ObamiconMe

I've recently learned of a fun web site called Obamicon Me where you can take any picture you have and "Obamicon" it.

Once you go to the site, you can upload your picture (or take a new one using your webcam) and the site will Obamicon your picture. Then you make adjustments and add a caption. Once you've registered it on their site, you can download your Obamicon to your computer, post it online, e-mail it, or even order T-shirts and other gifts with your Obamicon on it.

I tried several shots of me and didn't care for them. Then I decided to Obamicon one of my most recent pictures of Rusty and I really like it! I chose a custom caption because I think having Barack Obama for President is just the "cat's meow!"

Here's the original photo and the resulting Obamicon...

Great Things

sermon preached by the Rev. Sue Judson Hamly at Faith United Church, UCC, International Falls, MN

Texts: Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18 and John 1:43-51

When Phillip called Nathaniel to come and see Jesus, Nathaniel was skeptical that any good could come out of a backwater hick town like Nazareth. He changed his mind when he met Jesus.

Nathaniel was amazed that Jesus knew about him before he even met him. Obviously, Nathaniel wasn’t very familiar with Psalm 139. I just love the first 18 verses of that psalm! It contains so many reassurances ….

O God, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away. …You are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
O God, you know it completely. …
… It was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
… I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
… My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret,…Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, before they existed.
… I come to the end—I am still with you.

This psalm reminds us that God’s love it like the love of a caring parent for her or his children. Mothers are certainly aware of what it’s like to know a child before it’s even born—and so are most fathers. Grandparents too… in fact everyone who is looking forward to the birth of any baby begins to feel as if they know the baby already.

My cousin’s daughter in Wickenburg, AZ, gave birth to her first baby this week. We received e-mail pictures while they were still in the hospital. When Heidi got home, one of the first things she did was change her status on facebook so that it says, “Heidi is so in love with her new baby girl ” Has it ever occurred to you that God feels the same way about each and every one of us?!

Yes! God is in love with you and you and you and me. All of us—no matter who, no matter what! And God sent Jesus to show us and teach us about that love.

If we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” then all of us can do great things. Don’t let the word fearfully stop you. We forget that in the bible “fear” usually means awe and respect. So a better translation would be that we are awesomely and wonderfully made. We are awesome because God made us that way! And God loves us each just the way we are.

There’s a story about a young rabbi named Zusya who was quite discouraged about his failures and weaknesses. An older rabbi said to him, “When you get to heaven, God is not going to say to you, ‘Why weren’t you Moses?’ No, God will say, ‘Why weren’t you Zusya?’ So why don’t you stop trying to be Moses, and start being the Zusya God created you to be?”[1]

We are all awesomely and wonderfully made. Can you imagine if we believed that about everyone, including ourselves? Can you imagine a nation and a world inspired to live as if everyone mattered? Can we dare to hope for the impossible to happen—the end of religious, racial, class, orientation and gender hatred? God has made each person precious, awesome and wonderful. God has made our planet precious, awesome and wonderful. What if we believed that and treated people, animals and all of nature that way?[2]

I’ll tell you what… if we believed that—if all the people of the world believed that—great things would definitely begin to happen in our global community!

Many of us are expecting—or at least praying for—great things to happen after our new President is inaugurated on Tuesday. Of course he’s going to need lots of help and cooperation, but the most important thing is to give him a chance.

That’s all any of us can ask for—to be given a chance—and God is the one who gives us all the chances we need. God calls us to be the best we can be—the best individuals each of us can be, and the best Faith United Church we can be. We are looking for people and ideas to help our church be a church of the 21st Century, called and inspired by God to be and do great things and to demonstrate the love of Jesus Christ right here in our community.

Nathaniel wondered if anything good could come out of Nazareth. Some people in town may wonder if anything exciting can come out of a UCC church when they don’t really even know or understand who we are and what we’re about as God’s people. It’s time for us to find new ways of demonstrating our understanding of God’s love shown through the life of Jesus as we follow in Christ’s footsteps in our everyday life, work and community interaction.

Nathaniel came with Philip to meet Jesus. Jesus told Nathaniel what he saw in him and Nathaniel was amazed. He asked Jesus how he knew so much about him and Jesus replied, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.”

Fig trees are sacred in Islam as a place of meditation. Was Nathaniel a religious person—a seeker—is that what Jesus saw in him?[3] Whatever it was, there was something about Jesus. He KNEW, and Nathaniel recognized it immediately. It might not have even been in what Jesus said, it might have been more like something Nathaniel sensed upon meeting him. Fortunately he was willing to take Philip up on his invitation to “come and see.” See how Jesus lives and loves. It was apparently very obvious, allowing people to feel known and to imagine a different future.

Whatever it was, Nathaniel was inspired to proclaim Jesus as son of God and king of Israel. Jesus replies, you say that just because I knew you before we met? You’re gonna see even greater things than that, my friend!

Because God has known us and loved us since the beginning of everything, God sent Jesus to teach us all about God’s love. And when we love one another and all the rest of God’s people as Jesus loved, great things are going to happen because the love of God incarnated in Jesus Christ is the greatest love there is.

So don’t be afraid to be who God created you to be! And as a congregation, let’s not be afraid to seek God’s guidance in new directions for this new age. We can do great things because God is with us—in all time and for all time. AMEN.

Endnotes:
1. James Limburg, Westminster Bible Companion, quoted at
http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/january-18-2009-second-sunday.html
2. Adapted from “Fearfully and Wonderful Made” by Rev. Kirk Moore, Union Congregational Church, UCC, Somonauk, IL.
3. Note #1 from Ann Fontaine to “Sermonshop 2006 01 15.”

What COLD looks like...

