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Grandma

I wanted to share something that I wrote for my Grandmother’s memorial service. I think it clearly expresses even more what a great woman of God she is.

Hi my name is Bradley Alexander and I am one of Mary K’s grandsons. As I stand here this morning I find it difficult to honor someone that did so much for so many people. Where do you even start? Mary K or Grandma was like a connection magnet. She loved connecting. From early on in her life she was deeply connected with God and his son Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior and even was known to say that doing ministry to and with the least of these was a deep connection she had as well and we all have.

She was deeply passionate about her faith and living out that faith. She was actually very passionate about connecting with her family and it was always too soon when we had to depart. Definitely feeling that today. She revitalized our family reunion years ago and it has been going to decades under her leadership. Grandma always loved connecting with people, she just did. She loved being around people at church, teaching Sunday school, being with family on holidays like thanksgiving and christmas.

The deepest that Grandma gave us though was something else entirely. She connected all of us to who she saw us to be. She would always tell me when I lived with Grandma and Granddad while I attended Texas Wesleyan University that I was so capable of doing many great things, it was just about showing up and seeing yourself for who you really are. Before the Texas Rangers ever used the phrase Never Ever Quit Grandma used it frequently by the way she lived her life and loved the people in her life.

Grandma, I love you and thank you for all that you did for me and I promise that I will always seek to do what you taught me. To Love God, To Love People, Speak from the Heart always, and to speak the truth at all times even when it hurts. Even further I promise to follow the recipes as written in our family cookbook.

I love you Grandma!

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Jesus Heals Us

But this was all a signpost. When Jesus came to town, it meant that healing, deliverance, joy, celebration, forgiveness, transformation, and rescue soon followed. This is the consistent testimony of the Gospels. Jesus healed, He forgave, He celebrated through feasting with people (usually the outcasts of society), He delivered, and He transformed lives— not by changing the outside of the cup, as the Pharisees did, but by curing hardened hearts and cleansing them from the inside. Jesus’ healings demonstrated that the arrival of God’s rule over evil was breaking into the present. For Jesus, healings and the casting out of demons were signs of the dawning kingdom. They indicated that God’s future had arrived. They were tangible signposts that the kingdom of God was coming to earth as it is in heaven. “But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” 49 By healing the sick and casting out demons, Jesus was effectively saying, “This is what happens when God is running the world. This is what it looks like when God is King of the earth. The time has come; the dominion of God is breaking into the present. This is what happens when God becomes King on earth as He is in heaven. (Sweet, Leonard; Viola, Frank (2012-10-02). Jesus: A Theography (p. 169). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.) 

 

 

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Genealogy

“This long genealogy is given for a good reason: to show how this Jesus fulfills the prophecies that tell us the Anointed One will be a descendant of Abraham and David. Some of the women in Jesus’ line are given to show how God is gracious to everyone, even to prostitutes and adulterers. Because some of the women listed weren’t Israelites, but were strangers and foreigners, they foreshadow all the foreigners God will adopt into His church through Jesus. Some of the children in God’s family are conceived under strange circumstances (like Tamar’s twins being conceived as she played the harlot, and like King Solomon being born to adulterous parents). Now that it has been established this is an unusual family, what happens next shouldn’t be a surprise – the conception of a baby under very strange circumstances.” (The Voice New Testament) 

Last night at Pulse Wednesday Night we started a new focus that I am really excited about, what makes it so awesome in fact that it is so simple. Sometimes in youth ministry we can invest so much time in looking for the best curriculum ever and we trust someone from another state in completely different church to give us the curriculum that we need, but the bad thing about this is that the writers don’t know the students at St. Philip’s, and really if I am honest I don’t know a lot either.

I know who does though.

God knows my students better than I ever could.

So, thanks to my genius intern, Marianne we decided to read the entire gospels with our students on Wednesday Nights. By reading a chapter a week we can slowly let the great story ever told sink into the hearts and minds of Pulse Students.

Like I said I am very excited.

Last night we talked about our preconceptions about people.

Sometimes as humans we have the habit of thinking we know more about people than we really do and I think that through Matthew 1, God tells us what He thinks about people. Throughout the genealogy we find plenty of people that really have no place in the family the comes before Christ. Tamar, seduces her father-in-law to keep the family line alive, Rahab is a canaanite prostitute who helps foreigners sneak into a foreign land, and lets not forget the whole David-Bathsheba thing. 🙂

Point is God truly saw these people for who they really were.

