I had a really strange and wonderful dream. I was sitting in the open air on a hill side. There were people everywhere waiting for a speaker. I didn’t know anyone until I looked to my right and there was sitting an old colleague of mine. A pastor friend that had passed away a number of years ago. He smiled and said, “What are you doing here? Its not time for you to hear the speaker.”

With that he stood up and said, “Let’s go to the river you have to go home.”

We walked and talked, can’t remember about what but I can still see his face and the wonderful white hair he always had from a young age. We got in a boat, there were a number of people and we headed down the river. I can’t recall much other than knowing there were beautiful and wonderful things on the bank. People smiling waving and saying, “See you one day on the river.” Of course I then woke up.

Okay dreams are odd, sometimes confusing but this one…comforting. Of course Revelation 22:1 came to mind. “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.”

Often in our lives we get so caught up in the stuff of life we forget. What? We forget that God has a place for us, a beautiful, wonderful, yes mystical place of comfort and peace. But…we have to wait and as we wait we need to help others along, lift them up, prepare them so they too may see the River of Life. Twelfth-century mystic Hildegard of Bingen wrote, “Rivers of living water are to be poured out over the whole world, to ensure that people, like fishes caught in a net, can be restored to wholeness.”

Take a moment today to give thanks that God has forgiven your yesterdays, given you an area of service today and that one day we shall all gather at the river.

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I often have incense in my office. I remember my grandmother lighting it regularly and I grew up enjoying the various scents. But my wife doesn’t appreciate the aromas or the smoke messing up our ceilings so it has been banned. But the office is a different matter.

The other day I turned around and the smoke was just lingering for a few moments before drifting upward. Which caused me to think of Revelation 8:4, “The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel’s hand.”

When you read this portion of the scriptures you are introduced to the angel of worship. Here the prayers go up and change comes down. The incense represents worship and prayer combined to set into action mighty works of God. Point? The fragrance of the incense reminds us that worship and prayer is not forgotten or ignored on heaven or earth.

Now I know this is a blog and not a Bible study. But there is a lot of stuff happening around us. Planes falling out of the sky, people murdered going about their daily routines, sickness, the religious and ethnic hatred that seems to be in every corner of our world. Maybe today you should stop for just a few moments. Offer up a prayer for peace, for right actions, for comfort.

Pray with me…Dear God, we know that each day we move closer to death, that is part of the process. So, help us to remember that today is a gift. That as we serve, as we help others along the path we are living the life you called us to live. May today be one where we practice thanksgiving, and most of all right actions which may bring peace. Amen

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My 15 month old granddaughter wanted me to wear a beret they have in a dress up trunk. I placed it on my head and we laughed, we giggled we had a great time. In Psalms 126:2 we read, “Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy.”

There is so much pain in our world. Prejudice, hate, religious wars, bombings, children being abused, sexual trade, illness, cancer. The list goes on and on. But when you do some Bible study you come to a realization. God never meant for the world to be that way. His creation was “good” then we came along and willingly sinned and things went wrong.

Abba Anthony, often considered as the father of the monastic movement wrote, “From our neighbors is life and death. if we gain our brother, we gain God, but if we cause our brother to stumble, we sin against Christ.”

Today do something for your brother or sister in Christ. More than that just do something fun for a neighbor, a co-worker. Don’t worry about what you look like, don’t let your ego get in the way. Just enjoy God’s presence and laugh with another.

Take a moment to pause on the path today and…laugh!

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I had a strange moment this morning. I was having a time of meditation when all at once thoughts just rushed over me. Things like, “I can’t do this any more. I can’t keep pushing people to give, to share, to serve, to get moving. I just can’t… let some other servant do the job. (By the way this experience often takes place when its time for our annual meeting at church. When we look at budget, dollars, outreach and what we think we can or cannot afford to push. So you can kind of understand the frustration that was showing up within my prayers).

Then writer Madeleine L’Engle came to mind. She made this statement, “We are all asked to do more than we can do. Every hero and heroine of the Bible does more than he would have thought possible to do, from Gideon to Esther to Mary, Jacob, one of my favorite characters, certainly wasn’t qualified. He was a liar and a cheat, and yet he was given extraordinary vision of angels and archangels ascending and descending a ladder which reached from earth to heaven.”

Now both you and I know I’m no Bible character, sometimes a character but certainly not worthy of being any where near the list of servants in the Bible…but wait a minuet… maybe that is the point. We are all worthy because Jesus died for us and He certainly already knows what we (you know the list: liars, cheats, gossips on and on). Okay back to work, back to the path, back to walking with my Lord and Savior.

Dear God, today is the day so please help me to rejoice and be glad.

