Bungee Cord 10-19-17

Hello,

     It’s a cool, crisp day in Western Pennsylvania.  Sunny. Breezy. 50 degrees for a high today.  A great day to stay inside and write the Bungee Cord.

     Ah, but not according to my Dog, McMahon, a 1 year old Gordon Setter.  According to him, cool, crisp, windy autumn days are not to be spent inside, but outside doing his favorite thing.  Chasing leaves!  Nothing more fun than scampering after some leaf that is floating by unaware of the impending danger that is lurking.  Like a skilled hunter, McMahon sets himself in lurching position, his head jerking right and left to spy his prey.  And when a leaf saunters by, McMahon springs at it, pouncing on it, and then chewing it up.  What fun!

     Unfortunately, he thinks he needs an audience for his play, and so he won’t let me stay inside.  So, I have given into his unrelenting demands to join him outside, and have decided to write today’s Bungee Cord where he wants me to.  I find it too chilly to try and sit on our porch and write, so I have taken my place about 50 yards from our house amidst some trees where I fire ring is.  Seeking to stop the chatter of my teeth, I decided to build a fire.  Not an easy thing to do with wood that has recently been rained on, and wind that bullies the weakling flames.  But with a little help from lighter fluid, mission accomplished. 

     As I write, my once fledgling fire is now burning strong.  However, there is a problem.  The wind is too strong to allow the heat to radiate very far.  The heat flows quite well directly down wind, but so does the smoke which stings my eyes and rankingly permeates my clothes.  Though I add more fuel to my fire, the lateral expanse of the heat is still truncated by the gathering wind.  Every once in a while, the wind dies down a bit, and I can feel the heat blanket around me.  It seems that the only way to stay warm is to stay close to the fire.

     Likewise, in life, it seems the only way to stay warm is to stay close to the fire.  Sure enough, there are days when life is calm and peaceful, and the warmth of God’s grace radiates without hinder in every direction.  But when the wind blows strong and sharp – eroding hope, billowing with despair, fear chilling the bone – the wind has a way of truncating the reach of God’s warming grace.  When that happens, draw near to the fire.  That is what Sunday morning worship is for; to be the fire that warms people’s lives.  Warming it with the power of God’s grace and mercy that nothing in this world….or universe for that matter….can extinguish.  If hopelessness is swirling, in worship there is an inferno of hope in the tangibly given promise, “This is my blood…this is my body….given for you.”  When life seems like a wind tunnel of despair, there is a great warming shelter given in worship in the divine words, “Your sin is forgiven…as far as the east is from the west.”  When fear is tornadic in power, there is, in worship a bunker of grace that no tornado can pierce in the promise of God, “I am with you always.”  There is a furnace churning out divine heat, heat to draw near to when the sharp and piercing winds blow.

     So, does that mean that one only need to go to worship when the cold wind blows in one’s life?  I think not….and this is why…the wonder of worship is that not only is the place that we experience the warmth of God’s grace, those who gather in worship are also the fuel of that very fire.  An infant crying in her mother’s arms is a visual and verbal sign of hope to the 90 year old who has a hard time seeing life in their life.  The shake of one’s hand by another when one’s brokenness has scandalously and shamefully landed on the front page of the paper carries divine warmth.  Singing brings beauty to life’s boredom, and joining voices in prayer creates a human shield against the wind.  It may be that your life is peaceful and calm, but be assured of this; it is not so for everyone, and on those days…you and I are the fuel for the fire that God ignites in worship.

     So, on this cool, crisp, windy fall day….as I sit next to my fire…I am thankful for the fire that I can draw near to and be part of in this world where the wind never rests.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace,(ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

Bungee Cord 10-9-17

Hello,

     We still have 5 chickens…. but barely.

     I came back from the store a couple of days ago, and so as I went to the side door my hands were full.  As usual, on the other side of the door my two dogs were anxiously and excitedly waiting for me.   But not as usual, when I opened the door, instead of jumping on me and assaulting me with gladness, McMahon darted out the door and down the steps…..trouble!  Trouble because our chickens were out of their coop dining on bugs and worms, and I knew that McMahon had dashed out the door with dining on his mind, too.  Chickens!

     I yelled at him to come back as he dashed out the door.  My yells were wasted breath.  Unfortunately, since I had left the door open as I was trying to retrieve McMahon, my other dog, Duncan, seized the moment to escape too, with dining likewise on his mind.  I quickly put my shopping stuff down and ran down the stairs in hot pursuit of the escapees.  Before I got to the bottom of the stairs I heard wild chicken squawking coming from the front of the house.  I continued my yelling, trying a variety of commands…”Come!”….”Stop!”… “Woah!  ….”Duncan!”…. “McMahon!”.  All wasted breath as they tore around to the back of the house in hot blooded pursuit of the chickens who were making it known that they were being attacked by their cries of distress.

     When I got around to the back of the house I saw the commotion that I had heard.  Chickens taking to flight, dogs leaping to snag them, and feathers flying everywhere.  Unfortunately for one chased chicken, Duncan, the true hunter of the two, snapped down on the chicken before it could resume flight.  I increased the intensity of my yelling as I ran toward the capture, but instinct had well overwhelmed any obedience by this time, and he began to gnaw on the chicken at took to filing his mouth with feathers.

