"Living in the Shadow of the Cross" Pastor Cindy's Devotion - 02/21/2018

Good morning,
On Sunday in worship, we looked at pictures of crosses.  Last week I drove around our neighborhood and took pictures of crosses.  Some were on churches.  One was on a car window. One was a tattoo.  I included a picture of the Normandy cemetery with white crosses in straight rows.  One picture was of a cross hanging in a tent in Haiti after the hurricane.  Another cross was made of ashes and appeared on the forehead of a mother in Parkland, Florida after last week’s shooting.


After worship, several people stopped and told me stories about the crosses they were wearing around their necks.  The stories were beautiful, stories of crosses designed in memory of loved ones, crosses that had been given on special occasions, crosses that held special meaning.  One person shared that she had arrived in a small town for a special event.  She knew it would be held in a church, but she didn’t know where the church was.  She just looked up, looked for a cross, and used that to guide her to the location.


This is all pretty ironic.  We see crosses today as symbols of hope, community, and sacrifice.  The original cross that Jesus faced was a means of execution.  How did the cross undergo such transformation?  And if an ugly thing like the cross can be redeemed, what does that mean for the world?


We all live under the transforming power of the cross.  There is nowhere we can go that is not within the shadow of the powerful event that happened on the cross.


Today at 11 am a memorial service will be held at McLaren’s Funeral home for Alma Selindh.  Alma died last week at the age of 94.  She had no immediate family and at 94 for she had outlived many of her peers.  She had friends, many of them church friends.  In fact, one of her church friends planned her memorial service.  Another family from the church has visited her regularly for more than ten years.


We will gather and pray and read scriptures and celebrate her life.  Some of us there may not have known her at all.  But we know this.  She, like us, lived in the shadow of the cross.  Something happened at that first Easter event.  The redeeming work of God.


So today we will gather and celebrate her life and her resurrection.  You are invited.  You may not have known Alma, but you know the cross and the Christ who has redeemed us all.


I bet if we look around today, we will see a cross or two.  A continual reminder that God is with us, that God is at work in us, that through us, the redeeming work of God continues. 
 
Blessings to you this day,
Pastor Cindy
Pastor Cindy Hickman
West Des Moines United Methodist Church
720 Grand Avenue
West Des Moines, IA 50265
515-279-0826


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See you Sunday!

"Lent is a Time of Recalculating" - Pastor Cindy's Devotion - 02/13/2018

I make a wrong turn and I hear the smooth voice of my GPS say “recalculating.”  She (my GPS is a “she”) is very sensitive to missed turns.  She doesn’t like me to travel on the wrong path for very long.  Driving is easy compared to life.  In life, I can make lots of wrong turns, say the wrong thing to the people around me, get lost in the fog of my own thinking, and get so busy I forget to fill my tank.

Lent is a time of recalculating.  In some ways, it is a timeout, a God-given excuse to reset our lives.  Am I on the wrong path?  Have I taken a wrong turn?  Wandered a bit from God or who I think God wants me to be?  Are my energies depleted and along with my energies, have I forgotten to love those around me as I should? 

Recalculating.

During Lent sometimes people give something up as a means of recalculating.  Sometimes people take something up.

For example, we might

Give up salty foods.

Take up eating two vegetables each day.  (Your doctor will love you for this.)

Give up blaming people.

Take up forgiving.

Give up judging people.

Take up assuming people are doing the best they can at the time.

Give up social media one day a week.

Take up a family reading night.

Give up swearing.

Take up silently asking for God’s blessing on the people around us.

Give up taking the best parking spot.

Take up parking in the furthest spot.

Give up time on the sofa.

Take up helping with a chore. 

Give up seeing the worst in others.

Take up seeing and acknowledging the best. 

Recalculating. 

Lent is not an exercise plan or a diet plan.  It is really about getting out of old routines that may have become ruts and making time and space for God to set us on a new path.

This Wednesday I am inviting you to the launch of this recalculating season.  Our Ash Wednesday service will be held at 7pm.  We will sing and read some scripture and then one by I will place ashes on your forehead or hand in the sign of a cross.  Someone will place them on mine.  I will say “from dust you have come and to dust you shall return.”  All of us, very human, capable of getting off track.  And then we will pray for a better path, a renewed sense of direction.

And then we will set off on the journey to Easter together. 

