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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">I remember reading a Peanuts cartoon strip in which Lucy comes up to Charlie Brown and does something that is very unusual for her. She says, “I love you.” But Charlie Brown keeps responding by saying, “No, you don't.” And each time Lucy answers a little louder, “Yes I do, I really love you.” But Charles Brown has been rejected so many times he keeps saying, “It can't be true.” So in the last square, Lucy has reached the limit of her patience and she screams out in a loud voice, “Hey stupid, I love you!” </SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">I wonder if God has to do that with us sometimes. I mean, what does it take to get through? Does he have to yell out: Hey blockhead, I love you? Can't you see that God will literally turn this world upside down in his search for one human soul? Maybe you fell like God has been turning your world upside down a little bit lately. Well, that's love at work. And the supreme sign of that love is the gift of Christ Jesus. </SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">Staff, Sermons.com.</SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">Which Color Would You Be?</SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">Ralph Milton tells of the teacher who, for reasons of her own, asked the kids one day, "If all the bad children were painted red and all the good children were painted green, which color would you be?"</SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">Think about it. What color would you be? Red or Green? It is a tough question isn't it when you pose only two options.</SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">One very wise child answered the teacher: "Striped"</SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">The reason I am going on about this point is simple. It seems to me that in the frame of the story - everyone but Jesus is striped. It is the same in the world today. We are a curious combination of the lost and the found. We are striped. We are, in some sense, not completely complete. It is hard language, this language of lost and found, especially for folks in the middle, as most of us are most of the time. It seems too absolute.</SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">Rarely are we completely lost. And rarely are we completely found. There is always a part of us that needs to be dragged and cajoled into the light, and there is always a part of us that is already there in the light. For some it is more and for some it is less, but always some part.</SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">The wonderful thing is - that God wants us to enter fully into the light. The wonderful thing is that God wants to bless us all richly to keep us safe, to make us strong, to help us be like a Shepherd who really cares for his sheep, or like a poor widow who really values all her coins.</SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">Richard Fairchild, Seeking the Lost</SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">The Church Is No Place for Joy</SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">In church the other Sunday I was intent on a small child who was turning around smiling at everyone. He wasn't gurgling, spitting, humming, kicking, tearing the hymnals, or rummaging through his mother's handbag. He was just smiling. Finally, his mother jerked him about and in a stage whisper that could be heard in a little theater off Broadway said, "Stop grinning! You're in a church!" With that, she gave him a belt on his hind side and as the tears rolled down his cheeks added, "that's better," and returned to her prayers. I wanted to grab this child with the tear-stained face close to me and tell him about my God. The happy God. The smiling God, the God who had to have a sense of humor to have created the likes of us. </SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">Erma Bombeck</SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt"> It Is a Big Ocean </SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">H.H. Staton in his book, "A Guide to the Parables of Jesus" tells the story of having been on an ocean liner headed to the Middle East.</SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">Nine hundred miles out to sea a sail was sighted on the horizon. As the liner drew closer, the passengers saw that the boat - a small sloop flying a Turkish flag - had run up a distress signal and other flags asking for its position at sea. Through a faulty chronometer or immature navigation the small vessel had become lost. For nearly an hour the liner circled the little boat, giving its crew correct latitude and longitude. Naturally there was a great deal of interest in all the proceeding among the passengers of the liner. A boy of about 12 standing on the deck and watching all that was taking place remarked aloud to himself - "It's a big ocean to be lost in." </SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">It is a big universe to be lost in, too. And we do get lost - we get mixed up and turned around. We despair, we make mistakes, we do evil to each other. We deserve the wrath of God and that is what the Pharisees who criticized Jesus maintained. But Jesus understood God more. He knew God as a Shepherd in search of the one lost sheep. He knew God as a woman searching in the dark, in the crevasses, for that valuable coin. In the end it was Jesus' view of God which prevailed and not his critics. </SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">Adapted by Brett Blair from a sermon by Richard J. Fairchild.</SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">__________________</SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">Create Him Not</SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">The love of God is indescribable but a old Jewish legend does a pretty good job. It describes what happened when God created man. The legend says God took into counsel the Angels that stood about his throne. The Angel of Justice said; 'Create him not … for if you do he will commit all kinds of wickedness against his fellow man; he will be hard and cruel and dishonest and unrighteous.' The Angel of Truth said, 'Create him not … for he will be false and deceitful to his brother and even to Thee.' The Angel of Holiness stood and said; 'Create him not … he will follow that which is impure in your sight, and dishonor you to your face.' </SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">Then stepped forward the Angel of Mercy, God's most beloved, angel, and said; 'Create him, our Heavenly Father, for when he sins and turns from the path of right and truth and holiness I will take him tenderly by the hand, and speak loving words to him, and then lead him back to you.' </SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">Brett Blair, eSermons.com</SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">The Paradox of Christian Life </SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">There's a strange paradox about the Christian life. Often, it's more about being lost than found. It's more about feeling incomplete than whole. It's more about feeling excluded than included, because many of us live in those places most of the time. <br>
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But that's why we need redemption. That's why conversion is at the heart of who we are, because we all get lost in the desert, even when we're part of the fold. And we all need someone out there, willing to go looking for us. We're always in the process of trying to turn back, to find our way home again. And it's a struggle. <br>
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But it's a joyful struggle, because repentance is a joyous activity. It's the endless way that we turn back toward the truth and wholeness. How great is that? And life becomes this process of shouldering one another, of walking each other home. And sometimes we're the carrier, and sometimes we're being carried. <br>
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But all the time, it's a movement toward wholeness, toward being included again, toward being under one roof again. A sheep. A coin. Two sons. Us.<br>
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And what joy at being found. </SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">Edward Beck, The Joy of Being Lost and Found</SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt"> Kierkegaard's Four Steps in the Religious Quest</SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">There was a man by the name of Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher back in the 19th century. The interesting thing is that his writings did not make a real impact on thought and religion until our century. In some of his writings he talks about several different steps that we as human beings take in the religious quest. The first level he talks about is the aesthetic level. Now you do not have to worry about the technical name. Just trust me that the first level is called the aesthetic level. What he talks about is that in this level people dabble in life, trying to enjoy its pleasures. The key word of this level is pleasure-seeking. The second level of life is the ethical level. That is when people begin to take life seriously and the issues of life seriously and give themselves to seeking the good. The first level pleasure, the second level the good. The first level casual dabbling, the second level earnest living. The third level, he says, is divided into two and he calls them Religion One and Religion Two. Religion One has to do with what we were talking about in this bumper sticker where we seek the truth, where we yearn, where we reach out to find this something extra we know is somehow a part of life. That is Religion One and the emphasis there is on truth. So you go pleasure, good, truth. </SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">But he said there is another level that we have discovered. This level is revealed in the scriptures…</SPAN></div>
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<div style="LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">The conclusion to this illustration and for many additional illustrations and sermons for the Proper 19 can be accessed at <A target=_blank __removedLink__519036107__href="http://www.sermons.com/">www.Sermons.com</A>. </SPAN></div>
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