     That is when I arrived at the scene of the crime, and grabbed Duncan by the nape of the neck and McMahon, who had joined in, too.  I must have caught them between gnaws, because as I pulled them off the chicken, the chicken dropped to the ground…flapping its wings in desperate hopes of escape.  But not for long, because the grip that I had on my dogs slipped and off they were to finish the job.  Around the corner by my hot tub they went.  Dogs drooling.  Chicken squawking.  This time, however, I got there before they could latch onto the chicken who was cornered behind a plant stand.  The chicken was motionless as I dragged the dogs away and took them inside…Duncan, his mouth full of feathers.

     I went back to see if the chicken had met its maker or not, and I found it where I had left it….motionless.  I picked it up.  It was alive.  I set it on the ground……it moved.  Phew!

     I left the chicken and went inside to scold my dogs for doing what came natural to them, which seems a bit of a foolish thing to do.  When I got to the door, they greeted me with hopes of going back outside….Duncan still with feathers in his mouth.  I let them know that their hopes were ill conceived, trying to catch my breath from the chase I had just undertook.

     A few minutes later, the door opened and Kate walked in.  She had returned from running an errand.  “We just about lost a chicken,” I said with frustration oozing from my voice, recounting the event that she had just missed being part of.

     She could tell that I was a bit disconcerted, and so she said to me, “Are you alright?”

     “It is just frustrating trying to keep those chickens alive,” I said, given the fact that we live with two bird dogs whose greatest desire in life is to hunt them down.  There are days…many of them…when it would just be a lot easier to be chicken free.

     But alas…we still have 5 chickens.

     Given my frustration with trying to keep these chickens alive, I have come to a greater appreciation of the depth of God’s love for me.  For I am certain that in the greater scope of things, it would be a lot easier on God for God to be free of me.  It sure must be very frustrating keeping me alive, physically and spiritually.  I wander into trouble.  I am the object of hungry prey.  My ability to escape snapping jaws is limited.  It would certainly be a lot easier on God to be free of me…but God so loves me that he has done what I would never do for our pesky chickens.  He died to make me his forever….forever!  It would be far easier for God to be free of me, but God won’t let that happen.  God is stuck with me….well, although it may seem from my perspective that God is stuck with me…. apparently not from God’s.  From God’s perspective….amazing as it is…God is thankful to have me….and you, too.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

The Bungee Cord  10-3-17

Hello,

     As many of you know, I live in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, the Laurel Highlands.  Our home is perched on a hill between two ridges, Laurel Ridge to the east and Chestnut Ridge to the west.  Laurel Ridge rises to about 2700 ft.  Chestnut Ridge is somewhat lower.

     Of all the times of the year, October is the time that I most enjoy where I live.  The rolling hills that were summer covered with the soft, fluffy, green deciduous maples, oaks, locus, sassafras…just to name a few….. take on a patchwork of quilted color.  Rusty red.  Dazzling yellow.  Brilliant orange.  It is beautiful. 

     Some say that such beauty confirms their belief in God, however not so for me.  As beautiful as the October hills are, I know that their beauty is short lived.  Soon the hills will be replete with nothing but barren trunks and limbs.  It is true that some may say, and I am one of them, that there is a stark beauty to the winter hills.  But there are some stark things in nature that I don’t think any one finds beautiful:  hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, killing storms.  The problem that I find in using nature to confirm and understand God is that nature delivers a capricious, unsettled, and heartless God.  A God who will provide great joy one minute, and then the next minute slash that joy into fear, seemingly without blinking an eye.

     For me, what confirms and gives me understanding of God is not the passing beauty of nature.  It is the ugly, horrifying, excruciatingly painful Calvary cross that has laid its scar upon every moment of time.  That cross does not waver in its message and meaning.  That cross is the evidence upon which my belief is nailed, and my understanding of God is enfleshed.  There is no fickleness to such a God who enthroned himself on the most terrifying and grotesque sights of human nature and overwhelming it with conquering love.  Of course, I cannot categorically say that the cross proves God’s existence in the universe, but as with things as universally important as love, there are some things that one comes to believe with all of one’s heart as one abides in those things.  The cross is not a beautiful field picked daisy whose plucked petals oscillate with the wondering words, “He loves me.  He loves me not.”  The cross stands petal-less in time’s field saying one, and only one thing, “I love you.”

     Just as many, including me, travel to take in the beautiful sights of nature, sights that are breath taking in wonder and splendor, I, along with many, travel every Sunday to church to cast my eyes upon that instrument of death out of which flows the breath of life.  To refrain from making this weekly trip can entrap me in fleeting hopes, passing peace, and balloon pop-able joy.

     So, let me offer my invitation to all of you to come and visit me in October (not all at once, please) so that you can see how lovely this world can be.  Let me also offer to all of you God’s invitation to spend time in God’s house so that you can see just how much God loves you and how much you can trust (believe) in that love.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger