"Have You Found Your Baby Picture?" Pastor Cindy's Devotion 07/24/2018

(Not Pastor Cindy's picture)

Good morning, friends!


I went looking for my little girl self this morning.  Or at least a picture of who I was when I was a little girl.


Here at church during the month of July, we are doing a sermon series called KidTalk, what children can teach us about God, and faith and the church.  This Sunday we are asking everyone to bring a baby picture of themselves.  (Better yet-a photocopy of your baby picture—those pictures are precious!)
 
And this morning I found my baby picture.  The little girl in the picture looks like she is six months old.  She is propped up at the end of a sofa.  She is wearing a pink dress with bows on the front and lace around the hem.  Her chubby legs peek out under the dress and on her feet, she wears anklets with flowers embroidered on them and white leather shoes, that are actually a bit scuffed.  (She was the middle child, after all.)  She has only a wisp of hair.  There is just a hint of a smile.  Her cheeks are round and rosy, the way all babies’ cheeks are.


The thing you notice most about her are her eyes.  They are dark brown and each one reflects a single sparkle of light.  She is looking at someone or something.  Maybe the photographer was holding a teddy bear in front of her to draw a smile or maybe her mom was calling her name and clapping her hands, eliciting delight.


She looks content, assured, trusting.


In the picture, you can’t tell that she had an older brother at home or that one day she would have a baby sister.  You can’t tell she will have a succession of dogs and a few cats during her life.  Or that she will love to read.  There is no way to know whether she will marry or what sort of career she will have.  From the picture, you can’t detect the tiny hole in her heart that a doctor will discover years later.


She is just a little girl, content, assured, trusting, looking out on the world.
 
Is that how God sees me?  Still sees me?  Am I still a child of God?


She is lifting her right hand.  My right hand, the one I raise in blessing at the end of every worship service.  Maybe she is reaching for something, in the way all children reach out.  Reaching for God perhaps?  Reaching for grace?  Trusting it will be there within her grasp? 
As I type this, I see my reflection in the computer screen, an older face.  I know now that that little girl’s trust has not been in vain.


God has been faithful, is faithful.  I am a child of God.  You are, too. 
Every blessing to you,
Pastor Cindy
Pastor Cindy Hickman
West Des Moines United Methodist Church
720 Grand Ave
West Des Moines, Iowa 50265
515-279-0826


We worship at 8:30 and 11 and we would love to worship with you.
 
This week at WDMUMC:
KidTalk!  Bring YOUR baby picture on Sunday and we will have a place to display them.  If you would like to make a photocopy, stop by the church and you can use our copier.


Celebrating the Music Ministry of Tom Sletto!  Tom is retiring and this Sunday is his last day to worship with us.  Tom’s wife Barbara will be here on Sunday too and we will enjoy their last Sunday with us.  Come and thank Tom for his service to the church.
 
State Fair!  If you have not signed up to work at our amazing state fair stand, go directly to wdmumc.org and sign up now!  And bring a friend or a co-worker!  Lots of fun and a very important ministry.


Our Visioning Team will have their final meeting this Sunday night.  They have listened and learned and studied and interviewed and surveyed and prayed.  Sunday evening they hope to finalize their proposal and make plans to present it to the church.  Please keep the visioning in your prayers.  Pray that our plans are in keeping with God’s will for our church and our neighborhood. 
 

See you at church!  

"Midweek and Still Practicing Heaven" Pastor Cindy's Devotion 07/19/2018

Good morning!  Last week I asked you to “practice heaven.”  How’s it going?
I believe heaven is a place where we are fully immersed in God’s love.  So that’s what I have been practicing.  I am assuming heaven is all around and I just have to open myself to it.  It has been interesting.

Some heaven is completely obvious.  Vacation Bible school is happening at the church this week and that’s heaven all around with 54 children filling our halls.  We have dozens of faithful helpers, among them teenagers who dote on the kids and are clearly rock stars in the children’s eyes.  VBS begins each night following Kathy’s lead with song and dance and dancing has been amazingly fun.  I am sure there is dancing in heaven.  Supper has been heavenly, too.

Some heaven is more subtle.  Since I am “practicing” that I am immersed in God’s love, I assume every person I encounter must be too.  And honestly, sometimes I have to squint to see heaven in others.  There is this age-old question about who we will meet in heaven.  I once belonged to a bible study where that topic came up for debate every so often.  Someone would offer the name of notorious villain—the Unabomber, Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer, and we would debate what their chances were of being welcomed into heaven.  One day it occurred to us that people who judge who gets into heaven are probably jeopardizing their own possibility of going to heaven.  We ended the debates.
So this week as I practice, I am assuming heaven citizenship in every one I meet. It has opened some doors.

And heaven is also demanding.  I think we tend to think of heaven as this perfect place that suits our taste and sensibility, the next room over only with better decorating.  The more I practice heaven the less I believe that.  Heaven is the fullness of God’s love, not our preferred eternal vacation destination.

