An Appeal For Seth Jackson

An Appeal For Seth Jackson

July 12, 2012

Friends, we have found a very exciting exercise machine that is ideal for helping Seth to build and maintain muscle mass in his legs.  Besides this considerable benefit, this machine is excellent for building back strength, which is critical with Seth’s present battle with spinal curvature (a condition that has developed due to a wheelchair malfunction which has since been corrected).  It is called the Cardio Strider 2, and costs about $2000.00, and there is one available at a store here in Cedar Rapids.

That’s the good news.  Now for the bad news.

We don’t have enough money to purchase this unit.  The Seth Fund at River of Life Ministries had $1100, so we have withdrawn it with the hope of receiving at least $900 more dollars from friends such as yourself, thus enabling us to obtain this machine for Seth’s development toward walking again.

Some of you may remember how far we had come until we had to curtail Seth’s exercises due to a serious pressure sore in the waning months of 2011.   He was able to move both his legs in an outward motion, and he had just started moving his left foot.  Since the sore, though, we have lost a lot of ground.  We would love to be able to see Seth catch up faster and go even further through the use of the Cardio Strider 2.

Please take the time right now to give whatever you are able for helping Seth’s quest for recovery.  We need your generosity - especially now!  Any amount - from a few dollars to the full $900 - would be so incredibly appreciated by Seth and his family. 

The Cardio Strider 2 enables Seth to place his feet on the two platforms, set securely in an adjustable seat, and by moving the upright levers with his hands simulate the act of walking.  By using this machine, Seth would be able to do many more repetitions on a regular schedule than is presently done with human assistants, and would solve several major exercising issues.  See www.inspirefitness.net. 

For tax deductible giving, write a check or transfer funds to

2C Miracle Fund, River of Life Ministries, 3801 Blairs Ferry Rd. NE, Cedar Rapids, IA  52402.  (If you prefer, writing the check to The Seth Jackson Fund will work.)

If you want to give directly, but without tax deductibility, then write your check to

Seth Jackson, 4210 Morris Ave NW, Cedar Rapids, IA 52405.

To ask a question, call Will or Jacquelyn Jackson at their home phone, 319 654 0039.

As always, your prayers and generosity are greatly appreciated, and mean more to us than you can ever know.

Blessings To You All, and In Christ’s Peace,

Will and Jacquelyn Jackson

More Prayers To Fill Space

O Lord of the Resurrection, we have celebrated the wonder of Christ being raised from the dead.  Let us now become the evidence for this truth, that your Holy Spirit may live in us, and that we may continue to do Christ’s work in this world.  May our lives bring glory and honor to you, O God, because of the presence of the risen Christ in us. Amen. 
*
Lord of life, through your Son’s obedience in dying on the Cross, we have been lifted up to new and everlasting life.  God calls us to proclaim the Good News of the risen Christ, and to invite others to share in the eternal joy of walking and talking with Jesus.  May our lives glorify you forever, and may our hearts always be yours.  In Jesus name we pray.  Amen.
*
God of all, Christ is our Great Shepherd, for he laid down his life for us, and rescued us from death.  Indeed, he protects us even now as we follow him.  All honor and praise belong to you, our God and Savior, for we are the people you have called, we are the sheep of your pasture.  Feed us now with the knowledge of your Son, so that we may proclaim his name throughout the world, for it is in Jesus’ name we pray.  Amen.
*
Everliving God of all, you reveal your glory in Jesus Christ, and in Him we discover all the wonderful things that are to come.  Your promises give us hope, for your Holy Spirit shows us that your Word is faithful.  Jesus your Son shows us that we can trust you.  As followers of Jesus, may we bring the hope we have been given to a dying and despairing world, for it is through Christ we pray.  Amen.
*

