Sunday night thoughts

Today's Sunday School class led to a discussion about expectations. The question came up..."What does God expect of us?"...Several answers came up including...
1) Love God/Love People
2) To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Then one quiet lady in the class said..."God expects us to be human."

The more I've thought about this the more I agree with her. If you look up the word "expect" one definition you will find is "regard as likely to happen". Likely? There is absolutely no security in "likely". God is always sure. God knows everything. If He was expecting something then there would be a chance that He did not know what was going to happen. Which brings us back to that last answer.

As God expects us to be human He provides the sureness and security that only He can give. We have know idea how we will respond to different stimuli tomorrow but God does. So in saying all of this would it be fair to say that God truly expects "nothing" of us because He already knows?

reminders

I do want to remind readers that anyone can feel free to make comments on my blog. I know I haven't been the best at updates lately but I'm working on it so feel free to make comments and I'll do my best to reply also. Thanks for taking time to be interested in my blog. You are awesome 'cause God created you for a purpose. Have a great day!

day of the dead

This has been some week. Monday I had a funeral for a 61 year old man who was a strong family man but did not have much to do with the church. However, his obituary stated that he was a lifelong member of our church having been baptized and married in the church building. Tuesday I had another funeral for a man who left his wife years ago for another woman who he lived with for 30 years without even the thought of marriage. (side note-the ex-wife and the "significant other" were sitting across from each other during the service...interesting)

Yesterday Allison and I attended a conference in Des Moines on Grief and Grieving. It was interesting and offered some practical helps for both of us. Then on our way home Allison got a call telling her that the husband of one of her clients had died and the funeral would be today. So Allison is going to that service this afternoon.

After all of that the lead story on the "Today" show this morning was the death of Anna Nicole Smith. Granted her death does not impact us directly but after a week like we have it seemed appropriate that the morning news would start off with a story about someone dying.

Such is the life of a pastor and social worker. Seeing as these have all been very diverse settings I have caught myself saying "Well, we do know that God knows exactly where ________ is." I wish people would get it out of their heads that people are in heaven or hell or somewhere else right away...I'm just not finding that in the Bible. Oh well...