Communion Meditation

These are the Communion Meditations from this Sunday's worship service.

If I did not believe in God, I should still want my doctor, my lawyer, and my banker to do so.
G. K. Chesterton

Speaking about his new movie, Attack of the Clones, Star Wars creator George Lucas described how the young Anakin Skywalker became the evil Darth Vader: He turns into Darth Vader because he gets attached to things. He can't let go of his mother; he can't let go of his girlfriend. He can't let go of  things. It makes you greedy. And when you're greedy, you are on the path to the dark side, because you fear you're going to lose things, that you're not going to have the power you need.
Time (4-29-02);

The real essence of Christ's Passion consisted in the two things we least like to bear and suffer: fear and disgrace.
Hans Urs von Balthasar in The Grain of Wheat


[My constant sickness] made me study and preach things necessary, and a little stirred up my sluggish heart to speak to sinners with some compassion, as a dying man to dying men.
The Autobiography of Richard Baxter

When I was a child I was, like most children, afraid of things that go bump in the night. But I told myself (for no good reason) that monsters which lie under beds cannot break through blankets and sheets! By the time I was a teenager I wasn't afraid of what might live under my bed, but I was afraid of what my friends might have to say about the way I combed my hair. What do I fear now? I am afraid, to put it simply, of living a life that doesn't matter. I am afraid of leaving the world exactly as I found it, no different for my having been here.  What are things which last forever? Justice, mercy, forgiveness, compassion, and grace are a few. If I want my life to count, to be significant, then I will try to fill it as much as possible with these attitudes and actions.
Daniel Taylor, Letters to My Children

In reading the Scriptures I find a great moral power. Therein am I made aware of two great forces for good in human experience: the "fear" of God and the "grace" of God. Without the fear of God I should not stop at doing evil; the fear of God restrains from evil. Without the grace of God I should have no desire to approach positive goodness. The one is a deterrent from evil; the other an encouragement to good.
Jim Elliot, The Journals of Jim Elliot.