (or Julien) in Paris, France.

I often think about how tough life was 20 years ago when Kim and I got together.  The thing is, I didn’t think it was all that tough pastoring 3 churches, managing 3 kids and making 1/3 of the income we do now.  But to think about going back to that circumstance now fills me with dread.  I have been conditioned.  I guess you could say I’m spoiled in a relative sense.

So now it is time to pause and give thanks.  It’s time to stop thinking about how bad you have it or had it and start thinking about how good you have it.  It’s time to thank God for having the opportunity to be conditioned to expect the daily blessings.  Consider that you, too, are spoiled.  Think about what your ‘can of tuna’ has been.  And if it isn’t the sound of a can opener, what is it that causes you to expect something good to happen every day. 

…. And if you don’t get the ‘tuna’, do you really want to be known as the cry baby?  Or do you want to saunter around your day, figuring out that life is still pretty good?

God is Good,

Pastor Joe

Re-remembering

Hello Emmanuel,

My computer didn’t start up right today.  That is a great way to start a new day with high anxiety.  My laptop is several years old now and thus has all the work I’ve done since coming to Emmanuel.  That is a lot of sermons and meetings.  So any time my computer acts funny, I backup all my files onto my flash drive.  I learned that the hard way.  I once had a laptop suddenly die and lost 2 years’ worth of sermons. 

Do you backup your information?

I’m not talking about computers here.  I’m talking about re-enforcing what you know and what you believe.  There are those moments in life when humans act funny too—when there seems to be glitches—and we wonder what went wrong.  It is in those moments when we may need to take a breath and re-remember what we knew before.

I had the kind of October in which I had to do such.  I made myself re-remember the simple things about who I am and what I’ve learned:  I am not always in control of everything and to be okay with that; trust is the foundation of any healthy relationship; relationships are at the center of anything important in life; God knows all even when no one else does;  acting on what you think is true usually makes a bigger mess of what is actually true. 

Those are some of the basic matters of what I re-remembered.  What do you need to re-remember?  Maybe you need to write them down.  If you forget the basic lessons of life, you may end up going backwards.  God wants you to go forward.  Don’t lose your information.  God taught it to you for a reason.

God is Good,

Pastor Joe

A New Month

Hello Emmanuel,

It’s a new month.

I normally like to say ‘it’s a new day’.  That is, what happened yesterday is over.  What will happen today has yet to be done.  Forget what happened the day before and look to what can be.  It’s a way to get past a bad day and hope for a good day.  However, what happens when you get a string of bad days?  What happens when taking it day by day doesn’t seem to be working?

It’s a new month.

I know that optimism doesn’t always come easy.  Negative experiences are imprinted on our brain.  When we have enough imprints, we start to expect more negative experiences.  Before you know it, you become that grumpy old person that you didn’t like when you were a kid (a kid, by the way, that thought the world was a fun, happy place).

Case in point, tomorrow we get to vote.  It is well documented that the common Joe is frustrated with our political system.  I won’t go into all the details here because… well…. I don’t want to remind us of our imprinted negative experiences.  But how do you approach the polls?  Are you the grumpy old person or the kid who is looking for the new day… or the new month?

Hanging onto hope, be it in the political world or otherwise, can be a daunting task.  So how do you become one of those odd people that stubbornly hold on to optimism even in the face of adversity?  Well, let me introduce you to Jesus.  He gives us every reason to be optimistic because, inevitably, in the end, life wins.  Death loses.

Over the next couple of Sundays I’m going to risk bring Jesus into the political realm.  No, I don’t have a death sentence.  I am going to be openly optimistic about the hope that Christ gives us when we find ourselves in a grumpy world.  And let me start my boldness by suggesting that the political part of our culture is a grumpy world.  Don’t believe me?  Watch any news network and observe money being made on grumpiness.  No one ever seems to look forward to having a guest looking for a new day (though that is often a phrase that is passed around), only one who is lamenting the current day or complaining about yesterday.  Money isn’t made on optimism.  Even the Christian-based news media struggles with this reality.

So come worship with us.  I won’t promise that I will be optimistic throughout Sunday morning, but I promise that Christ’s message will be.  It’s the real reason I keep showing up to work.

God is Good,

Pastor Joe