Love and the righteousness of Christ

Beginning this week I am going to be adding a post a week about some piece of content I teach on Sunday mornings at First Alliance Church in Erie, Pa, during Sunday School or our community life group as it is called here. Today will be the beginning of the book of Philippians Chapter 1:1-11.

Paul’s prayer in chapter one is of particular interest to me.

“And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless on the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”

The word ‘love’ pops out at me. Here love is very active and informed. Not mushy love; a communal, uniting, familiar kind of love. Laden with meaning, it caries with it this knowledge of spiritual truth and the ability to make good moral decisions. So that, the people of God would look more and more like Jesus and less and less like the pagan. An issue we struggle with even today. They would live transparently in the midst of an opaque world. Overflowing or filled with the evidence, fruit, that Christ has taken their sins and substituted them for his righteousness, ‘to the praise and glory of God’. To unite these people to each other and to Christ. To be the good work begun in each of them which is being completed in them by the God who created them and made them new.

It is a rich prayer for their day and for ours.

Pepper anyone

One of the activities I enjoy is gardening. Living in Erie has taught me to enjoy the sun, grass and even bugs while they are around because the winter will be long and very cold. I enjoy the process of growth and production. Seeing a tiny seed grow into a mature plant able to produce fruit or vegetable. This year I planted a few pepper plants. They were all supposed to be different colors and shapes and sizes. At first, they were all green and I thought I had been taken by the seed distributor, but I soon found out green meant it wasn't ripe. I also found out I had planted half a dozen orange pepper plants. So, today I pulled in the ripe peppers. I showed Michelle the dozen or so orange peppers I had grown and she suggested we can them. Ordinarily we would eat them, but my plants are not showing any sign of slowing down and I still have many more turning ripe. The canning process is very interesting to me having grown up in a house were we bought things canned but never canned our own. I always thought it was something for someone else to do and that it was so complex only skilled professionals could get vegetables in a can. I am very grateful for my wife who just looks at me as though I am the one who grew up in the middle of no where and then shows me how to put pepper slices into little glass jars so we can have orange peppers in the winter. It reminds me of the seasons we all have in life. The times of plenty and the times of very little. I am very grateful for the people who have walked with me in the hard times and reminded me of the changing of the seasons as we await another harvest.

the journey begins

It is hard to say the journey begins when you are in the middle of living life with 4 small children and a wonderful wife. Even so, the ground feels fresh and expectant. Twin baby boys have a way of making the days feel longer and two small energetic daughters have a way of brining the sunshine inside. Emma has started saying "hi" to everything she can... the dog, her dolls, the door, her blanket, people we pass when we are out. Ordinarily it isn't anything to smile about but when it is your daughter and you are observing her emergence into a speaking world... it's wonderful.

This is why I am beginning my blog. There are so many wonderful stories in life we allow to go untold. Can a few minutes and a blog make this world beautiful? I hope so. I am certain this blog will be full of me and I hope a lot of you. I invite you to share you journey with me as I share mine with you.