God’s love means justice, and human dignity and compassion.  It means clean water and nourishing food and shelter.  It means respect for the least.  It means relinquishing the abundance that I have so that others can have enough.  It means sacrifice and sticking my neck out and speaking up for others.  Heaven beyond a place designed just for me.  Heaven beyond my narrow view of heaven. More than I could ever imagine.  Better. 

In the last week, God has shown me things that are not heavenly.  Things like hunger and poor housing and discrimination.  God has not only shown me these things, God has me wondering how these things might become more heaven-like and what I role I have in making that happen.
A pastor I once had said, “If you don’t see God in this life, you won’t see God in the next.”  Maybe that is true of heaven too.  If we don’t live heaven in this life, and offer it to others, we won’t arrive in heaven in the next. 

So I am practicing heaven.  I hope you are too.

Blessings,

Pastor Cindy

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

We worship at 8:30 and 11 and we would love to worship with you!

This week at WDMUMC
Our sermon series, KidTalk, what children can teach us about God and faith and church, continues.  Our intern Rachel Hollingsworth will preach about what life is like for a 21-year-old disciple.  I will be there too and I am excited to hear what she has to say.

Vacation Bible School ends tonight.  Many thanks to all who have taught and lead.  You ROCK!
And if you haven’t signed up to serve at our food booth at the Iowa State Fair, please do!  Simply go to our website, wdmumc.org and sign up.  We need you at the fair!

"Practice Heaven!" Pastor Cindy's Devotion 07/12/2018

Good morning friends,

This Sunday we will continue our sermon series, Kid Talk, what children can teach us about God, faith, and the church.  This Sunday the topic is heaven.  Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven belongs to children.  What do you think he meant?

So, to get ready for Sunday I have been thinking a lot about heaven.  I believe in heaven, but generally, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.  This week I have discovered a curious thing.  I am better off when I do think about heaven.  (Honestly, I have also discovered I spend too much time thinking about the stuff of hell—anxiousness, worrying, judging, not trusting God.)
 

So, I am giving you an assignment:  practice heaven.

For the next three days, I want you to practice living as though this is heaven.

What would the heaven around you look like?  Is it open and spacious?  Is it beautiful?

What happens there?  Is everyone accepted?  Is everything shared?  Are we reunited with everyone we ever loved?

What doesn’t happen there?  Are hatred and judgment prohibited?  Are we united with everyone we failed to love?

I want my heaven to be filled with friendly dogs and books and summer breezes.  I want to dance and sing in my heaven and act goofy from time to time for no reason at all.  I want evening campfires and early morning birdsong in my heaven.
 

There is a little problem with that.  It isn’t my heaven.  It can never be.  Heaven is completely and forever God’s domain.

Which means it is better than anything I might plan.

I think heaven is a place where we are immersed in love, so much so that love overflows from us to those around us and those beyond us.  Whatever keeps us from being fully loving now, falls away and we come fully into God’s presence and at the same time fully ourselves.

So for three days, practice heaven.  And I will practice too.  See you on Sunday.

Blessings,

Pastor Cindy

Pastor Cindy Hickman

West Des Moines United Methodist Church
720 Grand Ave
West Des Moines, Iowa 50265

Visit us at wdmumc.org, or like us on Facebook and Instagram.

We worship at 8:30 and 11 every Sunday and you are invited.

This week at WDMUMC…

Heartland Youth Choir Concert Friday at 7 pm.  The youth have been practicing all week and filling our halls with song.  Come and enjoy the concert!

Vacation Bible School!  Begins Sunday evening at 6 pm. There is still time to sign up.  Visit wdmumc.org to register.

And ice cream!  This Sunday between services we will have ice cream and lemonade outside on the lawn.  If you worship at 11, come early to enjoy the ice cream!  (Who knows?  Maybe there is ice cream in heaven.)

"Hope-filled Detroit" Pastor Cindy's Devotion 07/03/18

Hello friends!
I went to Detroit on a mission trip last week and I saw hope, lots and lots of hope. I came home sweaty and exhausted and much more happy than when I left.  Hope is infectious.

Generally, the purpose of a mission trip is to help people recover from a disaster, typically a hurricane or a flood or a fire.  The disaster Detroit experienced did not come in the form of rain or rising waters. Detroit’s disaster was created by humans.  It was an economic and racial disaster created by a complex history of racist policies and the failure of the auto industry.

When we drove through Detroit and we could see the prosperous, beautiful city it once was.  Beautiful neighborhoods, stately homes, wide welcoming tree-lined streets.  Then we looked closer and realized that most of the businesses were boarded up. There were abandoned homes on every block, boarded up, lawns are overgrown, roofs caved in.  One of Detroit’s biggest challenges is keeping lawns mowed and weeds pulled.  With the loss of jobs, people left.  Without revenue from property taxes from homes and businesses, the school system is in shambles.  One young woman told me that there is no economy in Detroit, none. Detroit has been labeled as the most dangerous city in America.

