Mindfulness: A Christian Application

           I am no expert on mindfulness. I do not pretend to understand all the nuances of this as a meditative or personal practice. I will admit freely I am barely a practitioner. But I am aware that mindfulness, along with more sleep, a better exercise regimen, and a list of other things, would make living my life better.

       What I do know is what the bible says, “Be still and know that I am God.” I know God spoke to Elijah in the still, small voice instead of the great powers of nature. I know God clothed the flowers of the field more richly and magnificently than Solomon, THE richest, wisest, king in the history of the Bible (for movie lovers, he’s the one with the lost gold mines).

       Stopping to pay attention to what the Lord has done for us in the world, in the moment. Looking at the wonder of creation, reflecting in love and grace and hope.

       According to Mayo.com, the Mayo clinic website, mindfulness is “a type of meditation in which you focus on being intensely aware of what you're sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgment.”  I would tweak this with a couple of assumptions. First, God created all. Second, God loves us. Finally, come to these moments in the Lord and that love will come to us in Jesus.

Pastor Peter

Overcoming the Credibility Gap: A Foundation in Christ

           In Sunday’s sermon, drawn from Ephesians 3, a challenge for us is to accept that God will go far beyond what we ask or even imagine. It is challenged by a credibility gap between knowing God can do all, in the theological abstract, and the realities of the sinful world around us that take aim with doubt.

       We overcome this gap from our foundation of faith, from being on the rock of Christ. Paul refers to the power of the Holy Spirit in our inner being, of Christ dwelling within us. It is not simply head knowledge, it is whole knowledge, as in the way Jesus says to love God, with all our heart, all our mind, and all our soul.

       To that end, we ran through a few examples of what we might do. This includes an excessively simplistic consideration of mindfulness, of meditation, of service (doing good works), and counting our blessings. As we go into this week, we are going to consider each in turn.

       Each one is to be considered from this particular point of view. How, in this activity, in this practice, is Jesus at work in me? How can I focus on how Jesus is working through me? These are not things done for their own sake, but for the sake of the faith God gives us in Christ Jesus.

       Each is to pursue the question “Who are we in Christ and who is Christ in us?”

Pastor Peter

Time For Giving

  It is time to give. According to the Book of Order I was raised with in the PCUSA, membership in the church is marked by two things, by our work and our worship. We offer worship in two ways, really and virtually. Coming to church makes it easy to track your worship. Virtual is a growing edge for us. 

At present, giving to the church is also by ‘real’. We are:

The First Presbyterian Church of Perth Amboy

45 Market St.

Perth Amboy, NJ  08861

Virtual giving, online access, providing a credit card, all that convenience of the modern age. Yah, we are not there yet. 

We are in need of someone with better tech savvy than the pastor to make that happen. I would welcome the help.

"Hearting" The Matter: Seeking a Better Term

  We pray. We think. We ‘heart’ (again, seeking the right verb). We talk. We do. This is a simple (not in the manner of being "easy", but simple as in not being complicated) method of building the church. 

It was suggested that the word I am looking for in “we ‘heart’” is “we feel”. My answer is “Yes, but…” Yes, but “feel”, pardon the punning, feels nowhere nearly enough to speak of the depth of the heart's capacities. 

Please follow me through what may seem an odd if not absurd example. Bruce Lee was (and may still be) the most well known martial artist in the world. There is a story that comes out about him. He was told something along the lines of fearing the man who knows how to do 10,000 kicks. Lots of technique, flair, whatever. Bruce Lee’s reply was the man to fear was the one who’d practiced one kick 10,000 times. In so doing, it was become something of great power within him. It has become muscle memory, body sense, instinct, internalized, whatever descriptor we would like to use. 

For the martial artist, it is at the deepest sense of themselves, at the heart sense, something sunk into the soul. It is how they will respond with great power and energy. in this example, for the martial artist, it is a kick. For an expert in any field, it is this knowledge and ability that, by practice and discipline, is at the center of their being. Could be a physical activity, a method of accomplishing something, a field of knowledge. For the Christian, it ought to be our understanding of the Lord. There is our center, there is our power. 

Sure, we feel it, but it is far more. When something is ‘hearted’, it is not that we can do something without thinking, but that we can do something faster than thinking. We can come to a place where we respond with the love and peace of Christ without even thinking about it, because that is who we have become in Christ Jesus.

Stepping Beyond Prayer: What is Next?

  So, we have prayed for peace. The communication is good, we and God are tight. That stuff about the covenant, the Lord will be our God and we will be God’s people, its gaining traction. We have been giving it serious thought and reflection. Our hearts are one in the desire to see God’s peace in the world. We don’t walk in lock step as to what we all believe about peace, or even about Christ, but that’s good. It is the Presbyterian way. 

We gather a group of believers and we are blessed by the diversity of the Spirit that speaks to the whole.

