Pastor Michael Moore's Blog

We’re having a mini heatwave in the UK. A skin-drenching scorcher few of us feel ready for. Because we’ve barely got over having layers of snow and a cool blue feeling in our souls.

We often choose colours that represent certain things to us. Blue is usually considered to be the colour of slowing down, a precursor to experiencing calm, harmony and rest. It’s also associated with stability and depth, piety and sincerity. It’s indicative of loyalty, trust, wisdom, intelligence, faith, and all things sky and heaven related.

On a hot day our skin can protest at sun’s fiery rays, emotions can rise and the change can feel destabilising and unsettling until we get used to it or have been eagerly anticipating its arrival for months.

So I thought I would keep things light today and share a trio of haiku with you to maintain the cool, calm and collected…

The Jesus Manifest continues (Matthew 5-7). This is a critical teaching of Jesus. What should I think about money and wealth? I need to get clear on this. Jesus is!

Who will I serve? It is a stunning question. Jesus now explains that behind the choice between two treasures (where I lay them up) and two visions (where I fix my eyes) there lies the still more basic choice between two masters (whom I am going to serve).

It is a choice between God and mammon, that is between the living Creator himself and any object of our my creation I term ‘money’ (‘mammon’ being the transliteration of an Aramaic word for wealth). For I cannot serve both.

Copyright 2013 by R.A. Robbins

 “Advice From a Tree:
Stand Tall and Proud,
Sink your roots deeply into the Earth,              Be content with your natural beauty, drink plenty of water, and remember your roots.”

– Ilan Shamir –

I thank You
Beloved Divine Presence
For being this day’s
Soft Companioning of Cloud
And Steadfast Friendship
Of the Trees which line this winding road

What comfort it is
For me to know
That You Are
Always To Be Found

Never Far
You Are
The Holy Ground
Ever beneath my straying feet

So Great as to
Create All Things
So Humble as to meet
One so small as I

With my canticles and cares
With all my pacing prayers

When I settle down
I always find You there

In the Silent
In the Still

In relinquishing my will
To the higher goals of Perfect Love

And when I am set to stumble
You do not forget me or leave me to fall
But call me onward toward Home
Through the Kind Correctives of Your Grace

You lead me to
The Gentle Place
Of Ultimate Belonging.

Our team from The Outreach Foundation, based in Franklin, Tennessee, http://www.theoutreachfoundation.org

Our team has fully assembled at the conference center up in the mountains above Beirut: Tom & Joy Boone, Jim Wood, Brian Collins, Marilyn Borst and myself. Dhour Shweir Evangelical Center is our home for three days of a gathering of the global body of Christ. For some of us, it is like returning to the bosom of family in a big reunion. For others, it is the first time but you all probably remember the first time you met distant relatives. This is the feeling we have when we gather. Lebanese, Syrian, American, French, English, Swedish, Swiss, German, Hungarian, Irish…it is a big family!

We have gathered around this theme, “Together for Reconciliation and Reconstruction,” and we take our call from the book of Nehemiah, the second chapter, the eighteenth verse: “And I told them of the hand…

Lord Christ~
You remind me
what it is to be in Love
Pouring gentle Beams of Light
in Streams of Gold from Above

You bring the Spring
again to birth
You kiss, caress, and green
the waiting, wanting Earth

O Radiance!
O Warmth!
O Highest Sun of Suns!

Come kiss and caress
Your waiting, wanting ones~
who long for Light
and Beauty to behold
As You lift us
into Streams of Purest Gold.

Beloved Jesus~
You are ever
here with me
beneath the Holy Oak
so firmly planted
in the center
of my heart’s garden

Our Mother’s roses
grow all around
palest pink
and the leaves
sound as tinkling bells
calling to prayer

The only Hymn
is birdsong
and the beating of my heart~
grateful, alive, passionate,
and peaceful in Your Presence

My Lord, my Love,
more than enough
You fill all hunger
and quench all thirst
To be with…