He knew their story intimately.

After all He created them and His own image.

Let this be an encouragement as you live your life know that there is no limit to God’s love and grace. The family that God has chosen to associate with is most definitely unusual, but isn’t interesting how unusually amazing and brilliant God is.

His grace is for all people.

Amen.

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Love in the Midst of a Whirlwind.

The last couple of weeks are a whirlwind.

Nov. 10 – Got married to my best friend, Amy Forsythe Alexander
Nov. 11 – Left for cruise
Nov. 18 – Back in Texas from Cruise
Nov. 19-20 – Couple of days in the Office
Nov. 21-23 – Thanksgiving at Harris and Alexanders
Nov. 23 – Thanksgiving with Howell and Forsythe’s

Like I said the last couple of weeks are a whirlwind.

Today I would like to share a moment that was so powerful.

Over thanksgiving I had the opportunity to introduce Amy to my cousin Lauren and my Paw Paw Jack Alexander. The implications of this need some explaining.

My cousin Lauren who passed away 7 years ago of spina bifida was always someone that seemed to me to be a conduit of God’s love and grace. She taught me so much about how God’s love is not determined by limitations but that God’s love cast limitations away and that there was no limits to God’s love and grace, and my Paw-Paw like Lauren taught me how to be a man of God.

My wife Amy reminds me a lot of Lauren. They both have such a heart for God and both to me are conduits of God’s love and grace. They have such a heart for the least and the lost, the small and marginalized, the people that are so easily ignored. I am constantly reminded by that through my time with Lauren and now my time with Amy.

Consider how powerful it is for Amy to embrace these people from my family. Two of the people that helped me in my journey to now.

This was a very powerful and God moment in the midst of a whirlwind, and a good reminder that no matter what is going on in our lives that the whirlwinds, or storms do not cast out God’s love and grace, but that God’s love and grace cast out everything that gets in the way. Nothing can limit this. Nothing can stop this. In fact as Paul says in 1 Corinthians that God’s love never ends.

So as you live your life and experience the storms and whirlwinds of life remember that God’s love and grace is always with you.

Thank you God for your love.

Amen.

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Who God Made Us To Be

God created humanity in God’s own image, in the divine image God created them, male and female God created them. (Genesis 1:27)

“Who was I made to be?”

“Exactly who you are.”

Ever had this conversation with someone? Have you ever asked the question of who we are made to be and then been given this response? It seems to be a very truthful albeit unhelpful response. It’s start to the point, simple, and yet extremely complex.

How can something be simple and complex at the same time?

That seems unreasonable, but we see it all the time in the scriptures. Love your neighbor as yourself doesn’t sound complex but it really is.

To add even more complex to this conversation let’s hone in the question of this post.

Who has God made me to be?
God created all beings in His image.

We are made to be like God, but we are not God. Which means we have qualities like God, like Love, Grace, Peace, Kindness, Caring and may others.

It’s that simple.

The problem is that we complicate the equation. We make it seem that we are not created to be in God’s image because if we were made in His image we wouldn’t make the mistakes that we do, but that is not true because at the same time we are human, and the nature state of being a human is making mistakes.

So you see the point now.

It’s simple, yet complicated.

Which is why the Israelites struggled with this thought and their worth and identity for years. Which is why Jesus came to begin with, to show us who we were made to be. His disciples. Jesus comes to the earth to help us realize our worth and identity, that it is not in our sins that we are defined but in the faithfulness of Christ. Christ defines us for who we are by saying, “I will die to prove that you are worth my image.”

It’s a powerful and influential force that comes when Christ dies for our sins. In that one simple act we are rebranded in the body and blood of Jesus. Because it is truth what it says in Galatians 2:20:

I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And the life that I now live in my body, I live by faith, indeed, by the faithfulness of God’s Son, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

You and I are not what we were before.

Christ is the active and abundant force that is within us, giving us the direction and words to say when we need them. However, we must embrace this force that is within us because when we do that we truly embrace who God made us to be all along, His image.

We no longer live but the body and blood of Jesus Christ live within us and we live by faith and are defined by the faithfulness of God’s Son, Jesus. Who died to prove that we are worth His image.

May God encourage, equip, empower, and energize us to embrace His image.

Amen.