Grandmother’s Table

Food will not bring us close to God 1 Corinthians 8:1-13  I have to say, there are times (in certain instances) when I beg to differ with Paul. Some years ago my two young sons and I visited my paternal grandmother in South Carolina. We arrived around 9:00 pm having gotten lost because the roads were very dark and I kept missing my turn. I made sure I called to let her know our ETA so she would not worry. Much to my surprise when we got there she was in the kitchen frying chicken! Being August, it was 90+ degrees. She had prepared a full meal and my sons and I were quite grateful. My grandmother cooked everyday we were there. At my grandmother’s table, we sat, talked and laughed. Surely, heaven must be like this! Perhaps it wasn’t the food, but it certainly helped to create a different kind of presence of being. My grandmother’s name was Esther.  (Click on the name to know more) She is gone today but her table is never forgotten.

Isaiah 55:13

Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
   instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;
and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial,
   for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. 

Perceiving A New Thing

“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” John 9:1-17   As we near the end of the Lenten season, hopefully whatever we’ve focused our attentions away from in order to draw closer to God, we are better able to experience God’s plan and provisions for living. We begin to realize that what we perceive as dependence on God is more like natural instinct towards his presence within us. To define our relationship as dependence causes us to look for blame either within ourselves or someone else when things don’t work out the way we believe they should. The reality is that something is always being worked out. We are not the only ones to whom God is in relationship. While our decisions play some part in what does and does not happen, instinctively we praise, instinctively we repent, instinctively we reconcile ourselves and instinctively we know that God is working it out not just for us but through us as well.

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him…” John 9:1-17

Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? Isaiah 43:16-21