Love the Lord your God with your Very Muchness

One of the most famous passages of scripture is Deuteronomy 6:5

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.[a] 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

Do you know what it’s really like to Love the Lord with all your strength?

Does it mean that he want’s us to be in the gym lifting as much as we physically can?

What does it mean to truly LOVE the Lord your God? Write him love songs? Send him flowers? Memorize his favorite love languages?

This word “strength” is really the Hebrew Word Me’od. This doesn’t mean “Strength” but rather “very” or “muchness”.

Ancient-Hebrew.org has a great little excerpt about this:

This word is used throughout the Hebrew text as an adverb, intensifying a verb, and is usually translated as very, greatly, or much. This is the only time this word appears as a noun and is best translated as "muchness." This idea of muchness is expanding on the previous two ways we are to love Yahweh, first with our mind, then with our body, and now with everything we have.

This is literally saying “Love the Lord your God with all your VERY ESSENCE, Your Very Everything.

So LOVE the Lord with you very inner being- your hopes, your passions, your thoughts, your wishes and EVERYTHING you have in you.

Outside Looking in: Addressing the elephant in the room: Part 1: By: Paula Gollaway

I am a woman gracefully aging into the 7th decade of her life. I am a mother, a grandmother, a

great grandmother, and a wife. Yet the most important part of the age-old adage “who am I?” is

this fact alone– I AM A CHILD OF GOD.

God created me, planned my life, and knew all the

wrong turns I would take, which there have been many to account for. He has guided me back to

correct paths and securely set my footing on solid ground. He is ALWAYS there to listen to me

lament, smile at my laughter, respond to my many “why God” questions, and of course to hear

my resounding praise, THANK YOU FATHER GOD!

The world I have lived in professionally

for over 40+ years, the center of the ministry I am called by God to establish, is the same one I

live in day-after-day. This is the wonderful world of Individuals with Disabilities (IWD).

Often when attending a church, I hear words such as: “All are welcome here” to which I have no

doubt that all would be welcomed into any church. Though if I am being honest, the statement is

beginning to sound hollow and the warmth of a welcomed invitation for all grows colder still. Is

this the new buzz catchphrase for the church?

Or does the church realize that in the same breadth

they both say words that would welcome a wayward soul into the building while inadvertently,

through their actions or lack thereof, leave IWD’s on the outside-looking-in longing to be a part

of the body.

I am not declaring that any faith-believing, Christ-centered church intentionally places the IWD

community into a “non-priority” status, and this in no way is meant to brow beat any church

body. Nor do I think that any one church can effectively accommodate all the IWD population.

In fact, if your church attempts to meet all the amassing needs, they will certainly fall short. Yet,

the staggering statistic runs that between 80 - 90% of IWD’s are either unchurched or under

served in church, which begs the question: Why is the Christian church marginalizing IWD’s?

Eyebrows might raise and heads may turn in alarm at the audacity of such a statement.

Yet a brief glimpse of the “if only” laundry list that IWD’s must overcome on a weekly basis to

attend church might assist in bringing awareness to the body of believers so intent on

“welcoming all.”

“Our church has a special needs program” – Up front I find the terminology a bit antiquated.

The label conjures up a nice pat on the head with the intent of segregating IWD’s away from the

“real church people.”

Or the statement tokenizes the IWD community as a particular outreach project, rather than a vital part of the functioning body.

“There is always someone who will open the door” – True for Sunday or special events but

what if I wish to attend a small group meeting during the week?

How do I get access?

If I am Deaf or Hard of Hearing, are there any certified sign language interpreters for the

message?

If not, what is the value of attending church?

How will I even be able to know what is being said? Is it not the “hearing” of the word that brings the knowledge of God?

What if I am blind in addition to Deaf, are the notes only on paper or are they transcribed into Braille? When

will a sermon be spoken in the language that my heart can actually understand?

If I have a mobility disability, can I get in and out of the restroom without asking for assistance

in opening the door?

When I see the “handicapped” icon placed near the restroom door and do

not see the accessible touch pad that allows me to enter/exist the restroom on my own, am I

reduced to asking for assistance?

What if it’s during a service and

there is no one there to assist me?

What if it’s a restroom on a different floor or requires me to go down two stairs? Do they

have ramps inside the building?

These are mere drops in the ocean to the “if only” list of obstacles that IWD’s must face, and to

account for every need would further fill volumes too numerous to count.

Thus, the matter is not so much about a church’s motive to welcome all, but more importantly on how to move toward

the functional integration of the IWD community into the family of God.

Otherwise IWD’s will continue longing to belong to the body of Christ but will never find a way from the outside

looking in to fully being able to live within.

So where do we begin to unpack the elephant in the room, the one under the carpet, and perhaps the one sitting in the wheelchair?

Baking the Shewbread

I was at the library with the kids. We love talking about biographies and real stories of people that make a difference in this world.

One of the books I was reading to them was about a wonderful group of ladies during the Civil Rights Movement.  They were called “nowhere.” They literally named themselves, “the group from nowhere.”

They pretty much single-handedly raised the funds needed to sustain the Montgomery Bus Boycott protesters and leaders. Through baking pies and cakes, selling food- hosting leaders like Martin Luther King Junior at their home- they were able to feed hundreds of hungry people and raise thousands of dollars during this time period.

And they were pretty much stayed anonymous- naming themselves “nowhere”. So that when people would ask, “Where did you get this money? Where did you get these funds? Where did you get this new station wagon from?” They said “nowhere.”

I was moved to tears- reading this story.  We have this group of women, risking their lives, risking their family (they could be thrown in Jail and lose their homes) to cook for a cause.  They risked their own health and family to bake for thousands of hours- over a hot stove to raise money for an illegal cause.

It’s was just such an amazing story.

This week, I am meditating on Leviticus 24. In order to bring the prescence into the Tabernacle- they had an entire group of priests whose only job it was to bake the bread of the presence in the Holy Tabernacle-the shewbread DAILY.  There weren’t machines that you just throw the stuff in, you press a button and you throw it in the oven and done.

Everything was made through grueling energy and time. Measuring the flour, grinding the flour, milling, heating the oven, hand-cutting all the wood, kneeding the dough for hours of time.

We don't realize how we can bring God's presence into a situation, how we can affect change in our work, our school and our family.

Bringing God’s life-giving presence  is sometimes just through simple things.

Maybe for you- every single morning. You get up And you bring worship music into the home while you make coffee.

I get breakfast, I clean the dishwasher, I have the music playing. The worship music gets playing before my kids even get up. That way I bring God's presence into the home.

And this is what I like to call “baking the Shewbread of the Presence”- my daily routine of the small ways that I can meet in God’s presence.

What's going to make the difference in this world?

The presence of God.

It’s going to change your city, your kids, your environment and your work.  What are you doing to make the bread of the presence? How do you to bring in His presence?

If that means playing worship music in the car on your way to work, if that means praying over your kids before they go to school- do that.

These things are so important.

Just like these women in the Civil Rights Movement- how they were just anonymous, behind-the-scenes, doing all these things.

You never hear about these ladies.

You don't Know most of their names. But yet they fed and gave money to an effort that now changed history. They didn't know they were changing history at the time. They were just baking their bread.

They were baking their pies. They were baking the essentials to feed the Civil Rights Movement behind closed doors.  They weren't even seen or talked about until this book came out.

I was just thinking how many times as women especially- we are not seen.  We are behind-the-scenes in our houses.  We are just cooking, cleaning and doing some of these things.

God's presence can enter into your home, into your life-just by you-working for the Lord. Knowing that you're doing it for Him and His glory.