We've been on the news all over the country. Friends have called or e-mailed or written on my wall on facebook to make sure we haven't frozen to death. Some things get cancelled, but mostly life doesn't stop for the cold up here! And yes, it WAS 42 degrees below zero in the very early morning yesterday!
This is perfect weather for ICEBOX Days which is being celebrated here in the Icebox of the Nation this weekend. I guess a few events are being cancelled due to the cold, but most of the fun will still go on.

Click here to watch a news video about the cold, including a segment on International Falls: Cold Video Then click your back button to return to my blog!

My mom flew home to Stockton, California on Monday, missing the most severe cold temperatures. But she enjoyed plenty of sub-zero weather and warmer weather with snow while she was here, including 9.4 inches that fell on January 3rd. She loved watching the scenery and the weather from our windows. We overlook Rainy River, whose oppostie bank is Fort Frances, Ontario, Canada. Mom especially enjoyed the days when it was so cold the river created steam or fog that made Canada disappear, and the hoarfrost decorated the trees and turend colors in the sunrise. It may be cold, but it sure is beautiful!

Tune In!

Sermon preached by the Rev. Sue Judson Hamly at Faith United Church, UCC, International Falls, MN

Texts: Genesis 1:1-5 & Psalm 29

We’re up to #6 in our “calendar quotes” sermon series from the UCC Desk Calendar and Plan Book. The quote for today comes from George Washington Carver who said, “I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting system, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.”

Can you just imagine God setting out to create the earth? Visualize, in your mind’s eye, God creating Rainy Lake … the Grand Canyon … the Mississippi River … the Sahara Desert … Old Faithful … the oceans and the glaciers … the moors and the fjords … the polar ice caps … the Red Sea … and all the trees, flowers, animals and people. How utterly amazing!!!

And of course God also created Minnesota … On the sixth day God turned to the Archangel Gabriel and said: 'Today, I am going to create a land called Minnesota. It will be a land of outstanding natural beauty; a land of 10,000 beautiful lakes, each one full of fish. It shall have tall majestic pines, peacefully flowing rivers, landscapes full of trees, tall grass, and eagles, beautiful blue skies, forests full of bear, deer and moose, rich farmland and fair skinned people.' God continued, 'I shall make the land rich in resources so as to make the inhabitants prosper and they shall be known as a most friendly people; people who practice being Minnesota Nice every day.'

‘But Lord,' said Gabriel, 'don't you think you are being too generous to these Minnesotans?'

'No, not really,' replied God 'just wait till you see the winters I am going to give them.' [1]

Yes, even Minnesota winters are an amazing and beautiful gift from God! You can go skiing, snow shoeing, ice fishing, ice skating outdoors or snowmobiling. You can do the Freeze Yer Gizzard Blizzard Run or keep warm in a coffee shop or carve ice sculptures and make snowmen. And you can look forward to summer and all the wonderful things we enjoy outdoors in nature when the weather’s warm!

I love the image from the quote about nature being God’s broadcasting system! One thing comes through clearly—that God surely must love us very much to have created all this beauty for us to enjoy!

Sadly, though, human beings haven’t tuned in very well. We haven’t taken enough care of our beautiful earth and now we’re beginning to pay the price.

God said, “Let there be light,” but in some large cities smog darkens the sky and the sun’s light has a hard time shining through.
God also created water. Over 70% of our globe is covered by water. Ninety-seven percent of all water on earth is in our oceans. Life on earth began in the oceans 3.1—3.4 billion years ago and then evolved from the ocean to the land millions of years ago. Today, the ocean remains crucial to maintaining life as we know it. The oceans provide necessities such as; most of the oxygen we need to breathe, a reservoir for soaking up almost half of the globe's gaseous carbon pollutants (more than 2 billion tons), a food source that can be managed to help feed the world, the ingredients for many of today's and tomorrow's medicines, making our weather, and it is an essential part of the global economy. [2]

God created the dry land as well and people have turned too much of it into concrete jungles or have changed the use of land from what it was originally created to do or to be. But we have also preserved some of our land and our forests so that it will remain as it was originally created to be. Sometimes we tune in and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we have hunted, fished and trapped too much and whole species of animals have disappeared or are in danger or doing so. Sometimes we catch on in the nick of time and work to save species in danger of extinction.

I’ve said before that from the first chapter of Genesis the most important thing for us to remember—besides the fact that God created—is that GOD SAW THAT IT WAS GOOD. Everything God has made is good. Every time I step out into nature and clear everything else from my over-loaded brain, I am reminded that everything God has created in our world and our universe—and even beyond—is beautiful, glorious, magnificent and good!

In the natural wonders and innate beauty we can find all around us if we just look for it, God is broadcasting to us that life is good, humankind is good, the world is good, and God is good.

In today’s reading of Psalm 29 we are called to recognize that goodness and beauty. We are called to “ascribe to God glory and strength … worship God in holy splendor” because God’s mighty voice called the light, the waters, the land, the growing things, the animals, fish, birds and people into existence. The voice of God, says the Psalmist, is powerful and full of majesty. It “flashes forth flames of fire … shakes the wilderness … causes the oaks to whirl, and strips the forest bare.” [3]

And God saw that it was good. If we just tune in, we, too, will see that it can continue to be good if we take responsibility and action.

God speaks to us in wind and flame, in rain and snow, in flood and drought, in beauty and barrenness, in mountains and oceans, rivers and forests, storms and calm. When we listen… when we care… when we work together for the good of ALL creation… when we do tune in… there is hope for the healing and the future of our planet. AMEN.

Endnotes
1. Author unknown; e-mail sent to me by Sherry Wold on 1/10/2009.
2. www.seethesea.org
3. From Psalm 29, NRSV.