Suffering For Jesus? Not Really what you think...

Well another week has flown by. I am not so sure that I like that what ‘old’ people used to tell me is coming true - that the older I get the faster the days fly by.

With that in mind I was reminded last week that we have now been in Brechin for 9 and almost a half years and that September 4 we will celebrate 9 years of the Brechin Baptist Fellowship being around here in Brechin. Someone who shall remain nameless, but he knows who he is, said something about nine and a half years of suffering in Brechin. My reply was along the lines of 'suffering for Jesus' and that eventually lead to a rather joking conversation about Jesus saying “suffer the little children” to come to Jesus. Suffering has for sure changed meaning over the past 400 years since the AV/KJV Bible was printed. 

We should know that what Jesus was saying was ‘allow the children’ to come see him and be blessed by him. Sadly we now say that like children coming to church to hear about Jesus suffer in misery. I can’t imagine not making learning about Jesus an awesome thing. My problem is, like I said last week, I still have a lot to learn even in the art of preaching and teaching the gospel of Jesus. I wish in the last 9 years I had become the most engaging in this endeavour but though I know the truth of the gospel my stammering tongue still doesn't always get it as interesting as I would like. As ministers and Sunday school teachers we have a passion for Jesus and the gospel of redemption he taught but we have to keep working so our listeners don’t ‘suffer.’ 

I just know that in the past 9 years that sometimes seem like only 9 months and sometimes seem like 90 years that the call of Jesus is still the same: you who are weary, heavy hearted and run down—or maybe over- come to me and I will give you rest. 

So suffer yourself , err, allow yourself to encounter Jesus and get blessed. Though this earthly life flies by, I rejoice in that there is an eternity to live...

Oh yeah and to be clear for the record: I love Brechin and you can’t get rid of me that easily... 

Looking forward always,

Rev. Jon Bergen

Summer is Done--Time to Study

Well that is for sure summer holidays done and dusted. The Brechin young people are back in school and studying hard... or is that hardly studying. Well if you see a young person on the streets in the next couple of days encourage them to get after their studies so they can excel in their futures. If you see a teacher encourage them even more to invest their lives into the lives of our youth.

But the reality is that all of us need to learn more. I have often heard the lines that reflect the thought that the day we stop learning is the day we might as well die and get dirt thrown in our faces... I have said it as well and mostly hope that is true. I want to keep learning all the time. There are not too many topics I can’t talk about, some I only prove how little I know but even my little is more than some folks. And some days as I chat and prove how little I know someone feels sorry for me and gives me a wee bit of education. 

I just know I don’t want to be like the guy from Iowa I knew that at the end of his high school days looked at his head teacher as he walked out the door and said: “I’ve had twelve years of book learning and fetching up and I aint learned nothing yet.”

2 Timothy 2:15 says ‘Study to show yourself approved unto God a workman that needs not to be ashamed rightly dividing the word of truth’. This really is a thought we can all grab onto and try to live. Learn, study, like it matters, like it can change our lives and the world around us. I think knowing scripture helps in a lot of ways. If you read it, it forces you to think about what you read and if you digest the thoughts it gives guidance for how we live our lives.

I probably should leave the rant alone but I confess I am really bothered by the rioting in England last week. I keep thinking 'if those folk had studied the Bible and took to heart the thoughts of not killing, not stealing, even not coveting, would they have been able to do that junk and done so much damage?' I think not.

My brother-in-law sent me the following: “So sad... Please put this on your status if you know or are related to someone who suffers from stupidity. People need to understand that stupidity is REAL and should be taken seriously. You could be sitting next to a stupid person right now. There is still NO KNOWN CURE for stupidity and sympathy does not help. But we can raise awareness!”

But ignorance can be changed—STUDY does it. And for life the best study I can think of is  foundational book—the Bible.

Always more ignorance to grow past,

Rev. Jon Bergen

Moving on...

It has been a long hot summer with too much sun and not enough sarcasm. Actually it is more like where was the summer? I fear I spent too much of mine being sick so I am a bit tired and worn out. And sadly I am talking to too many others that kind of feel like me. The energy to be creative is many days just not where I want it to be and someone else has it. And yet the days flit by at an ever faster pace. So summer holiday is about finishes so back to work. Somehow the thought that I had figured I had worried to death like a dog with his rawhide chew bone will just not leave me alone as I preach my way through the book of Hebrews in the New Testament. “Let brotherly love continue...” 

I see the news and the hearts of people from around the world comes glaring through, thankfully not the majority, but enough to make me realize this ‘brotherly love’ thing is not the world we live in. Oslo Norway comes to mind, the events of last weekend in London jumps out at me as an unavoidable problem. Again the financial crisis of the world economy is heart breaking in many ways, wars and rumours of more war, the political system being questioned in countries around the world including our own... and I think to myself if only...

