Pastor's Ponderings: Meandering through Mark 9:19-24 bible study (April 22, 2024)

Monday Morning Bible Study on the Gospel of Mark 9:19-24

Easter Blessings and Peace be with you today and every day.

This weekend we have a free movie at 2pm on Saturday. This is a first run movie which is great for kids and adults. Bring a snack or use the ones which we provide. I hope to see you there. Please continue to pray for Katie who was lost in the desert for five days and is now in intensive care as doctors work to help her body to recover from extreme loss of fluids. I thank God for your prayers for her. As our children in high school prepare for Prom, pray for them to be wise in their choices, and that they may be brought safely home at the end of this big evening in their lives. And please continue to pray for cancer victims, Jeff and Kandice.  Their doctors, though 1000s of miles apart, have said that their treatments are at best, difficult.

Jesus heals a boy who is possessed

Today we have another recounting of what happened when Jesus came off the Mount of Transfiguration, and back into His daily life, which included the 24/7 teaching and healing, and the crowding that happened every time he was in public situations. This time when Christ arrives, He is confronted by the father of a child who suffered from a serious seizure disorder. According to Mark the cause was a spirit. What really bums Jesus out, is that His disciples have, in His absence, been unsuccessful in curing this child whose body is possessed. We know exactly what He is thinking too. Not only are the people lacking enough faith to allow for the power of healing to cure this boy, but the disciples themselves have failed in their attempt to bring healing to the boy, the faith of the boy's father has faltered too, and it failed, in all likelihood, due to the disappointment of the disciples, and the resulting loss of faith of the boy's father in that failure.  After His mountain top experience, Jesus, had chosen with determination that will now take Him to Jerusalem. His faith is humble and pure, but the people, these people, are in a wholly difference place in their faith, or lack of faith.  Christ is still not yet fully planted in their shaken hearts, they continue to look often for the affirmation for which the world looks for, proof. For these folks, faith alone will never be enough. We can hear the frustration, anger, and disappointment in Christ's Words. But now there is a young boy in front of him, and the wavering faith of his father, whose confidence in Christ has been shaken by the failure of the disciples. In this passage, Christ is called back into the world of people. This is no mountain top experience. It is here that Christ's compassion and power are restored. Though He is headed to His end on the cross, Christ now steps back to what He has done so well. He speaks His words of healing, and the power of illness that is in the boy is sent away. This is not only healing for the boy, but also healing and faith bringing for the boy's father, for the disciples, for those who have come running when Jesus has come down from the Mount, and dare I say it, for Jesus Himself.

With all of this taking place, Jesus offers His Truth for all of us. "All things are possible for the one who believes."  On the other end of the spectrum, "All things are possible with God, yet through lack of faith, we most often see them as impossible, and like the boy's father after the failure of the disciples, he is no longer certain of the healing that is possible, yet in the view of the world, impossible!  You and I often end up in the middle of this. Let's take our prayers for Katie to be found, but as the days passed, we grew more certain that God's answer would not be what we wanted, but what was likely from way we, and the world, experience this kind of getting lost in our desert.  And yet, the miracle of the answer to our prayers offered in faith for Katie's salvation and being found, was granted. It was in our faith that the impossible became the possible. Lord, we do believe, but help our unbelief. With God, all things are possible!

Pray Unceasingly every day for every situation. In Christ's love, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study on Nehemiah 1:1-4 (April 18, 2024)

April 18, 2024:  Thursday Bible Study on the Old Testament book of Nehemiah 1:1-4

May the Joy and Peace of Christ's Resurrection fill all of your days.

Today please pray for Letitia who was in a three-car accident on Houghton Road.  She is headed to the hospital to get checked over.  She has lots of Pain and soreness already, and as far as I know, her car was substantially damaged.  Her service Dog, Candy, was in the car, but uninjured. 

Please remember our Yard Sale at American starts tomorrow at 9am - 2pm, and then again on Saturday.  Thank you all for your donations, and for the time and effort too.  God bless each and every one of you.  Come see what we have, it might be something that you really need or want, or just come to say hello.  We are hoping to send a generous gift to the Kartchners in Hawaii. 

Old Testament book of Nehemiah

Today we step into the Old Testament text of Nehemiah.  This book and Ezra are often handled together.  In fact, they are present and contemporaries of one another about one hundred years after the first group of exiles headed back to Jerusalem so they could begin and hopefully complete the large undertaking of rebuilding the city and the Temple.  As we know, the biggest issue with which Ezra dealt was the blending of the peoples of the region in marriage and economy.  When Nehemiah receives word of the terrible conditions in Jerusalem, He too, like Ezra, prayers to God in distress over the lack of movement to restore the city and Temple.  Now thirteen years later, the protective wall is down, and some of it burned, and gates to the city are nearly destroyed.  I wonder if we will see in Nehemiah what became of the large sums of money and the furnishings of the temple which Ezra brought back with him.  It really does seem that by now, it should have been encumbered to do the work and hire laborers too.  But for Ezra the issue of purity of the faithful was the most important thing to be rectified.  In the opening of Nehemiah, we discover that even in the most western province of Persia, that little had been known about the struggles in Jerusalem.  Though it sounds, in this passage, like the condition of the city might be from it's destruction from the time of the Persian conquering of over 100 years ago, it may have been from really current regional and tribal issues. and since the entire region was under that hand of Persia, even the near west of the Persian kingdom had not yet heard the news about the Judahites, the bans on marriage and even foreign spouses and children who in recent years had been removed from the people of Israel's exile population, and then, knowing the tribal and regional issues, there were plenty of battles around Jerusalem, including those which may have come from families who's partners and children had been summarily removed from the population.  As we know from our own experience with our own southern border, and current masses of people who are coming north from South America and Central America to find hope and life improvements, there is such a wide and varied opinion about these people here in our nation, and yet in spite of what some Christian communities may think politically about this problem, or blessing, we must, in order to find the Word of God through Christ for these situations, realize that historically failing to treat immigrants humanely caused a breach between Israel and God.  Israel failed, and Judah too, because they chose dismissive and derisive care for the immigrant peoples in their midst.  But perhaps we will see through Nehemiah what must be done to overcome this failure.  But first, like Ezra, Nehemiah must come to God on the knees of his heart, broken and humbled before God due to the failures of leadership and faith on the part of the exiles.  What will come next as the people of God's election try again to get the resettlement right?

Happy Easter once again.   

In Christ's Love,    Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Meandering through Mark 9:14-19 bible study (April 16, 2024)

April 16, 2024:  Tuesday Morning Bible Study on the Gospel of Mark 9:14-19

Blessing and Peace be with you on this beautiful Spring Day here in Tucson.

We received really good new in our congregation yesterday, and we are thanking God for His love and care for the adult child of our members who was lost in the mountains for 5 days with no food or water. Yesterday she was found alive and transported to ICU severely dehydrated. We prayed and prayed as a congregation for this adult's safety, and the beneficent One of all of Creation, answered the prayers that we offered.

As Jesus and James, John, and Peter come off the Mount (Hermon?), they are confronted by a problem which could bring great strife to Christ's journey to the cross. In His absence on the Mount of Transfiguration, the disciples left behind are faced with the inability to heal a child who has seizures and is unable to speak. Such a failure could mean that many would become less faithful and would see Christ as what He had already been claimed to be, a charlatan.

Whether it was the disciples who had failed, or if Christ had come off the Mount, and not dealt with the problems which this presented for Himself  and the disciples, it could certainly have supported the Pharisees, and others who through all of the hype of the Nazarene and what he had been doing and teaching could have lost its hold on those now coming to believe.  From this passage we learn that it is clear that Jesus is ready now to face the remaining short journey to the cross. The conversation with Moses and Elijah on the Mount had helped Jesus to cement His resolve to continue on. In the Disney animation, "Onward!", the story is so similar. Two brothers who have been ridiculed by classmates, one for his wild behavior, the other for his extreme shyness, set out on a journey to magically restore their father's life for just enough time for his shy son who never knew him to meet him. They became both discouraged and determined in their quest, and though they were often isolated because of who they were, they found in one another how they could live their lives with love for one another. Jesus knew how to continue His pathway to the cross, and how to deal with the everyday issues which surrounded His shared ministry with the disciples. Though Christ journey was to save the whole of the world and creation, He was also able to focus completely on the needs of one person. Sometimes you or I are that one person on whom Christ focuses, even when the whole world is such a mess of complicating, and sometimes deadly encounters for all people, Jesus works in both places to get God's message across. I have read ahead, and we all need to know how much we are represented in our individual issues, and yet the Christ of God chooses to always be with us.

Next Monday we continue on in the Gospel of Mark 9:19-24. After what our family of faith has been through this past week, I was brought to tears by the words of the man who was the father of this child who he loved so much! more on Monday my good friends.

Please remember that American has a yard sale this Friday and Saturday from 9 to 2pm both days. We need help setting it up on Wednesday & Thursday from 10AM to 5PM.  We will be doing this on the patio. And we also need help on the sale days as well. Funds from this sale will be sent to the Kartchner family in Hawaii who are members of our church. Kandice has cancer which is extremely difficult to treat. She is now unable to work due to her health battle.

May God richly bless this sale for help for just one of His children, just as we will see Him do through Christ Jesus for the child with seizures and the inability to speak.

May God bless us all every day! Pastor Kim

Church Yard Sale Poster