The Meyer Minute

The Meyer Minute for March 31, 2014

Was it Herman's Hermits who sang, "Somethin' tells me I'm into something good?" That's the way I'm feeling this Monday.  It's opening day for major league baseball. Play ball!

It’s another sign of spring, this year spring coming slowly.  Go through your town and see kids on bikes, joggers, and leaves knowing it’s time for them to come out.  Hyacinths, daffodils, forsythia, blossoms on fruit trees…  “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”  (Genesis 8:22)

Sure, we've got worries, national and personal too.  But there are things like sports and spring, and...you add to the list...things that are little and wonderful, given to you from the hand of God.  Dr. Stephanie VanUlft is a psychiatrist who tells her patients that when they're in a bad mood they should make a list of all the good things in their lives.  It’s not God who makes us gloomy.  Our Father has not limited His goodness to you to Sunday’s announcement of the forgiveness of sins, as essential as that is.  He is the giver of all good gifts.

Enjoy the day; play ball!

The Meyer Minute for March 28, 2014

The Muslims are coming!  What are we Christians going to do?

Dr. Abjar Bahkou, Lecturer in Arabic at Baylor University, spoke yesterday at Concordia Seminary.  He identified topics where the Bible and Qur’an seem similar but are essentially different.  For example, the Qur’an calls Jesus “Messiah” but not with the same understanding we attach to that title.  Both religions talk about salvation and heaven but Muslims are never sure of their salvation because theirs is a religion of works.  Have I done enough good works to please God?  Christianity is different because the Bible teaches that salvation is a gift from God.  Justification is imputed to us, not earned.

Dr. Bahkou ended his lecture saying it’s not about winning a religious struggle.  It’s not about winning a debate.  It is about the “foolishness of the cross” (1 Corinthians 1:22-25).  “In your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.”  (1 Peter 3:15)  Getting to know what other people believe helps make our worship more meaningful.

The Meyer Minute for March 27, 2014

Garbage out; God in… That’s what happens when I take daily quiet time.  If I don’t take daily quiet time, the day often overwhelms me.  You too?  “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)

Have you noticed the blessed detachment quiet meditation can bring?  Not an Amish detachment, like I have no involvement with the world.  I do have a stake in so much that’s going on and I follow many things intently.  This detachment I experience is a deep, below the surface peace.  If God's eye is on the sparrow, as the Gospel hymn puts it, His eye is also on me, for good.  So whatever things are happening, good or ill, are relevant but finally external to my soul.  "Body here yet soul above,” says another hymn.

"When anxiety was great within me, Your consolation brought joy to my soul” (Psalm 94:19).

An elderly pastor told about swimming in the pond when he was a kid.  Sometimes the water was agitated at on the surface but diving down he found that all was calm.  “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you.” (Isaiah 26:3)

The Meyer Minute for March 26, 2014

Suffering…  Sometimes we bring it on ourselves, deserving it.  Other times we don’t.  Are you ever slandered or shunned because you live as a Christian?  “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.  He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.  When he was reviled, he did not revile in return.” (1 Peter 2:21-22)  Jesus is our example.  When He was sinned against; He didn’t sin back.   

But you must let Jesus be more than example.  If you’re drowning, you don’t need an instructor to teach you how to swim.  If you’re trapped in a burning house, you don’t need a lecture about smoke detectors.  You need to be saved.  First and foremost Jesus is our Savior.  He rescues us from the eternal consequences of our sins.  That’s suffering we have deserved!  “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.  By his wounds you have been healed.”  (2:24) 

Whatever comes, not ashamed of Jesus!   “To this you have been called.”

 

The Meyer Minute for March 25, 2014

“With the Lord, one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”  (2 Peter 3:8)  Oh, but how we have become accustomed to getting our information right now, to live in the moment!  “Slow” God gets left behind.

King William III of England died on March 8, 1702, but the news traveled so slowly back then that the American colonies didn't hear of their king's death until May.  The first battles of the American Revolution took place on April 19, 1775, but the Georgia Gazette didn't get the news until May 31st (Mitchell Stephens, A History of News, p. 220). Today wars and rumors of war come to you in real time.  You can be so overwhelmed with facts that you don't take time to put it all in a greater, long-term perspective.

"The latest news, reader, arrived a little more than a fortnight ago" wrote the New York Evening Post on June 1, 1814 (p.  216).   God's news, older than a fortnight, is a good way to put the daily tsunami of news into perspective.  “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him.” (Psalm 37:7)

The Meyer Minute for March 24, 2014

Carol Pause passed away over the weekend.  Well up in years, she had been one of my Sunday School teachers.  We were blessed with many excellent Sunday School teachers, and “Miss Pause” was among them.  Looking back, what was it that made her and Sunday School a formative and valuable part of my childhood?