Then I get to chapter 13 verse five where it says and I paraphrase: ‘let your life be free of coveting because of the love of money and the stuff it buys, instead be content with what you have.’ And I think, wow if we add that to living a life of love that would just about get rid of 90% of the people problems we have. Violence would almost go away, theft disappears, abuse in families and homes—gone, corruption in all areas of life—yes you guessed it: gone. Charities thrive to help the poor and needy in ways we cannot imagine, employers have money to hire folk to work and can even pay decent wages, the burden of taxes goes way down because no one is trying to scam the system and only taking what is fair. And the list goes on and on of how life improves with love and a lack of greed.

Now comes the hard part for me again, this challenge of wanting more than I have, more than God gives into my life. I too desire the nice things in life, stuff that too often I don’t need anyway, I just want it. We all seem to and we don’t know how to get past it. So we have to take on board the promise of God to provide our needs as we trust him and then we work on changing our hearts to meet what godly principles we are to live by. I just know for me it is not always as easy as it sounds.

On a life long journey,

Rev. Jon Bergen

Last thoughts for now on Brotherly Love

I have been sick the past couple of weeks so have not been as prolific at writing as I should be. It has helped me be more empathetic toward those that are chronically ill. But it has also made me a bit forgetful about what has been going on.

So where was I? Right, brotherly love and my friends that lost a brother in law that while he was gifted and talented and in many ways had the perfect life was instead given to abusing his family in unspeakable ways and a massive abuser of drugs and alcohol. In most ways a wasted life.

But out of the abuse my friends had to learn to love in ways I am not so sure I could do. Then out of that ability to love has come an ability to use that hurt to know the hurt of others and to minister to them in ways that one without that pain and suffering could not know as personally as they do.

They have for a number of years been able to be involved in a special ministry to other ministers who themselves are hurting both from current hurts and past hurts. And out of that ministry so very many are able to heal and mend themselves and so able to then use the same type of healing to help even more people that have been through abuse. Back to learning from the scars that we each have in our lives.

So two thoughts that are always true: 1) If you have a belly button you have a problem and 2) Hurting people hurt people.

But it is not what you have to act in these ways, rather it is what you choose to do with those problems and hurts that will either make you a better person or a person that hurts others.

I know it is hard to believe but even those of us in ministry have our own hurts and struggles in life. Just because we have a special calling from God in our lives doesn't mean God takes all the hurt and pain away from us. I wish... but what we, what I choose to do with these is up to me. How I grow and help others is up to me.

I confess that the past couple of weeks being sick has not helped me be the most kind and gentle person in the world. But I know had I not learned some of these lessons and been trying to be who God desires for me to be... Well suffice it to say it would have been worse. (that is where at the least you are to give a wee chuckle).

Let brotherly love continue:  How is it in your life? Are you growing despite the hurts and the problems or are you the cause of hurt and problems in the lives of others? My prayer is that you are growing... 

Still learning,

Rev. Jon Bergen

Still working on love...

Let brotherly love continue: yeah that is easy—when life is good and the relationship is healthy, but what about when abuse takes place. I mean what kind of loving god allows that stuff anyway.

I have friends in Delaware that shared their story with me not too long ago. Her brother had just recently passed away, but he was not one of the good guys so the story was hard to tell yet revealing about how we can grow past even the most awful situation as we find our place with God secure. 

The story is one of a great looking guy that was clever and sociable to the point of “able to sell ice to an Eskimo“. He married at 16, had lovely babies and home but the path went from successful looking to the life of an alcoholic drug addict that abused his family in unspeakable ways both physically and sexually. When it came his time to die it was almost a relief to family that knew the truth of the story. This was one of the scars I mentioned a couple of weeks back. 

The time came to scatter the ashes on the Atlantic shore and the memories that flew by in my friends’ conversation were in the end reminders of love rather than the hate deserved. Memories of a life wasted and ruined leaving ashes in his wake. The reminder that good looks, money, influence and talent are not what really matter in the life is ended. 

The story as I got it went like this: “My wife and I stood on the shore's edge together. The only ones present were her nephew (the son now fully grown and living hand to mouth), her baby brother and his wife, and myself. Well, we also had the ashes of her dead brother in a plastic container enclosed in a clear plastic bag. Missing were his wife, his daughter, his mother, his dad and step mom, and a host of people who claimed to be his friend (as long as he could supply the drugs, booze, and women).”

He continued: “We each said a few memories about him and the son struggled to open the bag. Soon he had the ashes thrown to the wind to be carried into the water's caress. A gray cloud of mucky remains floated on the waves and mingled with water and the sandy bottom. The son cried, "You're free now... you're free!" With that we left and returned to the car and headed back to my father-in-law's home.”

Yet even knowing that her brother was such a rotten person my friends’ thoughts had turned earlier to the question of what about eternity. Despite the pain and hurt of the years it was a ‘brotherly love that overrode it all and her prayer was that somehow maybe, just maybe before it was too late the love that had come to her own life from Jesus would somehow find a place in her brother’s life and death.

Not sure I am able to be that way just yet, but my prayer is that I grow to that kind of love. Jesus the incarnate God came for the sake of love for you and me, yet I struggle some days to model it well. How is it in your life?

Stay tuned,

Rev. Jon Bergen

More Thoughts on Love

Ok so a few thoughts on love the past few weeks. I guess it is still smouldering under my skin that despite the expressions of love in our society I don’t see it actually working, I hear it more than see it. Then I look at my own life and realize that I also still have a long way to go learning this. The Hebrews 13:1 verse that said ‘Let brotherly love continue’ is still churning away trying to work its way out in the real world. It is a great thing to say we have love and it is awesome to know that God loves us. I mean Jesus came to save us over this whole love thing. Then a few verses later in this Hebrews chapter it talks about marriage and the marriage bed... which then took me to how I am to love my wife... Ephesians says I am to be love my wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.

But the challenge is I am not God and neither are you so somehow it is a big challenge for us to really love. Me love my wife as Christ loved as God himself loved and therefore gave—HIMSELF. Wow do I stand a chance of that kind of love. Those of you that know Ruth know she is lovable, that is not the problem, the problem is me, I’m not always very loving, I have my own agenda. So God to make this love thing really clear says that a man is to love his wife as if it is his own body. And I reply back to God, ‘Hey I’m just not that good.’ And you know if you look into your own heart you aren’t either. We all struggle with love that deep, that honest, that transparent. To know we should do and to actually get it done are two different things.

Then earlier in the actual words of Jesus we read that the two great commandments are 1. To love the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls and minds. And 2. To love our neighbour as our self. I don’t know about you but I have to believe that Jesus just didn’t know some of the neighbours I’ve had over the years. Some were pretty bad.

So I realize very quickly the ability to love like I am supposed to is just not as good as it needs to be and I jump to 1 John where the wee verse reminds me that “God is love.” While I do know and understand that God is so much more than love he is still love. Jesus was/is love incarnate (stop me and ask me if that word needs defining). Wow, so the key to loving and continuing in brotherly love is then to know God, not to do it on my own but to really know God and then let his love flow into and through me to others. And hopefully many others will join this journey...

I will share a story from a friend of mine that had to really learn this...

Stay tuned,

Jon

Scars are Not the End of Our World

Life often brings scars. Scars come from a variety of places and all hurt to some level. In our physical  bodies we carry these scars, both the ones from accidents to the ones that were intended, accidents range from paper cuts that heal overnight to major, requiring great amounts of time and care to get healed. The intended ones are the kinds we make ourselves for a variety of reasons like getting a tattoo or an ear pierced to the knife of a surgeon. Some scars are so small that no one sees them and others disfigure us for the world to behold. Some we get used to. Some we think stand out yet no one even sees them but us.

Sometimes the scars are the emotional baggage that haunt our waking hours and our nightmares. Some are seemingly so slight that our friends can’t figure why we don’t just let go. Others we deal with in ways that those who know us wonder how we can possibly make it. The sayings are that ‘time heals all wounds’ and ‘you will get over it in time’. We also say ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me’. These are all true but all lies as well. Time may well ease the pain but often the scars will not go away completely.

One scar is the scar of guilt we bear, both for things we do and things done to us that we take the blame for. And day after day, month after month, year after year the pain is there, the healing doesn't seem to catch up. But somehow we have to find a way to get past that guilt. Picture it if you will as a gift box wrapped in a silver paper, with a lovely bow... day after day we look at it and wonder what it is. We open the box and wallow in that guilt or grief and then wrap it up and put it back on the shelf and keep looking at it and the pain just doesn't go away. So we open it over and over to check if the pain is still there-- 5 times, 10 times, a hundred times we face that pain of the guilt and the more we see it we realize the paper is more torn, the bow less shaped the box is getting battered. And then one day we find that we don’t need to look at the box or unwrap it and we can finally take it out and put it in the bin with all the other rubbish.

I think this is part of what Jesus meant when he said, “take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart: and you will find rest unto your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden light.” We don’t use a yoke very much these days but two oxen or horses yoked together makes the load easier to pull. And that is what Jesus knew, and what he taught in his own suffering as he cried out from the cross: ‘Father forgive them...’ So we learn from him and eventually something we think is of value yet leaves us in pain we can toss out and finally move on. We may not forget that box but we can put it someplace it doesn't hurt us quite as easily anymore.