And God will meet us there. 

Blessings to you,

Pastor Cindy

Pastor Cindy Hickman
West Des Moines United Methodist Church
720 Grand Ave.

West Des Moines, IA 50265
515-279-0826

"Looking for God?" - Pastor Cindy's Devotion - 02/07/2018

I am looking for God this week.  God is not missing.  I am missing God.  Maybe I better explain. 

First, my life gets busy.  (Does your life get busy?  Can I get an “amen”?)  It is so easy to get swept up in the rumble of life and the things that keep us so busy.  Going a little deeper, the things that keep us busy can take on an importance that they really don’t have. 

Second, Lent begins next Wednesday.  Lent is the 40 day period that prepares us for Easter.  In a way lent is a time-out.  In just the way a parent puts a child in a time-out and says “I want you to think about what you’ve done,” in lent God offers us a time-out, gives us time to reflect on what we have done and who are and (and this a really important part) gives us time to reflect on what God has done and who God is.

Third, during Lent, we follow Jesus to the cross.  That story is an awful witness to what human beings can do to one another.  It’s pretty horrifying to me.  I need to prepare for that. 

Fourth, the world feels heavy right now. In recent weeks, several people have shared their hopelessness and anxiety with me.  In some ways, I share their feelings.
  

Fifth, I worship a living God.  I experience God in my life, in the day to day. 

So, in order to reset my priorities, to prepare for lent and refuel with the living oxygen God always offers, I have gone looking for God this week.  Someone once said to me “you go looking for what you need.” I think that is true.  The world is so beautiful and so full of amazing things, why not be honest about what we need and look?  

But how do you look for God?

The Australian Aborigines have a custom of walkabout.  A walkabout is a rite of passage for young men ages 10-16.  They live in the wilderness for six months in order to make a spiritual transition to manhood.  I think of what I am doing as a walkabout, no sleeping on the ground, no encounters with crocodiles like the aborigines might experience.  I just walk around my world, my wilderness, looking for what I might discover, watching and listening for the presence of God.

Watching and listening.  In order to do that, I have to slow down.  “Be still and know that I am God” says the psalmist in Psalm 46.  Slow down, listen, breathe.  I am looking for evidence of the living God present in the world, something beyond me.

Have I found God?  I have found good people.  I have seen good ministries and care in place.  I have run into an old friend and been reminded again of how important people are in my life.  But honestly, I have not found what I am looking for yet.  I am looking for a stirring in my heart, and easing of my soul, lungs filling with the reassurance that God is with us.  By faith, I know God is with us, but I want to feel it. 

It is only Wednesday.  And I am not very good at being still.  So more stillness, more downshifting, more looking and watching.  I will share more on Sunday, but right now, I am beginning to feel more at peace. 

May you be filled with the living oxygen of God. 

Blessings to you from the wilderness, 

Pastor Cindy

Pastor Cindy Hickman

West Des Moines United Methodist Church
720 Grand Avenue
West Des Moines, IA 50265
pastorcindy@wdmumc.org
515-279-0826

"Are You Having a Good Day?" - Pastor Cindy's Devotion - 01/31/2018

Hello everyone.

Are you having a good day? 

I hope so.  This morning I had coffee with a remarkable person. Then I met with a group of pastors who are working very hard and are smart and funny and dedicated to their churches.  And then I came to the church where the staff was busy at work.  I can hear the sounds of the preschool children in their classrooms.  They bring life and energy to the church.  The Wednesday Night Live Crew will be in soon and the smells of supper cooking will make its way up the stairs.   There is a buzz of life around me, good people tending to the world each in their own way. 

Is this the hum of grace?  Does God move through our actions and our hearts, keep us busy and interested in the world around us, call us to the adventure of living as people of faith? 

A simple prayer for today: 

Fill us, Lord. 

With your grace,

Surge through our veins,

Sing your songs in us,

Dance around hearts,

And then may we,

Fling grace into the world,

Sing songs of hope and mercy,

And dance to the rhythm of your heartbeat. 

Amen

Fling, sing, dance this good day.  The world needs you present in this moment and filled to overflowing with the goodness of God.

Every blessing,

Pastor Cindy

Pastor Cindy Hickman
West Des Moines United Methodist Church
720 Grand Avenue
West Des Moines Iowa 50265
515-279-0826