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

Snow Days or should that be daze...

Thought two in one day--go figure, must be snowed in or something...

Well here it is day 4 of the snow days... hard to believe we have had as much snow as we have had lately. Sunday it was treacherous out on the roads. Woke up to several inches of the white stuff in the street and watched even the police not able to get up the drive way to the police car park without a bit of help. The police van was parked in the street covered in snow... the grit trucks hadn’t even been by and the pavement was covered and slick. Our back carpark was too full of snow to even think about clearing it away and now it is today and there is only more snow than was there before... finally have the front pavement cleared and non-slippery with plenty of grit down, one of few in the City centre.

Well with all this white stuff lying about it was decided that the wise thing to do was to hold off on having services on the Sunday. But what a challenge to my thinking, it went totally against what was to be on offer in the study of Hebrews we have been on for the past six weeks, errrr, 11 months... finally in chapter 10 and one of the main verses is verse 25 which reminds us; “not to forsake the assembling of yourselves together...” oh the dilemma—should we be safe or live up to this verse... now the funniest part of this is that in September I had sat with our church secretary and set out the preaching schedule through the end of the year and this was right on schedule 28 November, Hebrews 10:19 to Hebrews 11:1... 

Now tell me God doesn’t have a sense of humour...

Till the next time,

Rev. Jon

Thanksgiving and Beyond

Not sure what happened last week... must have been that it was Thanksgiving and it is the one American Holiday I refuse to give up. So was a bit busy supervising the cooking and preparation for the turkey dinner. (Thanks Ruth for working so hard and letting me get the credit) I quite honestly love this particular holiday. It is not like the goofiness that Halloween is turning into, trying to decide if it is just a bunch of fun or an excuse to get as close to evil as we can without quite admitting that is what the witches, ghosts and goblins represent. And then there is Christmas which is one we get so mixed up on we don’t know what to do with ourselves, is it an excuse to be a kid-(I like that part), is it about gifts for those we love and care about, or maybe it is about the dinner, that excuse to do away with our diets for one extra big go, but whatever we come up with about Christmas it is to my mind being ruined by the excessive commercialism, but I think anymore we say this every year and no one pays much attention to the idea that Christmas promotions starting already in October makes most of us a bit tired of it all by the time Christmas actually arrives.

But one thing I am observing is that we are losing too often the meaning of the holidays we have on the books. Remembrance Sunday, “we will not forget”, is falling fast by the wayside, the couple of handfuls that showed at the Memorial this year sadly to my mind shows that, say it was cold all you want but the lads that died in the trenches had it colder. I am glad for those who do show each year. Halloween as mentioned has lost the sense of it being the eve of All Saints Day. How many of us really know who St. Andrew even was as a historical figure? And Christmas, the season which really officially started in the churches this past Sunday, is really about Christ and his incarnation. Yet the tradition seems for too many of us Christians to be that of bemoaning the fact that Jesus is getting left out more and more. That political correctness is trying to remove the trappings of what Christmas is really about. It is ok to do the Santa thing, and decorate a bit, but don’t say Happy Christmas, must say Happy holidays or X-mas. We forget that the beginning of it is ‘Christ’, if he hadn’t come we wouldn’t even have this holiday.

So back to my busy week of Thanksgiving; I love it because it reminds me in my life to be thankful for all the blessings I receive and to be thankful even in my hard times since in them somehow my loving heavenly Father has a lesson for me to learn. So for me it is three ‘F’s; Family, Food and Fellowship and my thankfulness that I can enjoy all three...

Now let Christmas Joy begin,

Rev. Jon Bergen

Tribute Part II

This week is a bit of a joint effort and you will I hope understand. As in the Brechin Advertizer print edition;

Death is a challenge for all of us to deal with but the sudden death of a young person of good character is even harder for us. This past week has been a challenging week with the sudden passing of Andy Crowe. We will all have seen the articles in the Courier and in our local Advertiser that gave wonderful tributes and news of what has happened.

I have been chatting with the Head teacher, Mr. Dempsey, at Brechin High School and want to share some from him this week. So a bit of a collaborative effort...

“The school community especially has been affected by the tragic death of one of our pupils, Andy Crowe on Friday 29 October. Special assemblies were held on Monday 1 November to pay tribute to him. It provided an opportunity for the school to share stories about Andy’s life and encourage the young people to talk and celebrate his life and his achievements. He was an inspiration to all of us to set targets and goals for ourselves. Andy’s family have encouraged young people to talk about him and share his memories with each other. Jon Bergen and a member of the Angus Council Educational Psychology staff attended the assemblies and were available throughout Monday to offer advice and support. The pupils have responded in a most respectful way to the sad loss of a valued member of the school community.”

As I have watched the students and interacted with them I want to brag on what a great group of students I have talked with at the High School. The staff at the High School have been marvellous as well, both in support and example of how to live through hardship. I have been amazed to see and hear of the many ideas that have come out of the student body to show caring and appreciation for Andy and the support for each other and Andrew’s family.

Mr. Dempsey wanted to share some of the many ideas that have come as a tribute to Andy these include:

“On Thursday 4 November, the football team asked for the whole to participate in one minute’s applause before morning interval;

On Tuesday 9 November and Thursday 11 November, the school canteen will serve Andy’s favourite meal, spaghetti Bolognese, with donuts;

A mural is being designed for the fitness suite; a memorial plaque is to be placed in the fitness suite; Walks are being planned around some of Andy’s running routes; a cup will be awarded at Prize Giving 2011 in his honour for a sporting achievement; Running events are being planned for later in the school session.”

The funeral service was a moving, emotional occasion for all those who attended. We will never forget the tributes from Andy’s family and friends. The whole community has been affected by the events of the last week. We have been reassured by the strength and resilience shown by the young people in the way they have responded. They have bonded to provide support and comfort to each other. It was also moving for myself, Mr. Dempsey and most of all the family to see the tremendous support of students, Cadets, the Royal Marines and so many others of our fair City and area that packed the Cathedral on a bright but chilly Saturday morning to show honour for a fine young  man. I know for my part one of my encouragements was for all to look to Andy’s example and to live life to that high standard so that our lives matter and are not just wasted. Andy’s life was not wasted; it was lived to the full. How can we not desire to follow that example?

Yours in Service,

Rev. Jon Bergen and Mr. Steve Dempsey