Month: February 2016

Categories
PWTE Daily Devotion

A Place to Gather and Connect

Lepaterique, Honduras

The church can be a place to connect.

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

“Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another,
God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”
1 John 4:11 New International Version

A lot happens in the marketplace. It is a place of selling and buying. It is a place of gathering. Day in and day out people gather to do business in the marketplace, yet it’s more than a place of commerce. It is a place for connecting with others.

Lepaterique, Honduras
Lepaterique, Honduras

On this Saturday evening in Lepaterique there were people gathering throughout the community and walking the dusty roads from one shop to another. There were probably more conversations happening than buying or selling. Connecting with others is an important aspect of life.

So, why do we find it difficult to connect with each other in the worship? We enter through the front door, sit in our pew and find our way back to the parking lot with the possibility of never saying hello to another person.

Yet, our purpose of being in worship is so that God can connect with us, and maybe, just maybe, we might connect with another pilgrim in life.

I believe that even though we struggle to connect with others in worship, we look for connections when we enter God’s house. We want to connect with God and we want to connect with other people. In one sense, we’d like the church to become a marketplace, not for the selling of goods, but to connect with others.

We’d like the church to be a place where we truly connect with others who loves us. The next time we worship, maybe we could say “hello” to someone before we head to the car and start a connection with that person.

Copyright Douglas P Brauner

Categories
PWTE Daily Devotion

It’s Okay to Grieve

Hope colors how we grieve the death of our loved ones.

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

Many of us in the United States would love to have the view of this house in Honduras. This home is surrounded by mountains and secluded from other people.

Honduras
Honduras

However, it looks like this building might collapse at any moment.

The smoke rising from the chimney is evidence that someone lives in this home. In fact, this might have been the home of someone who worshiped at the church where I stood when I took this picture.

This home represents our lives. We’re surrounded by the beauty of God’s creation, but there’s something wrong. We call that something death. Like this house, our lives will finally give in to decay and we’ll die.

Jesus died and we remember that his body laid cold in death in his tomb.

“And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking [Jesus] down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb.”
Mark 15:46 English Standard Version

We not only think of Jesus’s rest in his grave, but we also consider our loved ones who have died, whom we deeply miss. We feel the pain and the separation of their deaths, yet we grieve with hope because we know the rest of the story. We know the victory of Jesus’ resurrection.

It is okay to feel sad. It’s okay to take out pictures of loved ones who’ve died and to both laugh and cry. It’s okay because even though death is painful, it’s not the end.

Copyright Douglas P Brauner

Categories
PWTE Daily Devotion

The Important Stuff of Dreams

What do you dream about?

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

I see a young girl who has dreams when I look at this picture. What are those dreams? They might be big or small dreams, Dreams for herself or for her family, but my gut tells me that they’re important dreams.

February 21God invites us to dream.

“Delight yourself in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
Psalm 37:4 English Standard Version

It’s one thing to hear these words from God but it’s another to believe them.

Maybe the problem is with our hearts and what they desire. The first part of the first is the key to understanding the psalm. The psalmist calls us to delight in the Lord, not in our pleasures or wants. When we find pleasure in the One who has given everything for us, we’ll find ourselves dreaming about what he desires for us.

So, it’s okay to dream especially when those dreams are rooted in the God who takes delight in us.

Copyright Douglas P Brauner