I remember my parents talking with some adults about parents who didn’t send their children to Sunday School.  Those parents said their children got religion during the week by attending parochial grade school.  Well, I got religious instruction big time in that Lutheran grade school; so what good was Sunday School for me?

Two things: First, it showed me how much Miss Pause and the other teachers loved the Bible, loved church, and they loved us kids enough to be our teachers.  Second, Sunday School introduced me to other children who attended public school, great kids with whom we became friends.  That all is to say, faith in God is not just about head knowledge but also about heart and relationships.  Carol Pause and Sunday School did that for me.  You can read about it in Matthew 22:34-40. 

The Meyer Minute for March 20, 2014

How does God show His love for the world?  I asked that and one seminarian answered, “Through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”  “Yes,” I said.  “Any other ways?”  A little talking led to the answer, “Through government.”  God intends His care to come to all people through church and also the state, each in its own way.

16-year-old Pierre Childs was the innocent victim of a shooting last May 7 but no arrest was made.  Pierre’s grandmother was tense when a detective sat down with her but her mood eased when Rev. Maurice McIntosh walked in.  She knew and trusted him.  “People seem to want to listen to a minister rather than someone from the homicide unit,” said Lt. Fred Turner.  “There’s a spiritual side of people that comes out in these situations.” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 16, 2014)

A Concordia seminarian has volunteered to work with the St. Louis Police Department.  Last Friday he rode with officers, went to three shooting scenes, and provided a calm, unarmed presence for police and citizens alike.   Separation of church and state?  Sometimes, but there are times God’s love comes best when both work together.

The Meyer Minute for March 19, 2014

From the old King James Bible: “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people…”  (1 Peter 2:9)  Peculiar?  Yup, that other person sure is peculiar, very strange, doesn’t fit in.  But did you ever wonder if people think that you’re peculiar?  They should, if you are truly a follower of Jesus.

You are “peculiar” when you belong exclusively to some person or group.  That’s the meaning here, not that we Christians are weird but that other people see that we belong to the God and belong to one other.  A newer translation, the English Standard Version, puts it this way: “But you are a chosen race, a holy nation, a people for His own possession.” 

In  verse 10 Peter tells why we’re different: “In time past (you) were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.”  God gives us His mercies, another old word that means His loving-kindnesses.  People are people but God’s mercies in Christ lead us to realize that we are a special people.  Follower of Jesus, you are not normal.  You’re peculiar!

The Meyer Minute for March 18, 2014

In “Mission at Nuremberg,” Tim Townsend describes Army Chaplain Henry Gerecke’s ministry to the likes of Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Albert Speer, and others.  The Army asked if he’d serve because he had ministered in jails, spoke German, and was Lutheran, as many of the criminals nominally were.  No easy decision because he had seen the atrocities of war and had visited Dachau, but knowing his faith intimately, he said, “I’ll go.”

It reminds me of Rev. Uwe Holmer who agreed to temporarily house deposed East German dictator Erick Honecker and his wife Margot.  That was not an easy decision either, but Rev. Holmer’s children said it was the Christian thing to do.  Though he was criticized by some, as was Rev. Gerecke, he did it because he understood what forgiveness is and what it is not.

Tim Townsend writes, “The Nuremberg chaplains were not judging the members of their flocks.  Nor were they forgiving their crimes against humanity.  They were trying to lead those Nazis who were willing to follow toward a deeper insight into what they had done.” Is Lent leading us to a deeper understanding of who we truly are?

The Meyer Minute for March 17, 2014

“I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls,” wrote St. Paul to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 12:15).  That’s what St. Patrick did.  Born in England in the 4th century, young Patrick was kidnapped by pirates and sold into slavery in Ireland.  He escaped, studied theology, and returned to Ireland as a missionary.  Tradition says Patrick established 300 churches and baptized 120,000.

To spend and be spent was true of Joseph.  He, too, was sold into slavery in a foreign land and he, too, did good to his brothers who had wronged him.  "It was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you” (Genesis 45:5).

The greatest example is Jesus, "who, being in a very nature God...made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant.  He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross!" (Philippians 2:6-8). Unlike Joseph and St. Patrick, Jesus is more than example.  He took the form of a servant, a slave to the point of death for our forgiveness and eternal salvation.  Does this Savior so live in us that we will totally spend ourselves and be spent for others?