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Over the last few years I’ve done lino or wood cuts for Lent. I do one for each Sunday then hang them in the sanctuary to give people something to think about on their pilgrimage. I enjoy the cutting, the designing and most of all thinking in negative space. Imagining the cuts on paper after they are inked. What will jump out, what will be highlighted what will not look like I had anticipated?

The Irish rocker Bono said, “Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.”

Let’s be honest we are going to do some “stupid stuff.” The life we are cutting out isn’t always the way we planned, desired or wanted. Just like my small pieces of art. If I make a mistake with the knife the cut cannot be redone, it cannot be erased I can only accommodate, change the design, or even start over. But what a great picture of the believer’s life. Grace abounds! God is in control, others stand with you no matter what!

Lord while we are on the path allow us brief moments of catching a glimpse of You. And whenever another looks at the print of my life may they too catch a glimpse of Your marvelous grace. Amen.

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Near Paso Robles California a tree was struck by lightning and it fell across the highway. The road workers took their chain saws to cut it up in order to dispose of it. The tree immediately fell apart and in the middle was this cross.

Probably in the late 18th century some traveler had carved the cross to alert pilgrims they were approaching a place of sanctuary. But when I saw the symbol I also thought of Nicholas Herman, most of you would remember him as Brother Lawrence. One day he too had an experience with a tree that changed his life.

It was winter and he was gazing at a barren tree and it was at that moment, maybe for the first time in his life, he recognized the majesty of God’s love, care and mercy. He started to think of himself as a tree pausing and waiting for the future that God would bring in each season of his life. After this experience he would enter a monastery and would integrate daily life with spirituality. What he would later term “practice of the presence of God.”

Why not do the same. As you go about your daily routine, lift your life up in worship. Say a short prayer for another during the coffee break. On the drive home think of your season of life and where you stand in regards to the cross.

As you go about doing the normal. As you sit at your desk, or move about you office lift up a prayer today for another. Remembering the cross is before us, around us, and beside us. Today I praise God for His mercy and love. Today in all I do I praise my Savior.

Dear brothers and sisters may God be with you on your daily walk, as you perform your routine, as you finish your day. Amen.

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I was standing by the pacific ocean looking toward the horizon. As you can tell the light was fading and it was a beautiful sight with the pier in the foreground and not a person in sight. Just Arlean, my beautiful wife and companion for almost forty years, together at one of those moments when you hold hands and take a deep breath savoring God’s creation and blessings.

But then it happened! A thought crossed my mind (don’t you hate it when that happens). I started thinking, maybe I don’t want to go on. Maybe I don’t want to stay on that path going off somewhere into the distance. To keep doing the work of sacrifice, service, meditation, praying, the haggling with committees the preaching and teaching trying to motivate others to get up and move. Maybe now is the time to sit on the side and let someone else keep going. Maybe I’m done with the pushing, maybe it’s okay to enjoy my Savior’s presence without all the shoving a shepherd has to do.

Boy did that feel good! For a moment to get away, to relax, to contemplate quitting. In a brief moment to recognize where you are, what you are doing and what you are not doing. As I stood there the author Frederick Buechner came to mind. He wrote, ” A Christian is one who points at Christ and says, ‘I can’t prove a thing, but there’s something about his eyes and his voice. There’s something about the way he carries his head, his hands, the way he carries his cross-the way he carries me.’”

There is no way we can have any idea where that path is leading. But we do know this…our Savior is there carrying us. We also know this… another brother or sister is there waiting on the path, able to hold our hand to say “Lets go do this thing together.”

I will see you on the path in 2015 and I expect you to hold me up when I stumble just as I will walk with you. Amen. Again I say Amen.

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What do you see? I was outside of Pismo Beach California at a place called the “Oasis.” This is a small plot of land that becomes the resting spot for hundreds of monarch butterflies. Here they hibernate for several months before they start migrating to the Rockies and Canada in February.

As you walk beneath the trees, as you gaze way up in the branches the last brown leaves of fall and winter seem to shiver. But…then you discover they are not leaves but the wings of butterflies. Huddled together for warmth they wait. They wait for just the right moment to set out and continue their journey of life.

I think you immediately recognize the parable of the butterflies. We only have moments in this life to live, to marvel at the creation God has set around us. My point? Don’t waste the gift you have been given. Make January an “Oasis” a time of reflection, a time of preparation and then launch out into this new year with laughter, with prayer, meditation, and the joy of the pilgrimage.

But don’t forget to pause in wonderment today at what is around you. Paramahansa Yogananda, the founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship made this point, “Oh, reveal to me the wonders of creation. Thine endless secrets that even the tiniest roadside weed bears in its bosom!”

Enjoy the path today!

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