Genesis 1:1-10

In the beginning You created the heavens and the earth. When the earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, Your Spirit hovered over the face of the waters. And You said, "Let there be light," and there was light. Then You said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." So You made the expanse and separated the waters under the expanse from the waters above it, and it was so. Then You said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered into one place, and let dry ground appear"; and it was so. And You saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:1-10)

Well done, good and faithful servant

As for me and my househol! d, we will serve the Lord. (Joshua 24:15)

By Your grace, I want to hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord.” (Matthew 25:21)

2 Corinthians 9:10

Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will
also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the
harvest of your righteousness.
-- 2 Corinthians 9:10

The Quarter Remembrance By Mike Cope

The Quarter of Remembrance by Mike Cope (reprinted)
I actually got to meet Dr. Channing Barrett, though I don’t remember the meeting because I was too young. But that doesn’t change my picture of him as a young man walking a marathon of miles every weekend. In my mind, I see him returning home to Blissfield, Michigan around the turn of the century.
Channing Barrett was one of eight boys and was the first ever in the Barrett family to go to college. From his medical school, he walked twenty-five miles home each weekend, always returning a couple days later with clean clothes, a food packet, and a dollar.
Dr. Barrett became one of the first ob-gyns in Chicago, practicing at Cook County Hospital. He was known widely both for his innovative surgical techniques and for his ambidextrous skills that allowed him to change hands during long procedures.
There was no patient whom he wouldn’t accept. He delivered many “tenement babies” for fifty cents and many babies for the wives of Mafia dons for a good bit more!
With a growing, respected medical practice, a wonderful wife, and three children, this young physician seemed to be living the idyllic life. He enjoyed riding horses and lifting weights, and was an early member of the Polar Bear Society–that “unique” group that takes to the chilly waters of Lake Michigan in January each year to prove–well, who knows what they’re trying to prove?
And then World War I interrupted this Norman Rockwell life. Dr. Barrett left Chicago to run a field hospital in France, followed shortly by his 17-year-old son, who fought in the trenches.
As long as he could, Barrett sent money back to his wife and daughters. But by the last year of the war, his funds were nearly exhausted. He had no more to mail home. Mrs. Barrett sold most of what they owned, trying desperately to keep her daughters fed and clothed without having to lose their house.
By the time Christmas rolled around in 1918, there were no presents to place under the tree. They were lucky to have a place to live.
But Mrs. Barrett had managed, despite all the financial scrimping, to save two quarters. So on Christmas morning, when the girls emptied their stockings, under the paper dolls their mother had cut out for them and under a couple pieces of candy, they each found a coin.
Previous Christmas mornings had been more lavish, filled with frilly dresses and expensive toys. And there would be more such mornings in the future. But this was the Christmas the family would always remember.
In the future, even during the years of plenty, when the girls emptied their stockings, they always found–under the apples, oranges, nuts, and candy–a quarter.
It was a reminder–a reminder that some years are good while others aren’t too good. Some years deliver new babies, promotions, raises, and great promises. Other years offer sickness, failure, death, and deep disappointment.
The quarter reminded them about both possibilities. It warned them not to write off all the pain of the past as if it didn’t exist. It taught them that the sorrows and wounds of their lives had shaped their characters as much as their joys and accomplishments.
Anyone who takes seriously the Christmas stories of scripture knows that the first Christmas had more than angels, shepherds, wise men, and a mother nursing her baby. There was also the anguish of childbirth. There were the pungent, impolite odors of an animal pen. There was an old man who held the baby and told his mother, “A sword will pierce your own soul too.” There were the voices of many mothers screaming for their baby boys being slaughtered by a demented ruler named Herod. There was a breathless escape to Egypt.
