Pastor's Ponderings: Monday Bible Study on Paul’s letter, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 (May 12, 2025)

May 12, 2025:  Monday Bible Study on Paul’s letter, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

Blessing and Peace in Jesus Christ be with you this morning!

I hope that this day will be filled with joy in your life as you move through Monday. Please be careful of the heat if you are going to be outside, be certain that you are well hydrated and have water with you. This week in our prayers we are going to give thanks for the stability in treatment that has occurred for Kandice, which has really assisted her and Lisa with some relief from the heavy treatment, and oft changing choices for treatment that have been a part of their lives.  Please Pray for Tricia, who has begun her journey of treatment for breast cancer and will begin chemo in early June. Pray for the success of her treatment and the eradication of the cancer. Please also pray for Annette's husband Steve who has a growing dark spot on his lung. Pray for rapid care, diagnosis, and successful treatment for Steve. in addition, please pray for lasting peace in our world every day. God bless you for your prayer life.

In this morning's reading from 1st Thessalonians Paul is writing/speaking about a topic which must be on the hearts and minds of these newest of Christians. What happens when we die? And when the dead are raised imperishable at the end of things, what does that means for the Christians who have not yet died? Paul's purpose here is not to stop grief, but to surround the grief for a partner, or family member, or friend with the joy and confidence, with the very Peace of the LORD of all things, so that faith may abound even in the hardest of circumstances, including death.  Paul helps these new Christians to understand that a person who has died in faith is already in Christ's care. There is no time in our lives, or in our deaths, when Christ does not hold us and fulfill His promise to always be with us. I am confident that the very same kinds of questions about what happens to us in death still surround our own grieving process, and, dare I say it, fears about what is next for us all when we believe in the Savior. Let's face it, there have been volumes written about the second coming of Christ, and the "Rapture". I will say to you that the "rapture" believers have it wrong! One of our issues is that we have several different ideas about what is coming for the dead, punishment? maybe, Salvations for believers? Absolutely! But then, since the very beginning of the Church, people have wondered what all that means. Jesus says He will be with us to the end of the age. Daniel has thinking about how the son of man will be snatched up into the clouds as he is vindicated by God after his suffering. Is this prophetic? Or is it imagery in which Daniel sees something which he is trying to understand? Honestly, it's unclear. It might be best if you and I think about heaven as a companion dimension to the one in which we all live. If you and I believe the promise of Christ to always be with us, then this may make the best sense, better than Heaven and Christ coming down from some outer space, or skyward place that we cannot see. Doesn't it make better sense, in all honesty, to think about the nature of the ever-present Heaven and the Trinity surrounding us all the time? When Jesus returns, He might just step into a backyard, or a church, or a beautiful park somewhere. It might be anywhere, especially when we come to understand the always present Heaven to which Christ went in His Ascension, and yes, I know, it might be the other way in which the people of faith have usually believed too.  We could have protracted conversations about this for the rest of our lives, but that is not really what Paul is trying to accomplish here in 1st Thessalonians. He is looking to bring comfort in the face of grief, and joy in the Savior's presence at all times in the lives of the Thessalonians. What I do know for certain is that God will establish a new and perfect world in which all His children in Christ will join Him when we die, and if we are alive when Christ arrives to enfold His faithful ones, they will be there too.  We need to remember that Paul is the first, and earliest, of the New Testament writers trying to define and understand what is so new and completely different in Christ. Jesus loves His children with such passion that it would never be the time to leave them in the grave, asleep, separated from Him at any time. The God of Heaven and earth, the Redeeming Son, and the constant companion Spirit are never far away in some distant heaven at any time.

Thanks for letting me share with you this morning. Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study of Psalm 17 (May 8, 2025)

May 8, 2025:  Thursday Bible Study on Psalm 17

Good morning my dear Bible Study friends. One thing I love about the desert is the early morning sky on these clear days. Mountain views, blossoming Palo Verdes, and the desert blooms finally coming on the saguaro cactus all create a wonderful panoramic view of our LORD'S creation. So many people cannot see the beauty in this oft too hot place where we have chosen to make our homes, but I think there is hardly any place I have been that is more grand and lovely than the desert here in Tucson. Our house emergency has at least been repaired, but now the tear out for the wall and ceiling to get to the bad copper water pipes, has left a gaping hole. So, after Mother's Day, we will get a restoration company to make the repairs to the damage, mostly a little insulation and wallboard. We can manage the painting ourselves afterward.

Today we will move on to Psalm 17.

Have you ever been so bold as to offer the opportunity for God to search your heart and mind? That is exactly what David is doing here in this Psalm, and he is saying with confidence that if God will search his heart and mind, He will find it pleasing in His sight! I am pretty confident that there are certainly times when I hope God is not choosing to search my heart and mind. But David was pretty bold about this. I think that some of this has to do with his place as King in Jerusalem, surrounded by people who are unhappy with him, and geographically surrounded by imposing nations who want to take out the king and confiscate the promised land for themselves. I do pretty well with all of this until I find myself in the presence of people who I feel are forgetting even the most rudimentary words or actions of kindness and goodness in their lives. We were at the Costco earlier this week and as we were coming into the store entrance there were many old people, at least my age or older, who never expressed a word of thanks for the courtesy extended to them when others moved out of their way to make their journey out to their car a bit easier.  I hope God didn't search through me right then, I so desperately wanted to shame them for their sense of priority and entitlement! Forgive Me Lord! I am certain that David must have had these times too.

