A Miracle of Contagious Joy!

If you were to try to distill the mission of Jesus followers into a single sentence, it is to create modern—everyday—life changing miracles.

Embrace!— the Creative Mystery of God in our daily encounters & experiences!

Share!— the Wonder of Divine Love that is liberated from the world’s grinding demands.

This extraordinary mission begins in our personal lives with how we greet each day—and how we navigate our way through the day.

Then—when we learn to be consistent in sustaining this hope filled outlook—our attitude will begin to rub off on others.

In other words, it will spread as a miracle of contagious joy.

But it begins with you and with me.

Become expectant.

Train your mind to always expect better things to happen.

Place your trust in God to always have in store for you a better and higher life.

Expect that God will continue to make a better way for you as you journey through your youth and adolescence—as you reach adulthood and maturity—and then as you grow older—

You keep expecting better things to happen all the way to the end of your life and beyond the end of your life.

Now, someone might say, “Well, given the way things are going in my life now, how can I manage that?

Things are worse, not better.

Or, “I expect nothing much to change.”

Well, my guess is that you are probably limiting the scope of your vision to your physical, material existence.

That is a quite natural way to look at things.

We all do it. It’s the way of the world.

But it doesn’t measure up to a Jesus following!—Spirit seeking!—God loving!—way to conduct your life.

That way consists of nurturing inwardly—faith!—to see!—that reality is not limited to the natural world and the physical, material universe.

In fact, this reality is only a tiny part of a deeper, higher reality that has been identified by great souls across the centuries with words such as transcendent!

Ascendant!                                                                                       Wondrous!                                                                                                   Fifth dimensional!—ACTIVITY that happens inside and beyond the realm of space-time in which we live.

As an analogy from science—if the earth was a single gumball in a gumball machine the size of the sun, one million earths would fit within the sun’s gumball machine.

So 0ur physical life may be compared to that earth gumball, and the spiritual life to the sun gumball machine.

And if the sun were a single gumball in a gumball machine the size of the largest star now known, a million of our suns would fit within it.

Under/Over/Beyond/Inside our physical existence is a vast, Creative Mystery.

When you begin to understand that this is where God is and where God dwells and where God EMERGES from—then you begin to hope for more than what you already see and experience.

You begin to expect and experience WONDER! And miracles!

And when I say wonder—miracles—transcendence—or, as today’s lectionary suggests—ASCENDENCE!!!!—

I include a wide range of events—

From the transformation of a grudge holder into a grace generator!

From a servant of my worries to—understanding of how my difficulties often solve themselves without any of my help.

From having a closed mind to “I’ll think about that possibility”

From a people freed from some dominating tyranny –to a war that doesn’t get started—

From Jesus walking on water— to Daniel escaping the fate of a lion’s den.

To be a follower of Jesus and a lover of the Loving God is to SEE a larger, deeper, transcendent, supernatural, 5^th dimensional reality in which God’s activity is constant—far reaching—inward dwelling—life changing—birthing worlds that do not presently exist.

The Kingdom of God!—

Among you! Within you!

If you see the world and life—and your life—like this!— even a quarter of the time, even an hour a day!—a few minutes a day!—and you remind yourself of it enough by praying, worshipping, serving others, meditating, studying scripture and other spiritual writings, you’re going to become excited and expectant.

You are going to begin expecting better things to happen.

You will learn to trust God to always have in store for you a better & higher life.

You will learn to expect WONDERS AND MIRACLES AND AMAZING GRACE !—which is our calling as a Christian congregation—to produce:

Miracles of character won through endurance that generates hope!

Miracles of forgiveness that grow from giving up all hope of a better past.

Miracles of mercy given out of gratitude for God’s abundant mercies!

Miracles of equality and justice and liberation for marginalized people.

Miracles of healing the unhealable and saving the unsaveable!

Miracles of finding the lost! And miracles of….finally….becoming findable…..

Miracles and wonders—you know— don’t really overthrow the laws of nature—which is why some people object to the possibility of miracles.

No—miracles merely introduce a new event!

A beam of light!

A penetrating and compelling, creative action!

—or simple, unifying thought!—

—into the normal pattern of the physical world—and begin to transform this world!….

Your world! My world! His world! Her world!

And enable us all to transcend its harder and harsher realities.

Let us pray:

I ask you, God, to make me willing to see clearly my everyday experiences.

To sharpen my perception of how much there is to enjoy—

Even in ordinary things and happenings.

Let me become receptive.

Restore to me my capacity for wonder!

Include me in Your miracles of contagious joy!

Amen.

Ascension Sunday, June 1, 2019                                                               Westport Presbyterian Church, Rev. Scott Myers