Living With My Enemy

Yesterday I wrote about Sugar as my worst enemy now I am thinking about how I have had to learn to live with my enemy sugar. It is scary what too much sugar does to the human body and it starts early. To begin with even in children it rots the teeth. If you do not use it in exercise it adds fat to the body and clogs blood vessels. Over all it upsets the balance in the body.

Because of all the hidden sugars even in the most unexpected places I have to test my blood sugar levels every day and if they are high three times a day. This involves pricking my finger for a drop of blood and using a meter to collect it and test it. I got use to the prick but it still hurts. If I get high readings I have to go back and check on what I ate and see where the sugar came from. Then that item goes on my “Do Not Eat” list.

I have also had to up my exercise levels to use up excess sugar and sometimes that is not possible so I have to use creative efforts to do it. Lot of up and down the basement stairs. To day there is cold, snow and ice so I am not getting out for my usual walks and swimming. Living with my enemy is something I have to be aware of every day and I miss the good old days when I didn't think about it but should have.

People the enemy is all around us and is trying to kill us slowly. Be aware be very aware.

My Worst Enemy

I became addicted at a very early age, most likely inutero as my mother was also addicted before I was born. Everyone thought that my now enemy was a good friend that was helpful but it was killing us all very slowly. Ads on radio and television touted its benefits and encourage more and more use of it.

If you think I am talking about smoking you are wrong. My worst enemy is SUGAR! Do you remember the cereal ads for sugar corn pops and sugar frosted flakes? The cereals are still there but they dropped sugar from the label. Now they do not brag about the sugar in our food, they try to hide its presence in ever greater amounts.

I grew up in a house that always had cokes and other soda pops in six ounce bottles containing two cups of sugar. Now you get two liter bottles and big gulp cups. Today there are several kinds of added sugars in almost everything. Check the labels and find them but you often have to know the technical words for sugar like dextrose and fructose to find them. To purchase food with sugar left out you have to pay more money. Imagine that they leave out an ingredient and charge you more.

Ten years ago I found out that I have diabetes and now most of the foods I loved are like poison to me because they contain so much sugar. I haven’t had a coke or big red in a very long time. We have switched to cooking using raw natural foods and no sugar. Still it is a hard battle against my worst enemy.

Communion on the Moon

Many of us are not aware of this story. I didn't know this, but it's awesome!
Communion on the Moon: July 20, 1969 (This is an article by Eric Metaxas)

Forty-five years ago two human beings changed history by walking on the surface of the moon. But what happened before Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong exited the Lunar Module is perhaps even more amazing, if only because so few people know about it. "I 'm talking about the fact that Buzz Aldrin took communion on the surface of the moon. Some months after his return, he wrote about it in Guideposts magazine. And a few years ago I had the privilege of meeting him myself. I asked him about it and he confirmed the story to me, and I wrote about in my book, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God (But Were Afraid to Ask).

The background to the story is that Aldrin was an elder at his Presbyterian Church in Texas during this period in his life, and knowing that he would soon be doing something unprecedented in human history, he felt he should mark the occasion somehow, and he asked his minister to help him. And so the minister consecrated a communion wafer and a small vial of communion wine. And Buzz Aldrin took them with him out of the Earth's orbit and on to the surface of the moon.

He and Armstrong had only been on the lunar surface for a few minutes when Aldrin made the following public statement: "This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, # $ whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way." He then ended radio communication and there, on the silent surface of the moon, 250,000 miles from home, he read a verse from the Gospel of John, and he took communion. Here is his own account of what happened: "In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the scripture, 'I am the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing.'

"I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last minute [they] had requested that I not do this. NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray O'Hare, the celebrated opponent of religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon at Christmas. I agreed reluctantly. "I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility.

It was interesting for me to think the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements." And of course, it's interesting to think that some of the first words spoken on the moon were the words of Jesus Christ, who made the Earth and the moon - and Who, in the immortal words of Dante, is Himself the "Love that moves the Sun and other stars." How many of you knew this? Too bad this type news doesn't travel as fast as the bad does.

An Auspicious Prayer

I have marveled at the power of “The Lord's Prayer” every time I say it. Most Christians say it every Sunday during worship and sadly we say it by rote. Every Sunday we repeat it with the rest of the congregation without thinking about what it means. All the way through the words have great meaning and we just say them because everyone else is saying them.

