There's a church in the valley by the wildwood...

So today some of my friends posted a picture of themselves in front of a little country church with the caption, "The church in the wildwood."  Our church isn't exactly in the wilderness, but it's in the country and a sweet little place you'd hear that song. In fact, we sang it Sunday. 

It's appropriate because today, I'm gonna preach!  No, seriously I'm not "preaching" but I have prepared a "sermon" of sorts based on last week's lectionary passages. It was Pentecost Sunday and with that in mind, let me refer you to the biblical passages of the lectionary: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%202:1-21; https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ps%20104:24-104:35; and https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jn%2014:8-14:27. 

When I read these three passages I looked for a common theme and here is what I find:  glorify God. We are His creation and He rejoices in His creation. Our job is to bring Him glory. How do we do that? That's in the passages too:  we praise Him and obey His commandments. Jesus said in the passage from John that those who love Him will keep His commandments. I didn't really understand this until I had children. Then I realized that my rules for my kids were for their protection. And so were many of God's rules for us. One example is "Thou shalt not covet."  Yeah. I know. We ALL covet. Maybe we don't covet our neighbor's wife... Maybe instead we covet his Corvette or his bass boat or his lake frontage or something else, but coveting is part of our nature. But God said not to covet. Isn't life easier when we don't spend our time worrying about keeping up with the Joneses?  God had our best interest in mind when He made that commandment, and the others too. 

Jesus said that for those He loved, who loved Him, He would send the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, to dwell within us. And the  power of the Holy Spirit is great. We can't do a lot on our own but Jesus said if we ask in His name we can do all the things He could do. Remember some of those things, like healing lepers and blind people and crippled people??? He said all we have to do is ask. In His name. Now if we ask in Jesus' name we need to be asking for something Jesus would approve of, don't you think? Like healing or something else to - you guessed it, to glorify God.  So remember that. We have the power, He gets the glory. Amen!