September 12, 2021
God is good! Let’s give God a round of applause today! That’s right, God is so good! it is great to worship and serve our God.
But there are times for all of us when praising God isn’t easy. For instance, it can be hard to praise when you get a health diagnosis that is scary, or friend gets angry at you, or a family member behaves in a way that is concerning to you. Or when there’s trouble at work, or maybe you just have a low feeling. We all have times like that. We don’t want to live a life of worry and sadness or feel like nothing matters. So how do we find hope?
There’s a book in the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes, and the writer pours out his feelings about life: In chapter 1 verses 2 and 3, he says: “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless. What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?”
He’s saying, the world just goes on and on. People live, and people die. They work, and they work, and they work. They have to always keep working, they are never done.
In chapter 2:14 he says, “the wise have eyes in their heads,
while the fool walks in the darkness;
but I came to realize
that the same fate overtakes them both.”
So, he says, it’s better to be wise than foolish, but it doesn’t matter whether you are wise or foolish, because both will die. In verse 2:17 he says, 17” So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”
Have you ever had something that you thought would be really awesome, but it wasn’t anything like you thought it would be?
My son Ian just went back to school at Bloomsburg University, after a year and a half of doing college virtually at home. This was long awaited! He did not like virtual classes, and he couldn’t take much more of it. He wanted to see his professors in person, sit in class, and be with his friends in his dorm.
He went back to Bloomsburg. And his lively dorm turned out to be much emptier than he expected! At least 50% less students. Not every class he signed up for was fully in person. Even though he really tried to get all in-person classes. So being on campus is better than doing college at home. But it isn’t like college used to be. He thought it would so great to go back, but it isn’t all he hoped for.
Have you ever felt that way?
I think most of us go through life trying to become satisfied, trying to be happy, trying to have it all. Then life can be frustrating, tiring and unfulfilling. Things don’t turn out the way you think they should, the way you hoped they would. And you want a way out.
There’s a guy in the Bible who is the opposite of the writer of Ecclesiastes. The guy in Ecclesiastes had a stable life, a life of plenty. His opposite is the Apostle Paul in the New Testament. Paul didn’t have much, he didn’t stay in one place long, and trouble seemed to follow him wherever he went. He was beaten, put in prison, whipped, lashed, shipwrecked, and a night and day he was floating in the open sea. Paul was stoned. Not on drugs. Actual stones were thrown at Paul for punishment.
But with all that, the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:1, “Therefore…we do not lose heart.” In his ministry Paul goes around telling people about Jesus, and in return he keeps getting run out of town. But, he says, we Christians do not lose heart.
Wouldn’t you like to be like Paul? No matter what your kids do, no matter that your boss says to you, no matter that your neighbor yells at you, you can say, “It’s doesn’t really bother me, I never lose heart!” What is Paul’s secret to keeping a smile on his face when he had such a rough life?
Well, Paul knew the power of God to work through the cross. Jesus’ death brought life and salvation. So, in 2 Cor. 4:16-17 Paul says, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all…” The suffering Paul endured was NOT light and momentary! But something made his troubles feel not so bad. That something was the glory of salvation and knowing you will spend eternity with God.
Paul’s secret sauce for happiness is this, he solves his problems, not by solving them. Instead, he has something in his life bigger than his problems! He has something bigger and better in his life than his troubles. The key is you spend less time trying to fix your troubles, and more time pondering something bigger, something eternal: God!
Paul lived an awful life on the outside, but he still had joy inside! He says in verse 18, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
Paul’s life-changing habit is to shift his gaze from the material things of life, the circumstances of life, the things that are temporary. Instead, he focuses on what is eternal, what is of God.
When you fix your eyes on what is unseen, you never lose heart. Things around you can disappoint, but you don’t mind, you are focused on God!
Here are a few ways to stay focused on God:
Pray! Prayer sets our mind on things above. You know when you pray, you might think of all the things you want to ask God for, the things you want God to do. And God wants you to bring things to Him in prayer. But the more you pray, prayer grows to be something else. When I knew I would most likely be losing a job, I spent a year praying! I started praying worried about a job. But as time went on, I found so much peace. I worried less, I enjoyed God more. There’s comfort in prayer because you know God is 100% for you, and we all want to be around someone like that! There’s peace because God is with you. Soon you spend more time thanking and praising God. You started praying and your problems were huge, and God was small. Along the way you notice, your problems seem small, and God is huge. We become more eternally focused than temporary focused. When you fix your eyes on what is unseen, you never lose heart.
Serving God is one of the greatest ways to focus less on temporary things and more on what’s eternal. We missed some ways of serving during Covid, and it feels so good when we can serve again. I want to thank all of our volunteers: people teaching confirmation and Sunday school, people greeting, reading Scripture, doing our worship video, acolytes, and consistory and who serve in so many more ways. It’s such a blessing and help. Myself, when I think about signing up to serve, sometimes I don’t know if I want to commit to serving. I might lose out on free time to do something else. Maybe there are other things I’d like to do with my time. But then I serve, and it is such a blessing. I’m so glad I did! The real reason I want you to serve at church isn’t because the church would fall apart without you. The church works better with you. But the real reason I want you to serve is we need you doing something with your life that really matters.
Sheryl Hart had an idea and she and the card stampers group at St. Peter’s invited a bunch of kids and youth to come and make greeting cards and stay for lunch. They had a great time! The stampers are planning to do it again before Christmas. Stampers maybe needed to go home and take a nap afterwards, but they enjoyed helping the kids!
Trinity is a serving, giving church! I love to see us serve and give together! Over the last two weeks we gave $160 to help the Afghan evacuees. Rachel Lucas, a service member at the U.S. Ramstein Air base in Germany, who bought needed items for the evacuees with our donations said, “Please let everyone know I received the generous donation, and it will be put to good use!”
God is calling every one of us to do great things for him! We have talents and abilities that our church and our community! The world needs some hope. When you fix your eyes on what is unseen, you never lose heart. The world needs you, not losing heart, serving and spreading hope around!
My homework for you this week is to ask yourself, on a scale of 1-10, how much would you say you love your life right now? Think about what it would be like to be the apostle Paul, beaten, lost at sea, thrown out of town by an angry mob, and yet never lose heart?
That’s amazing! But he was always looking to God, looking to the things that are eternal. So, fix your eyes on what is unseen, and you will never lose heart. Amen!
Maureen Duffy-Guy's blog 