But there is hope, we saw lots and lots of hope.

Hope:  Mr. Williams, the patron saint of vegetables, is enthusiastically creating a community garden in a park.  That’s where we were sent on our first morning in Detroit.  The goal is to provide a place for people to gather and good food for people to eat.  His hope is in the form of kohlrabi and Brussel sprouts.  And he was so filled with hope, it overflowed into us and we spent the day pulling weeds and smiling.

Hope:  Mrs. Moore arrived at the community garden.  She grilled hot dogs for us for lunch.  She serves on the zoning commission for the city of Detroit.  All day she hauled us in her minivan back and forth to the nearest bathroom. On one trip she took us by her house.  She has a garden in the front yard and her house has a porch.  We asked if she sat on the porch in the evening.  “Not in this neighborhood,” she told us.  And yet she is committed to this neighborhood.  Hot dogs and transportation to a bathroom and her laughter all filled us with hope.

Hope:  Shirley is the president of her block club and one morning we met her on her front porch.  She was grimacing in pain, preparing to go to the hospital, and yet she waited for us.  Her neighborhood was made up of older two-story homes, evidence of past elegance, with scrollwork around the windows and balconies.  Beautiful homes, and again, an abandoned home or two on every block.  The alley behind her neighborhood was overgrown with weeds.  It gave the impression no one cared, and people didn’t like to walk near it.  We set to work pulling weeds and cleaning up the alley.  More than 70 bags of weeds later and a whole lot of sweat, there it was again hope.  (Shirley returned from the hospital later in the day.  The diagnosis was a gallbladder attack.  She will be having surgery soon.)

Hope: Stephanie was a volunteer for Cass Community Services.  Cass Community Services was started by Cass United Methodist Church.  She found us circling a neighborhood—we were a little bit lost.  Cass Community Services is establishing a tiny house neighborhood in a depressed neighborhood. They currently have seven houses in place. Another three are being built and eventually there will be 28. The homes are leased to people who have never owned a home. The rent is $1 per square foot.  One house was 350 square feet=$350 monthly rent.  If the renter maintains the house and the rent for seven years, the house is turned over to them.  Cass UMC also operates a small factory where they make doormats.  Detroit has lots of abandoned tires and the people of Cass drive around the city and pick them up.  The tires are cut into strips and people who had been regarded as unemployable due to disabilities are employed to make them into mats.  They employ 60 people.  Want to see one?  Stop by my house.  I bought one and put it on the front porch.  And when I step out on to it, I feel hope.

Hope:  Terrance was a part-time volunteer, part-time janitor at a small church.  The church ran a clothing closet and a used furniture depot.  The morning we arrived at the church, the police were there too.  Someone had rammed the door of the garage where the furniture was stored and stolen the lawn mowers and cases of diapers.  The volunteers who ran the clothing closet were discouraged.  “If they had waited until we were open, we would have given them the diapers.”  We went to work, mowing with a borrowed mower, pulling weeds, painting.  Terrance told me “I do what I can because God has given me more than I deserve.”  Hope marching on, even in a moment of discouragement.

Hope:  All of these people were African American.  Their skin is darker than mine.  Their history is a story that differs from mine. Their hearts were open to me.  Their hospitality blessed my life.
I have a pretty good radar for how money is used and as far as I could see, none of these enterprises had much, if any, money.  The tires were free if you didn’t mind scouring abandoned lots. The building where the factory was located had been abandoned.  Mr. Williams just needed seeds.  Stephanie loved her church.  Cass United Methodist Church mortgaged their church building to begin the tiny house neighborhood.  Shirley just looked out her window and saw what needed to be done.
Hope strengthens us. Hope opens our eyes. Look closely and hope is like the open hand of Christ offering blessing and resurrection.

And hope makes you hungry for more hope.  I want to be like Mr. Williams and be the patron saint of something.  I want to be like Mrs. Moore and commit myself to something beyond myself.  I want to be like Shirley and make the neighborhood around me a better place.  I want to do what I can, because, like Terrance, God has given me more than I deserve.

So I am looking around the church, searching for what is hungry for hope here, and dreaming about Detroit, and planning to return someday and see what hope has done.

Every blessing to you.

Pastor Cindy

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

We worship at 8:30 and 11 and we would love to worship with you.

Visit us at wdmumc.org or like us on Facebook.
This week at WDMUMC:
Incredible storms swept through the Des Moines area last Saturday.  This week look around and see how you might lend a hand to those impacted by the flooding.  As you identify needs, feel free to text me (515-988-0636) and we will post those needs on our Facebook page.  Follow our Facebook feed to see how you can help.

Sunday we continue our worship series, Kidtalk, what children have to say about God, faith, and church.  Graham Jones, from Hillside school, will be sharing part of the message.  Hope to see you there!

VBS begins July 15!  Sign up on the website.

And we’ll be serving up food and hospitality at the Iowa State Fair.  Volunteers are needed!  Check our Facebook page for details.