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    Jul 14, 2019

    The Puzzle of Our Lives

    Speaker: Rev. Vivian McCarthy, Pastor

    The picture on the puzzle box is a complete picture, made up of little pieces that all fit together -- like the pieces of our lives.  God can see the big picture, even before we can. ~ Athens: Bringing It Home

    The group that gathered for the adult class this week got a preview of a church-wide study we are planning for September, using Adam Hamilton’s book, The Call:  The Life and Message of the Apostle Paul. We spent about 3 days in the first chapter of the book which offers some background and insight into Paul’s life.

    In several places in Acts and then in at least 2 of Paul’s letters, we find Paul’s “pedigree.” On more than one occasion, Paul shared with the people who he was, sometimes when he was being threatened, sometimes when he needed to make a point. This reading is a compilation of Paul’s pedigree from Acts 21 and 22, Philippians 3, and Galatians 1:

    [Paul said,] I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia…a citizen of an important city…circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews…brought up in [Jerusalem] at the feet of Gamaliel, educated strictly according to our ancestral law being zealous for God…I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age…I persecuted this Way up to the point of death by binding both men and women and putting them in prison.

    Paul was a man of many facets – just as we are people of many facets.

    What are some other things you know or have heard about Paul?

    Listen to a brief excerpt from Hamilton’s book, chapter 1:

    You may wonder why these details of Paul's early life are important. The reason is that Paul and the things he would later think, write, say and do were in part the result of his early life experiences. Think of Moses, who grew up in Pharaoh's household and thus was the ideal candidate for God to use in liberating the Israelite slaves from Egypt. In a similar way, Paul's childhood in a predominantly Gentile city known for its culture and outstanding Greco-Roman education, his tentmaking in his father's shop as a boy, his grasp of the Greek language, his Roman citizenship, his education by one of the leading rabbis of his day--all these experiences were critical to the work Paul one day would be called to as Christianity's leading apostle to the Greco-Roman world.1
     

    Hamilton then goes on to review what he calls the “puzzle pieces of his life” and then says this:

    Each part of what I've described above is a piece of the puzzle that shaped the person, pastor and author I am today. I carry a Roman Catholic appreciation for tradition, a Pentecostal and charismatic belief in the power of the Holy Spirit, a compassion based on growing up with an alcoholic stepdad and an often chaotic home life, a willingness to see truth on both the left and right shaped by my education at an evangelical undergraduate school and a liberal seminary. It is as if God looked at the various pieces of my life and said, "I can use each of those parts of your past, your life experience, and your faith if you'll let me."
     
    In my experience, the most difficult or painful parts of my past are often the very things that have been the most important elements in whatever success I've had in ministry and in life to the present. In so many ways our lives are like puzzles, and God has a unique way of bringing those various pieces of the puzzle together to create something beautiful and useful in us.2
     

    I’d like to share one of the activities the adult class did over the course of a few evenings this week, and I want to invite you into the activity. There is a puzzle in your bulletin for you to complete this week.

    Each of us made a puzzle. The front side is a beautiful picture that appealed to the participant. On the back, each puzzle piece has a word or phrase describing a significant event or experience from their early lives – which we took from a journaling exercise. The question for the journaling exercise was:  consider your own background and the question of how God might use the influences and experiences of your growing years and jot your thoughts in your journal – then choose what you consider to be the most significant. 

    I wish we had time this morning to do the whole exercise, but we don’t.  I hope you take a few moments this week to meditate on your personal puzzle. What are the most significant pieces of your life’s experiences? How may God use them? How has God used them?

    You may be surprised to find that even the most challenging experiences of your life have prepared you to share God’s love in ways you wouldn’t have thought possible!

     

    1 Adam Hamilton, The Call-The Life and Message of the Apostle Paul (Abingdon Press, 2015), 21

    2 Hamilton, The Call-The Life and Message of the Apostle Paul, 22-23