Living Above the Sun Ministries

O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. -Psalm 139 We are all born with a butterfly looking gland fluttering in the lower part of our neck. It's called, the thyroid and it controls a lot of the body as apart of the endocrine system. When it gets out of whack the rest of your body is in troubl...

Who believes what we’ve heard and seen? Who would have thought God’s saving power would look like this? The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched field. There was nothing attractive about him, nothing to cause us to take a second look. He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. One look at him and people turned away. We looked down on him, thought he was scum. But the fact is, it was our pains he carried— our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us. We thought he brought it on himself, that God was punishing him for his own failures. But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed. -Isaiah 53:1-6 The verses above have stuck out in my mind surrounding this Easter Season and in the midst of this plague. Jesus wasn't afraid of disease or death or anything deemed to b...

"The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed." -Psalm 34, 147; Isaiah 61, 53 ESV So, it turns out even the things that are to be most durable, can shatter. Tonight, a corelle dish that calls itself 'break-resistant,' shattered all over the floor of my kitchen. I tried not to cry, it had been a long time since I had dropped something and broke it. This was a treasured, sentimental bowl, and my heart was crushed. But what if this is right where God intends to meet us? Not on a high mountai...

"This, in essence, is the message we heard from Christ and are passing on to you: God is light, pure light; there’s not a trace of darkness in him. If we claim that we experience a shared life with him and continue to stumble around in the dark, we’re obviously lying through our teeth—we’re not living what we claim. But if we walk in the light, God himself being the light, we also experience a shared life with one another, as the sacrificed blood of Jesus, God’s Son, purges all our sin. If we claim that we’re free of sin, we’re only fooling ourselves. A claim like that is errant nonsense. On the other hand, if we admit our sins—make a clean breast of them—he won’t let us down; he’ll be true to himself. He’ll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrongdoing. If we claim that we’ve never sinned, we out-and-out contradict God—make a liar out of him. A claim like that only shows off our ignorance of God." - 1 John 1:5-10, The Message This past week in the Carolinas we endured s...

"Listen, dear friends, to God’s truth, bend your ears to what I tell you. I’m chewing on the morsel of a proverb; I’ll let you in on the sweet old truths, Stories we heard from our fathers, counsel we learned at our mother’s knee. We’re not keeping this to ourselves, we’re passing it along to the next generation—God’s fame and fortune, the marvelous things he has done." -Psalm 78:1-4, The Message Some of Jesus' most remembered words is a sermon known as, The Beatitudes. In it Jesus echos many Psalms, and Hebrew text. We know that to understand scripture it usually is tied and referenced with another scripture. This is a rule of hermeneutics, letting the scripture interpret the scripture. John revealed to us in his gospel that Jesus is the Word, and the Word quoted Himself. Jesus used the word, "blessed" in this Sermon on the Mount. We like the idea of being and receiving blessing from God. A blessing in the Greek seems to communicate a receiving of G...

I can remember being a small child, three or four, and accompanying my dad to the nursing home where he was the chaplain. I still pass the nursing home every now and then and I'm taken back to those vague but memorable days with my dad. In this nursing home was my granny, Ruby. My grandmother, Nell, tried her very best to take care of her mother at home, but granny's parkinsons disease was too much for my grandma to take on by herself. It's no secret nursing homes don't treat patients right all the time, my grandma watched her mother suffer cruelty in the nursing home and vowed she would never let that happen to herself. The older folks at the home loved my dad, everyone in these parts call him Jimmy. He gave tender touches and hugs, he would crouch down to look them in the eye as they sat in their wheelchairs. I can't remember a lot about being at the home with my dad, just that I was there. We would sing, he would preach, and they loved it. Growing up I ...

"I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope. I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. Blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors." - Psalm 130:5-6; Proverbs 8:34 Waiting is something we don't do well anymore as a society. Even waiting in the drive-thru is too much for us! Waiting in traffic, waiting for someone, waiting to hear if you were accepted into a school or society. Life is full of waiting. Waiting for the promotion, waiting for the BIG trip, waiting to move, these are just some of the things I have had to wait for lately. It makes us anxious, and the unknown is full of questions. Will I like where I'm going? What if? Am I really going to be able to pay my bills? Things aren't all flowers, rainbows, and unicorns at work with that promotion, now what? Do we run to the next thing? Do we stay where we are for...