HELP!--by Linden Malki

The God Who created a universe complex beyond our imaginations doesn't need our help. We need to remember,with the Psalmist , Our Help comes from the Lord, Who made the heavens and the earth. (Psalm 121)

What does need our help is the world He made for us: the record says He put our ancestors in a place that needed tending. He could have made it self-sustaining. He didn't do that, and we were told to gather plant foods and care for animals. We were also created to need each other! If we didn't need relationships with our Creator and our fellow creatures, we would have missed out on so much.  We depend on each other, we hopefully get along with each other; our very existence as a society ultimately is based on there being next generations. 

Most people understand that we are created to help each other. We may do it well, we may do it badly; the best instructions are given in two short sentences: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and  strength. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.  We all need help. We all need to be helpful. God enriches our lives in remarkable ways as we give and receive help.  The help we need the most desperately is the strength of God Himself as we admit our own need and fall on His mercy and grace.  Everything we do on our own is flawed, but with His strength it transmits His grace and mercy onto those we help.

The communities of faith depend on each of us to use our gifts and abilities for the benefit of our "neighbors" and ourselves; this includes our family, our church, our community, our world.  It is easy to focus on what we think needs to be done; what others need us to do. The difficulty is to step back and ask what God needs us to do.  In the end, He doesn't judge us on what we accomplish in this world, because we all fall short of His perfection.  We've all seen people who are so sure that they have the answers to every need that they can miss what is really needed-truly caring about each other and less about who gets the credit. Sometimes we need to step back and allow someone else the opportunity to help. Sometimes what someone needs to have done is not we expect. Sometimes the only person who needs to know what happened is our partner, God.

 Jesus was scathing in His judgment of those who bask in the credit of the world--and even said that there will be no further credit when it really counts.  When we "count our blessings" we are blessed when we help each other in His name,and in His power.

Reforming Reality--by Linden Malki

We are usually our own worst enemy--this is why we need God's grace.  He created us and knows better than we do what we are capable of,  both the good and the evil.  Actually, where we need help is doing good; we can do evil pretty well on our own.  (And what we do "on our own" is usually not the good.)

The current study series where we are now is getting specific. The idea is that most people behave in variations of nine different ways. All of them have good and bad variations, and it is our challenge to work with God, His Son and His Spirit to respond in spiritually healthy ways. 

The first one we looked at this week is probably the most obvious way many people react: anger.  I have heard it said that we cannot control anger, because it is always set off by someone or something else, and we have no  ability to react any other way. (Note: this is very common in  Middle Eastern cultures.)  My own observation, the more I look at it, is that it grows out of the angry individual themself.  I realized that my own anger was usually triggered by what I described as "sabotage": I had been inconvenienced, damaged, or frustrated by someone or something.  And then, one evening when my kids were little, I was blazingly angry about something (I don't even remember what), and as I tucked the kids in,  I recall grabbing on a crib railing and found myself saying "God, You need to deal with this. because I can't."  It was like pulling a drain plug. As I stood there thinking and praying, I realized that I had a choice: I could carry on like a madwoman and accomplish nothing good, or I could look at the situation calmly, and apply His Wisdom. Arguing with people doesn't get you very far, either; say what you have to say as simply and calmly as you can, and then shut up. And pray for the evil in the situation to be gone. (Some of it might even be in your corner.) And yes, I have restored relationships this way.

it is significant that in the study series, this is called "Reformation."  This is the goal, isn't it?  It goes beyond recognizing a problem, even goes beyond restoration. The idea is to make good come out of evil; to make something better than expected. Jesus could "pull the teeth" out of almost any confrontation;  one that stands out as an exception is the incident in the Temple where He drove out the merchants and moneychangers that were making the Temple into a marketplace--and 40 years later the Romans put an end to it. Even the confrontations leading to the Crucifixion were meek and dignified on Jesus' side--and He had the last word a few days later.

Our calling is to "Follow Jesus"--not just on the roadsides through life, but recognizing that He is the standard and pattern for His followers everywhere.  When we fall short is when we need to allow Him to pick us up, clean us off, help us give up the anger and dissention, forgive where appropriate, and reform where needed. And His result is much better than anything we can do ourselves, or even imagine!