We need to remember that this Psalm is not just about God searching us, it is also about what faithful people, like David come to depend on in this two-way relationship between the Creator and the created. In our journey with the Living Lord, we too have expectations, or maybe the word hopes would be better, that God will be steadfast in all that He has promised. So, we look for the faithfulness of God to his promises. We seek to feel assured of His commitment to us, and that is only possible when we have faith in God ourselves. If you have ever wondered where the phrase wanting someone to be "the apple of someone's (God's in this case) eye", here it is in Psalm 17. Like David, we often appeal to God for His deliverance and favor, but that is nearly impossible for someone who has no Spirit-given faith themselves. That appeal comes with our confidence in Jesus Christ when we ask for forgiveness for our sins and confess our failure to live as God would have us live. There we go, right back to David's boldness and willingness to have God search his very being and trust, and ours, which is just like it when we confess with confidences in Christ's willingness to forgive, setting our feet on the path of righteousness with the Father.  There is a piece of this psalm which we might find a little troubling. It is when David appeals to God for the destruction of evil perpetrators, AND THEIR FAMILIES! This really seems to fly in the face of Christian goodness and forgiveness of others, but we must remember the turmoil between nations in David's time, with thinking that if the father of a family is will to be an imperialist with regard to Israel sovereignty, then his people must also be in the same place, and in conflict, they too will need to be destroyed.  This is really the harshness of the Old Testament times. Could God have done it differently? Yes, by all means. But for the safety of His chosen people, this is how the events of this time in the world unfolded. So, David presents himself with a better morning and a better life when God acts on his behalf, and on the behalf of his people. How do you open each new day? Do you see it as just another awful time to get through? Or do you see it filled with the possibilities of our God who is faithful in all of His promises to bring abundance into our living in this new day?

Thanks for being with me this morning. The God who loves His whole Creation is with each of us all day today, and always.

With love in Christ, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Tuesday Bible Study on Paul’s letter, 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12 (May 6, 2025)

May 6, 2025:  Tuesday Bible Study on Paul’s letter, 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12

Good morning my dear weekday morning Bible studiers.

Today we move forward with more of Paul's guidance for the new Christians in Thessalonica. Yesterday's study was basically about the problems that the culture of the Thessalonians might tempt these newest Christians to fall back into their old practices of sexual impropriety. In that part of Paul's letter, Paul is attempting to overcome a movement in the area of Thessalonica and Greece in which those who were spreading the ideas of Hellenization believed and said that marriage was an unimportant part of the relationships between people, which tended to encourage intimacy outside of marriage, or sexual activity practiced in some cults that would be regarded as completely inappropriate for any person who was living through faith in Christ.  We need to take note that at the time of this writing Paul does not talk about justification through grace and faith in Jesus Christ, nor does he really raise the issue of forgiveness through the resurrected Christ. That's coming from Paul, perhaps most especially because Paul only needed to look around at the world's temptations to understand that Christ's forgiveness of sin (which He accomplished through His death on the cross) was going to be crucial in the lives of the faithful who were saved through their belief in Christ, but who, like all of us, would act sinfully, even in the face of the overwhelming Grace of Christ to transform brokenness into wholeness.  

(Just a note here…) I am kind of pushing on today because of my specialist appointment for my prostate cancer later this morning.

In our reading for today Paul once again speaks about the need for always appropriate hospitality, and that the Thessalonian Christians are doing a really good job at this, by providing for the needy and destitute as those issues became a reality in their midst. In other words, within their community of believers. But Paul says there must be more! Such a sense of giving for the benefit of people must become a complete part of their ministry and lives. Today we can give to World Hunger, and sometimes we do give through holiday  challenges to stretch out our giving, we give a generous gift to CROP for food advocacy and for providing through the community food bank the resources of food assistance for those in our county, we give  flocks of chickens, some herds of goats, and even pigs through our generous offerings, we help the destitute and our own members through the discretionary fund in our church office, and we bring nonperishable food for the food cart, while at some times of special need we appeal for peanut butter, or other specific food items that bring our Christian care into the lives of people.  God presents us with all kinds of opportunities, both big, and small, to make this a greater part of our lives in Christ. That is what Paul is asking of the Thessalonians too. Paul also speaks of believers living in peace with others, and quite frankly, it is the call on our lives from Christ that all believers should be peace makers. How are we all doing at that my friends and faithful ones? Gossip is a great destroyer of Christian communities, and even the most faithful can succumb to sharing "juicy" information about someone, or something! Paul says believers should mind their own business. How True! When I first came to our congregation, we would, at fellowship events, always have a table of whisperers who were talking about others in the church, and in the community. What damage this group of people did! The cure for this is apparently to stay busy doing Christ Things in our lives. Help provide meals for others when they are laid up, bake treats to give away at church, or to people you may not even know. Do property work around our church home. Make cold weather shawls for people to use when worship is a little too cold. Bring a can of soup for the food cart. Share a meal with someone you don't know, or don't know well. I must admit I see these things happening quite often in our congregation. We even have members who provide veggies on Sundays, boxes of them! Free for the taking! All of this style of faithful living is truly an attractive message all on its own for those who may not be believers. These things are really the message that touches the heart of people around us. When we, like the Thessalonians, live transformed by the gift of the Spirit, with an exuberant faith lived every day in the care we offer for all people. I don't know about you, but my heart hurts when I witness the failure of good people to be the living Christ in the lives of others, but when I can do that myself, and I see the good people of faith doing it, my heart is filled with joy in our loving Lord Jesus. 

Please hold me in your prayers this AM as I get to my specialist appointment.

With the Love of Christ, Pastor Kim