O wonderful Saviour, it is with the utmost joy that we come before you this day.  We give you all honor and praise, for you are not a God who demands of us great and magnificent deeds to win your approval and favor.  Rather, you are a God who accepts us as we are, is merciful beyond measure toward us, and who delights to give us the gifts of your grace.  You lift us into your presence, where life is new, is full, and is forever.  Amen.
*
Gracious and Everliving Lord, you have showered us with kindness upon kindness.  In Jesus the Anointed One, you have opened the way for us to live in your presence, not as mere servants but as the very friends of God. Indeed, you lift our hearts when you call us by name, you dispel our fears with your grace, and you stir our souls with your healing love.  We praise you, and with our voices we sing your praises this day forth and forevermore. Amen. 
*
Gracious Lord of all, we come before you this day in Spirit and in Truth.  You are a holy and awesome God, the very essence of all truth and love.  We are completely unworthy to stand in your presence.  Only through Jesus the Anointed One dare we approach your throne, for he offers us to you as the prize for his sacrifice, the reward for his obedience.  All praise and honor to you, ruler of the universe, for bringing truth and grace together in Christ, whose name we exalt this day.  Amen.
*
O God, Ruler of the Universe, we give you all praise this day for your Holy Spirit, your life in us, making us new, renewing the world.  You have called us forth from death to life by the power of your Word, and we call upon your name with the breath of your Spirit in us.  You are the Creator who delights in the art of your creation, sculpting us into your image, and you are the Gift-giver who comes into our hearts, making us into the very temple of the Living God.  In the name of the Holy One of Israel, the only true God who is revealed through Jesus Christ as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God now and forever.  Amen. 

Still Alive

Yes, I'm still alive.  I just haven't had much to say lately.  However, I thought I would throw in a couple of the prayers I've written lately for the worship services at Calvin Sinclair Presbyterian Church.

PRAYER OF ADORATION

O Lord our Lord, we give you praise and honor, for you alone are holy.  We are not worthy to enter into your presence, yet you are most merciful, and overflowing with love for your people.  Weak and frail though we are, you come to us in your Son, Jesus, and you speak to us of your salvation and you embrace us as the children of your grace.  We give you thanks, dear Father, for your great and wonderful kindness toward us.  Amen.

prayer of confession

Most merciful and loving Lord, we confess to you that we have taken your grace for granted, and that we have counted a couple of hours in church as all you should receive from us.  We read the Bible, but do not hear your Word.  We sing the songs, but forget their meaning.  We claim the Name, but our hearts are far from you.  Forgive us, gracious God, and grant that we would be made alive through your Spirit.  Fill us with the joy of your grace, and give us the passion to serve and honor you in every moment of our lives.  In the name of Jesus, who died that we might live, we pray.  Amen.  

PRAYER OF ADORATION

Gracious Lord of all, we stand before you in the shining light of your love.  We celebrate your presence with us, for you do not hold us in contempt, nor do you condemn us.  You embrace us through Jesus Christ, and in him we discover that the Creator of the Universe is also our closest friend.  Glory to you, O God!  We praise you, our Lord forever more.  Amen.

prayer of confession

Great God and Creator, you have ripped apart the heavens so that you can walk with us in the world.  Yet, we fail to see you, for we are preoccupied with the shortcomings of those around us.  We complain that you are distant and uncaring, as we struggle with the daily limitations of being human.  Forgive us, gracious Lord, and grant us hearts to see that you are close to us, and give us faith that reveals your amazing glory in the midst of the ordinary.  We ask this in the name of the One who died that we may live, Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.  Amen.  

Staying Alive,

Will

A Word Of Thanks From St. Paul

Mark this, the one who plants sparingly will have a spare harvest, and the one who plants bountifully will have a bountiful harvest.  Each person should give as they purpose in their heart, not grudgingly or because of duty, for God takes special delight in a hilarious giver.  God has power to make all grace abound for you, so that in every way at all times God will give you all you need so that you may overflow in every good work. As it is written,
   In many places
   he gave to the poor,
   his righteousness endures forever.