There is a phrase that should stop us in our tracks and say “Now wait a minute!” It is that part where we ask God to forgive us in the same way we forgive others. Most of us need more mercy than that. How many people carry a grudge around all their lives. Unforgiving and angry we condemn someone who hurt us in some way. Often we hold others who are different from us as guilty of the sins of their people. Some hate other people only because their parents hated them.

Yet Jesus teaches us to pray “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” You can put in Debts or Trespasses as you are accustomed but it comes out to sins all the same. It begs the question “How can we be forgiven if we do not forgive?” The answer is we can not for the hatred, anger, grudge or spite put a barrier between us and God. The non-forgiveness becomes our sin that is not forgiven as long as we hang on to it.

Think twice before you say The Lord's Prayer for it is an auspicious prayer.

Always Be Prepared

The old Boy Scout in me remembers the motto: “Be Prepared.” There were never any limits for that motto we were trained to be prepared for anything and everything. We are to be physically prepared, mentally prepared and spiritually prepared for all of our life.

I was thinking about that for my worship and devotion experience and about how that motto would apply for me today. In my prayers I need to focus my thoughts and center my spirit and make it ready to accept God’s Holy Spirit.

As part of my preparations I open my heart to feel the love of God for me and all humankind. In my open heart I share that love and express my love for all of God’s children.

With my centered spirit and open heart I then can open my mind and clear it of all the noise of my life. Now I can be ready to listen to God.
Being prepared is something this old boy scout does every day in my walk of faith.

Cain and Able?

I have been thinking about the many layers in the story of Cain and Able. I wrote about this sometime back in response to a question and thought it was time for an up date.

Is one sacrifice better than another? Perhaps it is more to the point of the attitude of the one offering the sacrifice. It says that Able offered the “First Fruit” or the best of his crop while Cain brings only an offering from his crop. This beggs the question for us today. "Do we give of our best – first fruits – in our offerings?" It does not matter what kind of offering if it is the best we have.

Able offered a blood sacrifice for the forgiveness of his sin, so he did acknowledged his fault before God. We do not know what that sin was and it is not important. His relationship with God was at peace. He died not because of his sin but because of his brother’s sin. I receive from that thought the concept that though my brother's sin is different than mine both our sins are the same before God,

Am I my brother’s keeper? I note here that Cain used that question as a means to deflect God’s question. How often do we dodge the real question about our sin?

Answering a question with a question is an old and well used tradition. Here is a clue to Cain’s problem not wanting to own up to his own responsibility for his actions in the way his offering was made and for the killing of his brother. Cain was selfish and self centered and it corrupted his relationship with God and that is the real issue of the story.

It is important for us that we are more concerned about our own relationship with God than to condemn someone else.

Who Was John the Baptist?

Sunday at Hurstbourne Christian Church Pastor Mike preached about the baptism from the Gospel of Matthew chapter three. The sermon was focused on Jesus but my mind went back forty years to my experience in seminary when I was assigned to write a paper on “Who was John the Baptist.”

At first I thought how am I going to come up with enough information about a wild preacher who eats bugs. I didn't think that there was all that much to know about the wondering preacher in the wilderness. But I was wrong! Between the Bible and Jewish history there is a lot of information for even a long paper. I was soon deep in historical research about John, his family and life. I looked at what all the Gospels said about him and was amazed.

According to to Luke, John came from a long line of priest and high priest of the family of Aaron the brother of Moses and the Hebrew's first High Priest. Even his mother was in the family of Aaron and was a cousin of Mary the mother of Jesus. Looking carefully at the story of John's father Zechariah we find him in the temple serving as a priest and conducting a very specific worship service for Israel. He is described as going alone into the sanctuary of the Lord to make in incense offering while all the others waited outside. That description says volumes for that event takes place once a year on the day of atonement and is only preformed by the High Priest in the Holy of Hollies.

It was then that Zechariah had a vision and was informed that he would have a son and would name him John. The boy would be a Nazarite dedicated to God. As son of a priest John would have been raised to be a priest for he was a priest by birth. Though the Bible does not tell us about his service in the Temple it is safe to assume that he took his turn a few times before he traded his priestly clothes for a coat of camel hair and went out of Jerusalem and into the wilderness.

I had always wondered why so many high ranking people went out to the Jordan river to hear him preach. Now I knew that he was a priest and the son of a high priest who could have become a High Priest who was preaching and baptizing people in the wilderness. Of course they went out to hear him preach in droves as they knew he was sent by God.

I am so glad that I was assigned that paper for it deepened my understanding about John the Baptist.