A college friend of mind has a story that is an
incredibly powerful reminder of appreciating the blessing of life. She worked for IBM, and one day she was
preparing for a business trip.
After booking her flight her boss asked her to cancel the trip. She argued that it was an important
trip to take but her boss was insistent that she cancel the trip, as IBM had
decided to place a freeze on business travel. She reluctantly canceled the trip. The flight she booked flew on September 11, 2001, and turned
out to be the second flight that hit the World Trade Center.
It would be impossible not to think of life as
incredibly blessed after such an experience. To awaken every day, knowing that because your trip had been
canceled, you are alive. You are
alive and have the blessing of enjoying many more years with your spouse. You are alive and have the blessing of
watching your children grow to adulthood and have families of their own. You awaken every day with the knowledge
that life could have ended far too early – but it didn’t. I believe such an experience to be a
blessing that would prevent one from ever taking life for granted.
As we conclude our brief series of messages on
the 23rd Psalm, this morning we study the last portion of verse five
– my cup runneth over, with a message
titled A Blessed Life. As this is Consecration Sunday, when we
pledge our time, talents, and resources to the church and to God’s kingdom, I
believe it is an appropriate time to consider what blessed lives we lead.
Hear,
again, the 23rd Psalm –
1 The
Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He
maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3 He
restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's
sake.
4 Yea,
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:
for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5 Thou
preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil;
my cup runneth over.
6 Surely
goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
I love the image of an overflowing cup, as it
represents the blessedness of life, so let’s talk about A Blessed Life.
1. We are called to
bless the lives of others.
Those of you who have been part of the Bethel
Bible Study learn something that is foundational to the study – as we are
blessed by God we are called to, what?
To be a blessing to others. You better get that right, or Thelma
and Jim are going to get after you!
Sometimes, faith is viewed as such a personal
matter that it can be void of a connection with others. Some people even claim that faith
belongs solely in the personal domain, and should not have a place in the
public realm at all. But faith is
far more than personal; it has a very public side as well, as we are called to
help fill the cup of others, so their cup too might overflow. As we are in that time of year when we
plan our church budget for next year, I want to take a moment and reflect on
the way you, as a congregation, are such a blessing to others. Consecration Sunday is about much more
than simply raising money to keep the lights burning, the heat going, and the
staff paid. It is a time when we
recommit ourselves to the offering of our time, our talents, and our lives to
being a blessing to others. As a
congregation you are doing just that in so many ways, and not all of those ways
of doing mission and ministry are reflected in our church budget. I am working on a document in which I
will list not only the many types of mission and ministry we do as a
congregation, but to also calculate the money and volunteer hours that are
given, and I think it would be an amount to surprise us all.
There is not a month, a week, or even a day
that does not pass without someone in this congregation engaging in some type
of mission or ministry activity, and the number of hours given would be
incalculable.
What does it mean, this image of a cup that
runs over? It is an image of
abundance, of have so much more than enough that the vessel of our lives cannot
contain all that comes our way.
Now, I realize that most, if not all of us, don’t always feel as though
we have enough in life, let alone having more than enough. But the reality is that, in some way,
all of us have an abundance of something with which we can bless the lives of
others. Maybe you don’t have an
abundance of financial resources, but you might have an abundance of time. Maybe you don’t have an abundance of
time, but maybe you have an abundance of some talent or ability that can bless
the lives of others.
We are living in a time in history when there
are millions of people who have been displaced because of violence and warfare. There is a robust debate in many
countries about whether or not to take in the people who are fleeing those
war-torn areas of the world, and there is a robust debate in our own country as
well. Of course, we ought to take
in people from those areas of the world.
I believe our faith compels us to do so. We are so blessed with freedom, security, and resources and
we ought to allow overflowing cup of blessing to bless the lives of others.
2. Learn, from the
blessing of adversity, how to bless others in their time of adversity.
It’s by design, I believe, that adversity is
one of the great themes of Scripture.
Some of the most powerful writings and experiences come out of adversity. When I was taking church history, I can
well remember when we studied St. Augustine’s City of God, which was written centuries ago. I was bored out of my mind. I sat in the back of the class and
thought to myself, there is absolutely no
reason for me to know anything about this book as it has no use or relevance to
my life. And lo and behold,
years later, I taught a class on that book for four years and wrote a study
guide for it as well. During that
process I often wished I had paid
attention in church history class!
I came to appreciate the beauty of that great
book, as it was written in response to a time of great adversity, and reminds
us that one of life’s great lessons is the truth that faith is not forged and
made strong by prosperity, but by adversity. One of the great statements it offers is this – some of the best bread is baked in the oven
of adversity. I love that
declaration – some of the best bread is
baked in the oven of adversity.
Adversity is, as strange as it may sound, one of life’s gifts, because
without adversity we could never truly appreciate the depths of love or
gratitude or the blessings which are so abundant in our lives.
George Matheson was a Scottish minister who
lived in the 19th century.
As a young man, when he was engaged to be married, his eyesight began to
falter and his doctor told him he would quickly lose all of his vision. When he told his fiancé of his oncoming
blindness she immediately handed back to him her engagement ring, saying she
did now want to marry one who would soon be so dependent upon her. It was a crushing experience for him,
but out of that experience he wrote the hymn O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go –
O love
that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in
Thee;
I give Thee back the life
I owe,
That in Thine ocean depths
its flow
May richer, fuller be.
(The Taste of Joy,
Calvin Miller, p. 89)
3. A blessed life
is a life of faith.
Ernest Gordon was the longtime Dean of the
Chapel at Princeton University. I’ve
referred to him a time or two before, I believe. He wrote the book Through
the Valley of the Kwai, which was the basis for the movie Bridge Over the River Kwai. As a prisoner of war during World War
II, Gordon and his fellow soldiers suffered unimaginable difficulty, but it was
in those difficult conditions that Gordon himself came to faith. Of his experience he wrote, faith thrives when there is no hope but
God. It is luxury and success that
makes men greedy (The Good Life,
Peter J. Gomes, p. 262)
Skeptics will say that faith is a genetic
predisposition, a weakness of the intellect, a desire to control others, or
that it’s born out of a fear of death.
People place faith in a great many things, but
faith in God is, I believe, a foundational need in life.
Luke 5:17-26 contains one of my favorite
stories in the gospels. It is the
story of the paralyzed man, who was healed by Jesus. What I like about the story is that the paralyzed man is not
the focus of the story; his friends are.
These friends carried the paralyzed man on a mat to a house where Jesus
was teaching. They believed that
Jesus could heal their friend, but when they arrived at the house there were so
many people gathered it was impossible to get their friend close to Jesus. Did they give up? No. They climbed to the roof of the home, dug a hole in the
roof, and lowered their friend through the hole and placed him right in front
of Jesus. Wouldn’t you like to
have some friends like that? They
were some great friends.
Faith is a communal activity, not just one that
is solitary. Think of how the
faith of those friends must have strengthened the man who was paralyzed. Imagine his reaction when they said
they were taking him to Jesus.
Imagine his reaction upon discovering they couldn’t get to Jesus because
of the crowd. Imagine his reaction
when his friends haul him up to the roof and start digging their way through
the roof. Imagine his reaction to
suddenly find himself at the feet of Jesus. They weren’t about to give up and lose faith.
My favorite part of the passage is what Luke
says – when Jesus saw their faith. It was not the faith of the paralyzed
man that Jesus saw, but the faith of his friends. It was the faith of his friends that brought about his
healing.
I don’t believe I could do faith on my
own. I haven’t done faith on my
own. I have faith because of my
parents, who first instilled it within me. I have grown in faith because of teachers and mentors and
role models who helped me understand faith in a more powerful way. I continue in faith because of friends
and loved ones, who have encouraged me and reminded me that faith never gives
up, and never quits.
Remember how you got to where you are in life,
because you did not get there on your own. We so need to remember, because it is too easy to forget.
We live in such a forgetful, disposable
culture; we use something for a short time and then throw it away. Forget it. Toss it. The
Recycled Teenagers went last Thursday to Nonesuch, to Irish Acres Antiques,
located in an old school building, as we have done in recent years. A couple of years ago when we were
there, I was looking at a piece made between the late 1800s and about
1910. Deanie Logan was explaining
it to me, and made the interesting comment about the quality and endurance of
things made during earlier eras.
Technology has just about finished off any such idea. A phone lasts until the next, cooler
version comes out. In my previous
congregation, we had a rotary dial telephone that remained mounted on the wall. One day, one of the kids asked if they
could use the phone, and then stood there staring at it. I asked, what was the matter?
He had never seen a rotary dial phone and didn’t know how to use
it. But it worked when the power
went off, and it worked when the cellular network was down. People laughed at it, but it was more
reliable than the smartphone in their pocket.
Some people treat faith as though it is
something from a bygone, forgotten age.
They want us to believe that the age of faith has come and gone, and
that it is foolish to continue to cling to faith in our modern age.
A blessed life is a life of faith. It has served humanity well for
thousands of years, and will do so until the end of time.
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