Moreover, the one who supplies seed to the planter and bread for the eater will supply and multiply your seed so that he may increase the harvest of your righteousness, in every way being enriched for all liberality which produces through us thanksgiving to God.  For the service of this worship not only completely supplies the needs of God's people, but also overflows in many thanksgivings to God.  People will glorify God because of the proof of your service, which consists of your obedience to your confession of the Good News of Jesus Christ and the your generosity of fellowship toward them and everyone else.  This will result in great regard for you, and people will pray for you because of the overflowing grace of God through you.  Thanks be to God for his indescrible gift!

II Corinthians 9:6-15

Poor Fork-legged Animal

Preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ is such a bizarre "twilight zone" endeavor.  Imagine how ludicrous it is for some mere human laden with cultural blind spots, physical frailties, and mental misperceptions --- all mixed together with a good dose of blinding arrogance --- to try to communicate the essential nature of the Creator of all to other similarly constituted humans.  Then, to top it all off, such a person dares to declare that we can know what this Creator desires for us and from us, that we can truly know the "mind" of God!  Absolutely preposterous!

Yet, this is exactly the claim of the Christian faith, that through preaching the Word of God is communicated, comprehended, apprehended, and inculcated by mere human beings.  Indeed, we are simply "poor fork-legged animals," as Frederick Buechner describes us (who, in good preacher fashion, is borrowing a phrase from someone else, in this case Shakespeare).  It is beyond incredible that the great Creator of all should condescend to such a faulty and fleshly means to be understood by such faulty and fleshly creatures such as ourselves.  No wonder the apostle Paul calls this medium "foolishness," for that is how it appears to anyone who gives it much thought.

Yet again, many of us preachers know that there is so much more than mere mental processes and chemical reactions happening when we preach.  This is on my mind right now because of my experience this last week preparing and delivering the sermon for September 25 at little Calvin Sinclair Church.  All week I wrestled with the text, Exodus 17:1-7.  I was intrigued with the "Is the Lord among us?" issue in the desert travails of the Israelites, but for some reason I wasn't coming up with anything very interesting (at least, not to me) for making a sermon out of this.  Though I squeezed out a passable few decent points, I went to sleep Saturday night feeling very dissatisfied.
  
In my dreams, I continued to work on this text and trying to come up with a better sermon. By the time I woke up, I had a whole new approach with much more relevant illustrations than when I went to sleep. Then, as I delivered the sermon Sunday morning, there were a number of people who seemed very intent as they listened.  Afterwards, many of these people commented on how my sermon sections derived from my "dream work" (which they did not know about) were particularly relevant to what is happening in their lives at this time.

So, how are we to understand all this?  It is apparent that there is so much more going on during a sermon than the cleverness of the preacher or the relevant use of word studies. Truly, the Holy Spirit is active, and no amount of work with the original languages, cultural and geographic settings, literary analysis, sitz im leben, or weltanschauung speculation can ever eliminate the need for God's direct intervention to make meaningful the words of one "poor fork-legged animal" trying to convey the eternal truths of the Divine to the mundane lives of other "poor fork-legged animals."

Quite literally, thank God!


Now, where is my Greek verb parsing guide?  (Sorry, Dr. Storey, my Greek isn't as good as it once was.)

500 - 1000 - Maybe Even 2000 Years Of Schism!

(It has been pointed out to me that this posting is a bit abrupt and polemical, using broad brushed labels such as liberal and evangelical. While I must admit this tendency here, probably due to the fact that I wrote this quickly, without time to make my statements more nuanced, I believe the major points I am making are clear and along the lines of what I intend to communicate. Yes, I love "liberals" (especially those who drink Guinness) and some of my best friends are such, but my sentiments in this posting are along the lines of St. Paul's declaration (Ephesians 6:12) that "...our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.")

