Grow! Pray! Study! Daily Guide from the United Methodist Church
of the Resurrection - Thursday, 30 January 2014 – "We preach Christ
crucified"
Daily Scripture: 1 Corinthians 1: Christ the Power and Wisdom of
God
18 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who
are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it
is written,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of
the discerning I will thwart.”
20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is
the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21
For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God
decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who
believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, 23 but we proclaim
Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but
to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and
the wisdom of God. 25 For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and
God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
Reflection Questions:
Paul declared a message he himself acknowledged was
"foolish" to some and "scandal" to others. He preached
Christ crucified as a life-changing physical and spiritual fact, though he knew
no PR person or mythmaker would try to impress Greeks, Romans or Hebrews with a
crucified savior. He relied on God's power to change people's lives and
thinking. He trusted that God's wisdom and strength were greater than this
world's—and they were!
Imagine you have paid good money to attend a great concert
pianist's performance, but the pianist walks on stage with his hands tied
behind his back. What would you think? When Paul said Jesus was the world's
Lord and Savior, even though the Romans crucified him, his hearers would have a
similar reaction: "that makes no sense"! Jesus saving the world
through the cross was (and is) a completely counterintuitive message. In what
unexpected, unimaginable ways has God worked in your life? In the lives of
others you know?
Paul knew his message was "foolishness" to the Greeks
and "scandal" to the Jews (verse 23). Just telling the story seemed
to invite people to mock. The message seemed so weak, yet it carried God's
power. Verse 25 stated Paul's conclusion: God's weakness is greater than human
strength; God's foolishness is greater than human wisdom. In what part(s) of
your life today do you need to trust that God's strength and wisdom is greater
than yours?
Today's Prayer:
Dear God, I am grateful that your strength and wisdom are
greater than the world's! I need your strength and wisdom. I can't do
everything on my own. Help me to trust you and depend on you in all areas of my
life. Amen.
Thursday, 30 January 2014 – Insight from Janelle Gregory
Janelle Gregory serves on the Resurrection staff as a Human
Resources Specialist.
If you ever find yourself flying south of Lima, Peru, make sure
to look out the window to view the 190 square miles of ginormous, ancient
geoglyphs known to the world as the Nazca Lines. Believed to be created between 300 BC and 650
AD, these gigantic figures of everything from monkeys to birds to people to
artistic designs were created by the Nazca people by scraping away reddish
pebbles and uncovering the whitish ground beneath.
Scholars have long been puzzled by the purpose of this early
artwork. Why would a people go to such painstaking work to create designs that
could only be partially seen atop surrounding foothills and fully seen
centuries later by flight? Multiple theories have been proposed. Perhaps they
marked irrigation lines. Maybe they were meant to communicate their pleas to
the gods for fertile land. Others have
thought they map out constellations or the dark spaces between the stars.
But one of my favorite and certainly one of the most fascinating
theories behind the lines comes from Erich von Daniken in his 1968 book
“Chariots of the Gods”… alien landing strips. No, really. Because doesn’t it
make sense that extraterrestrial beings would fly over a land, shouting down
instructions to the villagers (in their native tongue none-the-less) to carve
out large designs in the shapes of monkeys and such so that they could land
their U.F.O.s? Perfectly plausible, right?!
The absurdity of concept makes me giggle and hypothesize about
the possible substances that may have aided von Daniken in his speculations. It
was the 60’s after all.
Yet in my mocking of space invader suppositions, I’d be remiss
not to examine and ruminate over my own beliefs as a Christian. While growing
up in the faith has given me the advantage of understanding certain aspects to be
true, there’s a lot of what we believe that to the unknowing ear sounds a bit…
well, frankly it sounds downright wacky – like alien landing strip wacky.
I mean, really – mysterious, spiritual conception in the body of
a virgin of a God who would become a human; be born with the animals; work
against and not with the religious rulers of the day; perform outlandish
miracles like giving sight to the blind and raising people from the dead; would
be ridiculed by the crowds; die as a criminal; come back from the dead; and
live in an unknown world beyond this dimension where He rules with his Heavenly
Father who, by the way, is also actually Him along with an invisible Spirit who
helps to personally comfort and guide people to this day through “nudges” and
voices that can’t be heard. To be honest, I think I’d be more inclined to
believe in alien landing strips.
If you’re looking for your religion to fall within any sort of
realm of normalcy or regularity, you’ve certainly taken a wrong turn somewhere
along the Boulevard of Beliefs. In no way does Christianity make sense. In
fact, a lack of faith would seem to make a lot of sense.
That is, unless the wacky faith that we believe just happens to
be true. It’s in that light that the very things that are perceived to be
preposterous find an unexpected beauty. There is strength in worshipping a
powerful God who humbles Himself as a servant. There is comfort in knowing that
our Savior understands the pain amidst suffering. There is hope from a Redeemer
who refuses to be bound by the confines of life and death. In no way do these
things make sense, but in every way do they make life.
We have to be open to the realization that God will frequently
be surprising. As Soren Kierkegaard pointed out, “the movements of faith must
constantly be made by virtue of the absurd.” Trouble arises when we expect God
to make sense, even within our own understanding of Christianity as many of the
essential aspects of our faith first appear to be zany. If we know anything
about the way God works, we will embrace that He often moves in ways that are
unpredictable, ludicrous, and occasionally downright wacky.
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United Methodist Church of the Resurrection
13720 Roe Avenue
Leawood, KS 66224 United States
(913)897-0120
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