The entrance of God’s Son into the world meant peace–but it didn’t assure that people would get along. It meant great joy–but it didn’t mean we’d always be happy. And it meant unconditional love–though it never implied that everyone would act lovingly.
And so one family, year after year, continued dropping a quarter of remembrance into the bottom of each child’s stocking.
At least one of Channing Barrett’s children picked up that tradition. Every year through the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s, her five children, Dr. Barrett’s grandchildren, pulled their stockings off the chimney on Christmas morning to find quarters buried under fruit, nuts, and candy.
And at least one of those five passed it on to her four children. And at least one of those four is passing it on to his children.
The quarter has mysteriously tied this family together–binding even generations who never met. Together they have remembered that bad year in 1918 and other bad years since.- One year brought the safe birth of a new nephew; another brought the self-inflicted death of a relative who couldn’t keep fighting the demons of his life;- One year brought the thrilling news from the gynecologist that a baby was on the way; another brought the news from the pediatrician that the baby wasn’t developing right;- Some years brought joy; others brought deep, deep pain.
The quarter is a remembrance that the meaning of Christmas is deeper than our triumphs and sorrows. It is a joy that can’t fully be expressed, a peace that passes understanding.
For years my children have followed this tradition started by their Great, Great Grandmother Barrett. Together, we’ve experienced the love of God, woven through the fabric of good days and dark days.
Eleven Christmases ago the quarter represented a burden that was crushing our hearts. Not long before Christmas of 1994 our ten-year-old daughter, Megan, took her last breath in the pediatric ICU at Hendrick. Her death was surely the darkest moment in our lives. We felt very connected to Matthew’s Christmas story, the one that tells of “Rachel weeping for her children” (Matthew 2:17).
And then five Christmases later, our family returned to that grief, for in June of 1999 my brother’s son, Jantsen BARRETT Cope, died suddenly and unexpectedly after lifting weights with his high school football team. We barely survived as we gathered in my parents’ living room that Christmas without my nephew’s big, joyful laughs. Fifteen is too young to die. Our quarters were quarters of grief.
But by God’s grace, we have survived. We’re still together, we still love, we still hope, we still believe in that one who was born in Bethlehem.
This Christmas there is still that gaping hole of absence. And yet our quarters will also represent joy. For when people gave money as a memorial to Jantsen, my brother and sister-in-law prayed about a place to let that money be used in the name of Christ. Through a ministry of their church, they traveled to Vietnam to visit an orphanage. They only went intending to give money. But there in a foreign country, across an ocean, on soil where American and Vietnamese soldiers had died, my brother looked into the eyes of a little guy whose name was Vihn, but is now Van – Van Cope. A year later in the same place they looked into the eyes of a sweet Vietnamese girl who is now Tatum Cope.
As Randall Frame has written, “Christmas does not deny sorrow its place in the world. But the message of Christmas is that joy is bigger than despair, that peace will outlast turmoil, that love has crushed all the evil, hatred, and pain the world at its worst can muster.”
That’s why this Christmas Eve, late in the evening, my wife and I will slip a quarter into the bottom of the stockings of our boys and our daughter-in-law.
The quarter will always remind them of a story that is truer than life: that God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son. There in that simple manger in Bethlehem, “the hopes and fears of all the years” found their fulfillment. God had broken into a world of great darkness with the light of his Son.
And yet while the Kingdom of God came in Jesus Christ, we haven’t yet experienced it fully. That’s why the church has continued to pray for 2000 years, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” In the meantime, in the words of scripture, we groan, we long, we wait, we hope.
We live in the belief that our simple acts of kindness and giving are not without meaning because Christ has come. And we live in hope that one day the Lord Jesus will come again and all tears will be wiped from our eyes.
That’s the story of Christmas. I know it’s true. I’d bet you a quarter!