But now we need to talk to the world. I have two overwhelming visuals when it comes to sharing my faith. The first is the earnest Christian who is begging me not to end up in hell. “If you die tonight, where is your soul going?” Yah, I want to come hear more of that. Joyful, joyful we adore thee?

The second is the individual walking up and down the street with two enormous placards hanging in front and in back of their body, joined over the shoulders. The message on the placards and from the preaching is predicting the end of the world coming soon. Really soon. The message is basically, “get with God or get blowed up”. Yah, I want to go to church with that guy.

So how do we get the message out? God says ‘go’. Unfortunately, left on its own, that has proven to be a non-starter. We of the church are in a safe place to express that message to one another before we take it on the road. I love God, you love God. We are in a place where we can reasonably expect that the other person will be neither offended nor put off if we talk about that love. If we look for the words that are real to us to express that love. 

We pray for peace, we think about peace, we (and I am looking for a good verb to define this), we ‘heart’ about peace. Now we got to talk about it. The peace of Christ that passes all understanding. Great. Talk about what passes our understanding. There’s Jesus for us. 

Paul did it. Extensively. He maintained an extensive correspondence, a huge portion of which was set aside as inspiration for the rest of us by our God in our New Testament.

Have We Thought Through The Peace We Are Praying For?

  It is a good thing to pray for the peace of Christ. But do we know what it is? Beyond vague generalities like “the love of Christ made manifest” or “the grace of the Lord for humanity”. Those are not wrong answers, but how would our church seek to make the love of Christ manifest in the world to achieve this peace? What does the grace of the Lord for humanity entail? And if we wait for the pastor to tell us what this is, what if it doesn’t sound right? What if it doesn’t ring true? What if it doesn’t resonate in our hearts and minds and spur us to thank the Lord? 

Is the pastor wrong? Being a pastor, the odds are in your favor in that consideration. What is peace? At 11:11am and 11 seconds on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year 1918, the guns fell silent at the end of the Great War. “Peace” was achieved. It lasted twenty years, setting the path to the Second World War. Retrospectively, implicitly recognizing the failure of “peace”, the Great War was renamed ‘The First World War’. Thus far, there has been no World War 3, but that is not about the achievement of peace. That is about the desperate fear of nuclear annihilation, “Mutual Assured Destruction”-not much peace there. 

So we got to think about peace. We need our minds and hearts in alignment in understanding what this peace is. In understanding the God who, in Jesus Christ, is offering us this peace. If nothing else, it will provide clarity as to exactly what it is we are praying for. The vibrant church is not simply the church that prays together, but the church that thinks together, that reflects together, that offers a place of safety for its members to come boldly in their understanding (or lack of understanding) of the things of God. 

There is a ten dollar word for thinking about God, for thinking about the things of God. We call it ‘theology’. It is thinking about God that is guiding Paul’s hand as he writes to the Ephesians. What he puts into a few verses has prompted thick books of people thinking about it. What is the peace of Christ? What are we praying for? What are we offering up to the world? How are we reflecting the light of the Child of Peace into a world that needs it so desperately?

Peace: Begins With Prayer

  An opportunity for the faithful: This Wednesday, March 15, 2023 at 10am, prayer in the sanctuary. Come and join us. It is a profound experience to pray together. Can’t make it? Let us know, we will set another time. 

Why pray? Funny you should ask. Walk with me through the words that follow.

Paul’s word to the Ephesians this past Sunday was that of peace, peace for two divergent communities, those of the Jews and the Gentiles, to come together in peaceful coexistence and more, to thrive and grow, in the love and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Christ proclaimed peace among them, by His death and resurrection, He fulfilled the precepts of the law of Moses-the dividing line between these two communities exemplified by Paul in the language of circumcision-and abolished the law, fulfilled it. In Jesus came the achievement of what the law set out to do.

For the church to thrive and grow in the world, it must do so in community. It is in Jesus that the church will find the peace of Jesus for a world in need. How a congregation operates within its bounds will be a sure reflection of how it will operate if it were to cross over its threshold in the world beyond. To gain this peace, to thrive and more, this peace must be achieved.

Where does a church start? In humbly coming before the Lord in prayer. A vibrant relationship requires vibrant communication. Is the personal prayer life of the individual stressed? Is the opportunity for the community time of prayer offered? Or are the prayers of the community concentrated into the worship on the Lord’s Day?

What do we pray for? A far shorter list (nay nonexistent list) would ask ‘what don’t we prayer for?’ Pray for the peace of Christ in the church. What if we are small and desperate? How will the outreach of the church reflect anything other than that desperation unless it has found peace first? The second half of chapter 1 of Ephesians is the prayer that Paul laid down on paper for the church in Ephesus. It is a noble prayer for any community to begin with.

(Ephesians 1: 15-23)

15 I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love towards all the saints, and for this reason 16I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. 17I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, 18so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, 19and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. 20God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. 22And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, 23which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.