Wales' Tales July 28,2014

Once in a while the world seems to be

A cauldron of horror and vice,

A place where no child should ever be

Born, because it’s just not very nice.

There’s bombings and murders,

Corruption and pain,

Planes blowing way up in the sky,

Where armies and rebels continue to fight

And everyone just wonders why.

Then earthquakes, tornadoes, and drought

All appear

Taking their toll as they move,

Hurricanes, wild fires, landslides and floods,

As if they had something to prove.

Yet in the beginning, the Lord said,

“It’s good!”

“It’s Just what I want it to be.”

A beautiful world filled with wonder and joy,

With mountains and valleys and sea.

The problem is often that we human beings

Are often the cause of the stress.

Our pride and our hubris can get in the way

Leaving everything else in a mess.

We think that we know how life should be lived

The ins and the outs of each day,

And for those assumptions , the thoughts that we have

End up making everyone pay.

We pay for pollution, for hunger and pain,

For abuse and excess and war,

We use God’s creation with hardly a thought

Then with nerve, ask for more.

Some day we may learn that God’s plan is complete,

When we follow, our trials will cease,

We’ll get to the point where we care for God’s world

And let God’s creation find…

                                                Peace,

Wales' Tales 7/21/14

When will we learn that war’s not good

For getting things under control?

That fighting and fear are poor excuse

When innocent lives are the toll.

No one has ever battled to get

Justice for all those involved.

No one has died in the fierce to and fro

Where the problems are finally resolved.

We’re led to believe that might is the source

Of bringing our wants into line,

But when it is used it rarely achieves

The stuff that we want to refine.

Hostility, anger, denial and pain

Are often the reason we fight

But rarely the answers that we truly seek

Are found in the use of our might.

More likely the winners pay such a high cost

That their triumph is muted at best,

And the loser will seek to discover a time

When the winner is put to the test.

The seesawing nature of war is the truth

That humans are prone to ignore,

Returning to violence time after time

In hopes of re-settling the score.

Yet God in God’s wisdom, has offered us peace

As a way to attain common gain,

To meet each one’s need, to save each one’s pride,

Without war and fighting and pain.

It means we must think, communicate more,

Seek ways that will bring us relief,

Examine our needs, forgive each one’s faults

And allow for our varied belief.

So if we accomplish the tasks that we set,

And make the hostilities cease,

We just might discover that God knows the way

To justice, to mercy and …

                                                Peace,

The Prodigal Sower

Facebook has a function where you can sort all your friends, and put them on different lists: close acquaintances, family, school, church, soccer team. Isn’t that how our brain works anyway? We see someone, and we classify them – we make assumptions about what we can see: race, gender, class, age, etc. We decide if they fit in with our world or not – if they are different from us, or the same as us. It makes life easier to have these shortcuts in our brain, these ‘friend lists’ to help categorize the people we meet and live around every day. 

Read Psalm 119:105-112 and Matthew 13:1-9,18-23.

In Matthew’s parable of the sower, as Jesus tells it, it is easy to jump to categorizing people into the four soils. We want to put us and the people we love into the ‘good soil’ category – the kind that receives the Word of God and bears abundant fruit, the kind that uses God’s word as a light unto our path as the Psalm says. As we think of the hard soil, the shallow soil, and the thorny soil, people probably come to mind that we would put into those categories. Someone who just won’t listen to the Gospel, or refuses to believe. Someone whose faith will not endure tough times, or who only shows up when it is convenient. Someone who gets so caught up in this world they lose sight of the kingdom of heaven. As with many lists, it becomes ‘us’ and ‘them.’ 

While Jesus spends a lot of time talking about the results of the different soil and the seed attempts, I wonder if this parable is not so much about the soils but about the sower. Most of us would come to the conclusion that the sower is a terrible farmer. Shouldn’t he be plowing the good soil before seeding it? Why is he wasting seed on bad soil where no good harvest will appear? What kind of reckless farmer would just throw seed out before checking it? Doesn’t he know what bad soil looks like? Can’t he see the birds are going to eat that seed? Shouldn’t he be spending all his seed on the good soil? This sower is a bad businessman, wastefully extravagant with his seed. 

And how lucky we are that our God, who sows the seed of Jesus Christ in our hearts, is a prodigal sower. The real truth is that categorizing people isn’t that easy. We all have days when we are more like shallow soil, or thorny soil, or hard soil, rather than the good soil we are called to be. How lucky are we that God doesn’t turn away from bad soil but instead shares his love extravagantly with all. This prodigal sower watched His son die while we were still sinners. This prodigal sower offers us grace time and time again, even when we don’t deserve it – especially when we don’t deserve it. 

 If God is a prodigal sower, then we too are called to be prodigal with the Good News. We too are called to waste the love of Jesus Christ on all types of soil, we too are called to this inclusive kingdom where all are given a chance to bear fruit. For maybe this prodigal sower is a better farmer than what we think. After all, the good soil bears thirty times, sixty times, a hundred times more than what was planted – a harvest beyond our wildest dreams. A small seed of grace and love on our part, empowered by the Holy Spirit, can forever change someone’s life. 

So are you ready to sow? Are you ready to see God’s kingdom as an inclusive area where all are welcome to experience the love and grace of Jesus Christ? Are you ready to be as prodigal with love and grace as our Sower is? Are you ready to help God’s seed reach even the broken places in the world? For the harvest is one that can transform the world – the harvest is one that will produce even more seed for our prodigal sower. And thanks be to God for Her prodigal love.

Grace and peace, 
Pastor Kate

Wales' Tales - July 7,2014

Time to go to school again

To see what I can learn.

Time to sit in classroom seat,

The late night candle burn.

Time to stretch my mind a bit,

To think new thoughts and old,

To contemplate the universe

Where space and dark are cold.

To spread my arms in joyousl flight

To let my mind fly free.

To climb the lofty mountain top

To see what I can see.

For some the thought of going out

To learn is just a waste,

More fun to sit before the Tube

And drink beer by the case.

But there’s a special time each year

When I will take the chance

Of breaking free of what I know

To learn a different dance.

To move and sway to different beat,

To find another tune

Discovering that those daring thoughts

Might cause the weak to swoon.

There just might be a dreary hall

That I have never seen,

Or maybe just might be a new idea

That makes my mind more keen.

To take the time to go and learn

Is more than just a jaunt,

When one stops learning on the way,

Old thought begin to haunt

The dusty places in our minds

That need to be renewed,

Require exercise and pace

Our prejudice reviewed.

For we are never smart enough

To let our learning cease,

In God’s whole world there is so much

That offers us God’s…

                                                Peace,