1 John 3

Now I am a child of God, and what I shall be has not yet been revealed. I know that when He is revealed, I shall be like Him, for I shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. (1 John 3:2-3)
This is God's commandment: that we believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as He commanded us. (1 John 3:23)
Those who obey Christ's commandments abide in Him, and He in them. And this is how I know that He abides in me: by the Spirit whom He has given me. (1 John 3:24)

Richard Kuhn: Return To Maker

Twas like a beacon in the night,
but, why three red lights shone so bright?
It felt like something was in the air,
and the dread filled thought - it needed repair.

When we read the owner's manual, the mocking words,
"Must be returned to Microsopft for repair" almost
gleamed out at you like those flashing lights on the
game console. I don;t know how they did it, but I
swore the word even sneered at you off the page.

This was beyond ANYTHING I could fix. It needed the
maker to fix it - or a complete replacement.

And that was the essence of Christmas, Jesus entered
life waiting in line - for us - so we could get a new
replacement on our terminally defective hearts.

And while I hate waiting in line for what seems like
forever, the X-Box replacement will cost me nothing
except my time.

OUR defect cost Him everything - and I will try and
meditate on that as I stand in line.

Matthew 6:19-21

'Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.' Matthew 6:19-21 NIV

I Am The Christ By Mike Cope

“I am of Christ.”
That sounds like such a nice descriptor. Others may claim to be of Paul, and others of Apollos (two influential teachers in Corinth) — but I am of Christ.
So why does one have the feeling that Paul didn’t have warm feelings about those who made that claim (1 Cor. 1:12)? Because there were schisms in the church in Corinth: maybe within the house churches, maybe between the house churches, perhaps when they all came together. And behind the schisms, there was a lot of pride at work and a dearth of love.
There were fracture lines appearing, partly because they were attached to their teachers in unhealthy ways (but ways that would have been familiar in Corinth).
But others, dripping in pride and exclusivism, were only “of Christ.”
That resonates with me. Because for part of my life I took pride in not being of Wesley or Calvin, of Luther, and certainly not of the Pope. Just a Christian.
The desire to be “just a Christ-follower” can be very healthy. But it must not become a source of separation from others whom we don’t deem to be just as pure; and it should not ignore the fact that we’ve been influenced by many men and women and of faith. None of us is completely objective. None of us is reading scripture without bias. None of us finds our place in the family of God by being perfect–either in living or in biblical interpretation.
As I lived in those words of Paul last week, it reminded me of how subtle and dangerous spiritual pride is. It is so well disguised, masquerading in costumes of restoration and humility.
Beware anytime there is a church or a group that thinks it has cornered the market on spirituality, interpretation, or missionality. Let us follow the leading of God’s Spirit as he helps us live for the sake of the world; but let us recognize that there are many, many other followers of Jesus who may worship differently, talk differently and think differently.

A Quiet Man

A Quiet Man

My father was a quiet man.
He didn't speak of his adventures, he didn't brag of his triumphs.
My father was a graduate of the Naval Academy.
The Naval Academy at that time was one of the most difficult of schools to get into. It is by invitation only, only the best of the best. It was by congressional appointment to the sons of the best and brightest our country had to offer.
My grandfather was instrumental in the cure for syphilis during world war one.
Back then; it killed almost as men as the Germans. Therefore earning the placement for my father to attend the Naval Academy to pursue a engineering degree.

Now, after graduation my father was denied his commission as an officer because he wore glasses and at that time before our entrance to the war the armed forces could still be kind of picky who they wanted commanding their ships.
When my father was called to active duty, he was 24. he was to fight in World War II, as the commander of a destroyer in the north Atlantic.

The German submarines at that point had decimated allied shipping, navies and ruled the seas.
There was no radar, there was no sonar, and you knew a submarine was around when its first torpedo hit you or your colleague.
My father watched as ship after ship went down around him. He rescued all the men he could but he watched many others die; the surviving ships often turned and headed home, battered and beaten.

My father, his best friend, and a group of other ship captains came up with the combat convoy formation they still use today. One that would offer some protection to some of the ships and they went out yet again, to avenge with murderous intent.
The war was starting to turn by then, but the German navy still dominated the seas.
The Nazis decided to launch a huge winter offensive; they were counting on the weather, Mother Nature to assist them.
They were relying on weather reports from a submarine in the north Atlantic to launch and to facilitate their attack and victory.
Equipped with their new combat formation and our newest technology, a most basic radar and sonar my father detected the nazi sub.
For three days they hunted the sub, playing cat and mouse or "search and attack" off the coastline of Europe, then a sister ship reestablished contact with the new underwater sound equipment.
Commander James M. Irvine directed his ship into the field of fire and launched his depth charge attacks. The sinking of this sub was a key part in our victory in "The battle of the bulge", contributing materially to sealing our victory in WW2,
My father was awarded the Legion of Merit with the combat V, the third highest award our navy awarded.
The war for him was not over yet, on his last mission, he forced the surrender of another nazi sub, and escorted it back where it is on display in the Chicago museum of science and industry.
Dad never told me these stories, like a said he was a quiet man.

My dad died July 4th weekend in 1988,
My son was 9 months old, and my father never saw his only grandson.
I was a different man back then. My ego, my pride, the anger of a young man had driven a wedge between my dad and me.
So we had not spoken for a while, July 4th weekend meant I was working. July 4th weekend meant nothing to me, except work and everybody complaining we had to work on a holiday. I liked the fireworks and the parties even though I worked through most of that too. But I never thought about the sacrifice for freedom, his sacrifice for freedom.
My mother gave a call that weekend to let us know my father had died.
Mom gave me his medals, the letter from the President and secretary of the navy for his legion of merit, and the navies "action report".

As the years have passed I have grown, I have come to better understand my quiet father by reading those letters of award, by gazing at his medals, and the memories of a quiet man who sacrificed along with the tens of thousands before and since. The tens of thousands who paid the ultimate price for our freedom that I so carelessly enjoy.

The fourth of July is a day of parades, fireworks and celebration in the United States.
Someone in your family, or the family of someone you know are grieving for every freedom we enjoy.

Please share a moment of remembrance for the cost of our freedom.