Illustration results for gratitude
Topic of the Week: Changes
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In the highly rated Smallville, the WB’s story of Superboy, Clark Kent is just learning about his super powers. It is a perplexing and frustrating time for him. His powers really come to light when he is accidently run down by Lex Luthor and yet is unhurt. Not only is he spared any pain but is able to save Lex’s life even though he was run over at 60mph! Lex, who is very wealthy, gives Clark a new truck out of gratitude, but Clark’s father is not grateful. And we learn that there is something that Clark actually wants more than any truck.
{Video Clip - Smallville - Season 1 - Episode 1 (Pilot)- Start: 3:23:34 - End:3:26:12 - 2:45}
(Smallville DVD released by Warner Brothers one of the approved CVLI Producers.)
HEATHERS AND GRATITUDE
Some people think being thankful all the time is like going around with a goofy smile on your face all of the time and being insensitive to other people’s feelings. Some think it means to always be happy. We can be grateful, thankful, without being irrationally "happy" in bad times.
In the teen-age film where Winona Ryder came to prominence ("Heathers"), her character says, "If you were happy every day of your life, you wouldn’t be a human being; you’d be a game show host."
Nevertheless, the Bible teaches that thanksgiving is intended to be a lifestyle rather than a mere holiday or something we do on Sunday.
I would like to bring in here the story of the film “Chocolate” directed by Lasse Hallström [Heinrich Jacob, Der Prediger und Katechet, 6/2002. pages. 849-851]. A small, sleepy, and quiet french city. The inhabitants are lower-middle class, strictly moralistic, tied to tradtion, scrupulous and totally unfree internally and externally. No one dares to be different. Everyone goes to church. The mayor runs the city within the framework of rigid rules. He even corrects the Sunday sermons of the parish priest.
A young mother with her little daughter moves into this city and opens a chocolate shop at the time of Lent. She makes delicious chocolates of different types, which once tasted, no one could resist. This lady is energetic, charming, goal-oriented, sensitive and empathetic. She knows well to sell her chocolates. And she captivates the attention of the entire city.
This shop, the lady and the chocolates disturb the people, that too, at a time of fasting. People, starting with someone daring, begin to buy the chocolates. The established, ordered and the regulated life of the city is disturbed. The chocolate shop becomes the meeting point of the people of the city. There is encounter, conversation, friendship, joy and laughter. But there is also opposition. The lady is even threatened in order to leave the city. But the openness and the trust of the people for the joy and hope she brought into their lives overcome all opposition. And we see the mayor himself quietly climbing a tree to have a look at the chocolates in the shop-window. Finally all come to the shop, mayor and the priest alike. And the priest was ever after free to preach the sermons he prepared.
This story has a deeper symbolic meaning. This lady and the medium of chocolate stand for healing and happiness, for transformation and rebirth, for resurrection and for salvation. Everything in the city changes. There is a new life, a new city and a new world for the people. There begin to show up all the signs of a truly christian community: accepting others, open for friendship with strangers, giving and taking, a communicative relationship with one another and gratitude as a response to the gift of life and togetherness.
Miss Anne was not able to give Helen Keller her sight. But she was able to lead her into an understanding of the world around her that she had never experienced before. As you watch the closing moments in the movie we began earlier, The Miracle Worker, think about how marvelous that moment must have been for this man healed of his blindness in
John 9. Think about the gratitude and love he must have felt toward the Lord as he considered the marvelous thing Jesus had d...
Remember the show, “To Tell the Truth?” There would be one person who did something strange or different perhaps for a living while two others would try to pretend to be that person. The object was to try and fool the panel of stars and the audience. Sometimes the person would be something strange like a “professional nose picker.” At the end the real person would stand up.
As I thought about this passage from Matthew 6:24, I thought about loving one master and hating another. And I thought about some alcoholics that I know both practicing and recovered. I thought about the effect that addictions have upon people. They end of hating this “master” because they are enslaved and can’t get out. Usually end up hating themselves and everyone around them.
Jesus talks about the master of Mammon. I like the word “mammon” as a translation rather than money. For mammon is more than just money. It is greed. It is desire. In fact, the connotation is that this greed for money goes beyond just money but includes the power and privilege. It gives us the sense that this mammon is almost alive. That this particular sin because alive and begins to devour us. Paul uses the same type of imagery. Thus the darkness within us because exceedingly great! Just a little more. Gambling has that affect. Deal or No Deal is a great example. The show is about gambling. How far can you push it and what is the most that you can walk away with.
Runaway desires. Tithing and fasting are ways to work against these desires. To train them. Tame them! Tithing, fasting, and even baptism act out a different reality. A new reality of God’s Kingdom. Baptism is a symbolic way to act out the new reality of being a follower of Jesus--that God is now the Lord and King of our lives not mammon. By being baptized we align our lives toward the Kingdom life and Kingdom values, which are opposed to the values of mammon. The memory of one’s baptism (one Lord, one baptism) can then become a marker to "tame" our struggles with rampant materialism. It can become a sort of litmus test.
All these actions are revealing a change of masters.
Alcoholics know that one of the most effective way to maintain sobriety and recovery is to tell on their disease. Take ownership of their difficulties, their character defects, their sins. To tell the truth.
To Tell the Truth
• On our masters
Who are your masters? Jesus says we can only have one. Anything but God will consume you. Job, business (e-myth), health care system, money, shopping, gambling, drugs (prescription and illegal). Tell on the truth. This is what I struggle with.
• On ourselves
This is me. I’m not perfect. This is who I want to be. In terms of the specifics of the passage, admitting that I am not as generous as I should be. There can be only one.
In one of readings for today from Luke 12:13-21, Jesus is first asked to make a judgment. It is a cry for justice. Tell the story.
Generosity towards others is generosity towards God.
As much as some of us struggle to please two masters and we try, we cannot. “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.”
Col. 3 talks about putting to death things that want to rule us and as I translate can become or are our masters: fornication, impurity, evil desires, greed, anger wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth, lying. Put on these clothes: compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, forbearance, love, gratitude.
How? Daily examination. Teaching others. Admonish which means to encourage while gently correcting. Being thankful not condemnation. To tell the truth of first ourselves. Confession.
Van Gogh. The use of yellow in his later paintings were a sign of hope: of starting over with a new master. We can start over with a new master. We all need that hope. We need that assurance that we can start over.
This is what worship is about. A new start. To a new creation. To a new week. To a new life. No matter who or what is your old master: stress at work, conflict with a boss, conflict with a family member, divorce and struggling to glue pieces back together, overwhelming bills maybe because of overspending, illness that never seems to end, the joys and trials of raising children, death of a friend or family member, houses and cars and other stuffs that “never end,” a family member that is in the throes of addiction. To tell the truth is to say I don’t have the answers so I resolve to start afresh in trusting God. Some of us constantly need that hope that I can start again today and that these trials and such will not last forever (even when we can see no end in sight). God can.
Phil Connors is a self-centered weather reporter who is experiencing one heck of a day. In fact, he’s reliving this one day over and over again, the same day repeating itself it’s - Groundhog day. Every day is exactly the same in the way it unfolds. Phil knows everything that’s going to happen before it happens. Each day is predictable but also another opportunity for Phil to change. Finally, he comes to care for the people he once disdained. Because he knows exactly what is going to happen he begins helping them in ways that only he knows they need. What he learns is that his divine-like intervention can be a thankless job.
{Video Clip - Groundhog Day - Start: Chp. 23: 01:21:54 - End: Chp.24: 01:23:30 = 1:36}
Most of us are like Phil. We ex...