The Real Choice--by Linden Malki

We always have had choices; we were created with a choice--to recognize our Creator or not. We can use our abilities to do good for God, for our neighbors, for ourselves--or not. If we think we can be happy on our own, it will usually be just beyond our grasp, because those things that we expect to make us happy fall short. God knows what we need: to recognize His authority and live by His guidelines. It started with one: to have the patience and discipline to leave one thing alone.  I suspect that He knew that our human curiosity and would sooner or later bring us to want to know that one thing--the cost of being in charge of our own destiny. 

We may have a memory of being God's creatures;  on one hand reaching out for God and with the other hand reaching out for our own desires. We come into this world with nothing and leave it with nothing. What we gain in this world is a product of what we are given and what we give. We are all responsible for each other; we can take care of each other or take advantage of each other. In the end, what we have accumulated of the world is left behind, and what we have learned and grown in the Spirit is what we take with us. Whether or not what we have to offer is worthy of His presence is up to our willingness to accept His grace and mercy.  

Even when we know what God asks of us, we cannot do it on our own. We can try to do everything right for our own credit, and it's not worth what we expect--because our strength is not enough.  We can give God orders--demand He do what we think He ought to do, and we don't bother to wonder what He thinks, which is what actually counts in the long run. We don't know nearly enough to run the Universe. We can ignore Him completely, and show up with nothing that counts in the long run. We can create a god of our own, which doesn't have the power to accomplish what we expect. 

"What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could “be like gods”—could set up on their own as if they had created themselves—be their own masters—invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing." *

Or we can throw ourselves on His love, power and mercy, and be amazed at what can happen. It usually is not what we expect, not always comfortable (in fact it probably isn't, in the worldly sense). We can appreciate the wonders of the Universe in a whole new way, when we know its Creator.  The more we learn about the world, the universe, and all its creatures (including ourselves) the more awesome and complex it proves itself to be, real beyond anything that could have just "happened" by accident.  

*C.S.Lewis, Mere Christianity

The Miracle of Memory--by Linden Malki

We celebrate when a child is born; we have high hopes for the person he becomes.  We mourn when someone dies, but we celebrate as well when someone has left a legacy of hope.  The Resurrection is unique--we celebrate a life  and a death--but also a return.  Jesus taught for about three years, and what He said has not been forgotten. What He did, is an example for two thousand years--but the most memorable thing He did cannot be repeated.  This was the basic message: "Fellow Israelites,

listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourself know. This man was handed over to you by God's deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep his hold on him."*

One of the miracles of human life is memory.  We depend on our memory to know what to do when we wake up in the morning,  what we do next, how to get from where we are to where to go next.  We remember a surprising amount of our past life, and even more amazing, we recall things that we were told by other people--some of which may have been told and retold, verbally and in writing, for hundreds, and even thousands of years. The passage  I just quoted as been part of our heritage for very close to nineteen hundred and eighty-five years and at least three languages.  It is even more amazing when we realize that shortly after this message was originally delivered, the place that it was heard was conquered, and many of the original records were lost or destroyed. However, this message was told, retold, written down, and spread from its origin in Jerusalem to Asia Minor (today's Turkey), Greece, Egypt, and pretty much the whole eastern Mediterranean, to the imperial capital of Rome within thirty years, within the lifetime of many of its original listeners. Within a generation or two it had spread as far west as Britain and as far east as India, and the written copies are amazingly similar across the miles. In fact, it was quoted so often in other writings that a very high percentage of the core writings can be reproduced from those quotations.

We take for granted the volume of preserved knowledge, scriptural and otherwise, that has survived, and in some cases  been  lost and recovered.  There is much we don't know about how memory works, from stories told and retold, and even more amazing, written, translated and preserved.  There is much we don't about intelligence, and creativity, and how people think in different ways but we can still learn from each other. There are also differences in knowledge and understanding; there are people who have creative ideas but different mental processes.  People can disagree and reject other people's ideas, and come out in totally different places.  We believe that the story we have received is trustworthy, and we will be held accountable for how we tell it, and how we live it out.
*Acts 2:22-24