Just thinking,

Rev. Jon Bergen

Making a Difference

Well the days are getting markedly longer and longer, a nice change of pace for the next few weeks before we start fussing about the nights drawing in again. But I can tell I am getting more culturally acclimated in that I find myself fussing about the coolness of the days like everyone else.  Yet I also see that the fields are shaping up with the rape blossoms now fading quickly, the tops of the barley growing into heads and the fields growing so very quickly.

I guess  with the funeral for Steve last week the reminder of how quickly life passes by came by my heart one more time. Then we received news Sunday morning just past that Ruth’s uncle of 59 in Houston Texas had passed away unexpectedly as well. I have talked to some that are in their later years and they so often mention how quickly their lives have flown by and how quickly the days come and go. 

The reminder to make my life count seem to fly into my heart and head—the sense that I don’t want to waste what is left of my life. Suddenly in that contemplation I start to think of guys who lived short lives that made big differences in the world around them. I think of an almost local boy from Edinburgh who by his ministry is a name more linked to Dundee, a young man by the name of Robert Murray M’Cheyne who lived only to the age of 29 yet one of the greatest of Christian revivals surrounded his ministry in those short years at St. Peter’s Free Church. I have read a couple of the biographies of his life and am often convicted by what I read to do more than what I actually do.

Another man that was more than a mere man, yet died at about 33 was Jesus Christ. His life though short has literally changed the world for almost 2000 year. But more importantly he is still changing folks lives today. 

While I know that I will not change the world the way Jesus did, nor will I change Brechin and Scotland like M’Cheyne did, I do hope that I can change a few lives by sharing what Jesus did and that as some come with me on this journey of life that we then don’t waste our short lives and instead can be a blessing to our world. As I was reminded last week, I must’ let brotherly love continue’ and it is a lesson hard to learn some days, but it will make a difference in the long term.

Praying I learn before it is too late,

Rev. Jon Bergen

“Let Brotherly Love Continue.”

Hebrews 13:1 says quite simply: “Let brotherly love continue.” 

It is verses like this that give me a lot of trouble in life. Sunday we had a Brechin City FC V Ayr United football match as the final playoff match... I woke to the rain and the wind and knew in light of my sermon on this particular passage of scripture I was in trouble. As a minister it is sometimes even for me a challenge to love everyone I come in contact with, let alone an Ayr fan at the final Brechin City match...

I must confess I wanted a nice warm sunny day... for me but that nasty rain was just what I wanted for those Ayr fans. I knew they were bringing a load of supporters up and that they wouldn’t all fit in the David Will stand. I also kind of figured that our folk could squeeze together in a brotherly love sort of way in the Cemetery End coo shed... so it was a mixed emotion of how do I pray—did I really want to love my fellow football fans or did I want to wish them ill will? Well as you may or may not know I can’t control the weather, we get what God allows or sends our way and in the end it was really a lovely, if a bit blustery, day. A fitting day to meet and battle it out on the pitch.

It ended up one of those days of bitter sweet emotions, the 2400 plus folk at the Glebe gave a warm round of applause for our departed fellow football fan and avid BCFC supporter Steve Mitchell. Yet we lost by one goal. A hard day to celebrate and show love to the other team. Our friend is no longer among us, my beloved City is still in second division and the rapture predicted for last Saturday didn’t happen... and still the sun came up and life will gradually get back to whatever it is we consider ‘normal’. 

So forgive me today for my rather disjointed thought and give to me as well a wee bit of the brotherly love as I need to receive it as much some days as I do to continue to learn to give it to the world in which I live. I keep being reminded of love and the difference it makes to each of us. We all need it but somehow it is one of those gifts that the more we give the more comes back as well... so let a brotherly love kind of thing keep going and going in our community and let’s see if it changes something. I know 2000+ years ago God’s love made itself known and all these years later we still ken that God/Man Jesus Christ. So love does make a difference day by day, may it long continue.

Learning to love more,

Rev. Jon Bergen

Thoughts on being behind.

Have had many thoughts for the week and been meaning to get them up here. So the plan is in the coming weeks to catch up from ages ago. The thing is is anybody even reading these things? No comments so hard to tell. If you read this then let me know with a bit of feedback to say either that you like it, it makes you think or it stinks... so seeing I am 4 months behind I have a lot of 'out of date' material that has been in the Brechin Advertiser that I will try to at least catch that up with several bits and then these will be archived here at least for you to check out and take note of.

Oh and if you are on this but haven't been to the Brechin Baptist site the Bible reading for May is now up at Bible Reading. This is a reading from John's Gospel to start on May 9 and finish on June 3.

Till soon then,

Jon