Okay, I'm getting a little "fed up" (as my dad used to say) with the claim by the liberals in the PCUSA that we evangelicals are now the schismatics because we believe that WHAT a person believes is important.  (Sorry, I don't have time right now to make that last sentence into something more erudite.)  Since the "how-can-you-evil-evangelicals-dare-exclude-anyone-just-because-they-do-not-believe-the Bible-is-God's-Word-or-that-Jesus-is-God-incarnate liberals" finally have cleared the way for getting what they want in this denomination, I have been reading their comments that we should all seek the unity of the church, and that if anyone does not agree with their views on Bible, sin, Jesus, gays, church government, and God, then such a person (eg: any orthodox evangelical) is resisting the leading of the Holy Spirit and fracturing this cherished unity.  It is funny that these same people did not see things this way when they were being "prophetic" as they spoke and acted against the Book of Order and majority policies up until this year.

If their assertion that the evangelicals are being schismatic by forming new structures (eg: Fellowship of Presbyterians, Evangelical Presbyterian Church, etc) for living out our discipleship as followers of Jesus is true, then I hate to break it to the PCUSA liberals that this would make them schismatics as well.  In fact, we all need to go back to the Pope and confess our sin of schism, since the very nature of being a Protestant means schism from the Roman Catholic Church!  After all, that's why we are called "Protestants," for crying out loud!

I remember being in a gathering of Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox, where one of the Roman Catholic persons said something about the nature of being a Protestant.  An Orthodox monk then quipped, "To me, you all are Protestants."  That's right, even the Roman Church is schismatic from the point of view of the Orthodox Church.  So, what are we talking about here: 500! - 1000! - maybe even 2000 years of schism? 

As long as we view unity of the church as consisting of only the institutional and organisational forms, then yes, we evangelicals in the PCUSA are being schismatic!  It would not be difficult to extend the liberal understanding of unity in the church to include persons who are not even Christian in any sense. Why not ordain a Buddhist monk to be a PCUSA minister? After all, such a person may be exemplary in lifestyle, compassionate, and possessing many gifts to be shared with others. And they probably have some kind of sense of a "Christ-consciousness" that could pass as acceptable in most of our presbyteries.

If, however, the faith of the church is organic, relational, and spiritual; rooted in a common understanding and experience of who Jesus is, and if this faith is flourishing through the shared and communicated witness of those who have encountered Jesus during the last two thousand years (and even longer for Reformed thinkers), then there is a great unity of the church that transcends all our little polity scrabbles.   In all the cultural, political, economic, and even theological diversity of Christians in all times and places, there is a core identifiable "like-mindedness" that one follower of Jesus can recognize and honor in another follower of Jesus. 

As the Apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians (Ephesians 4:3-6): "Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all."  There is a unity that the Spirit makes between all those who follow Jesus, and this unity consist of both content and experience that can be recognized and communicated.  This is evidenced in the various ecumenical creeds that all Christians can affirm because of a "like-mindedness" created not by human organisational ingenuity, but only by the Spirit of God.

The liberals in the PCUSA place far too much emphasis on the institutional forms, while ignoring the heart of faith.  And they cannot align themselves with the heart of the faith because they cannot subject themselves to the authority of the Word, since the Word imparts corrective content upon our own ideas, assumptions, and preferences.  Therefore, they mistake unity for an organisational haven where human intuitions can thrive without the illuminating light of the Scriptures, the Church Universal, or the healing guidance of "like-minded" Christian fellowship.  This may be unity, but it is unity in darkness void of understanding.

Well, that's what I've been thinking, for what its worth.  Now, what channel is ETWN on?

Challenging Time For Seth

The last couple of months have been very challenging for Seth and the rest of the family. Due to the development of two pressure sores, particularly the one on his lower back, Seth has not been able to keep up with his exercises, which in turn has led to some loss of the progress we had been making. Instead, Seth has been dealing with the back sore, which finally resulted in his hospitalization last week. Unfortunately this also coincided with the beginning of his 6th grade school year.

The good news is that we finally got the medical people to take these sores seriously, and since then they have aggressively tended to Seth's healing. With the added focus from the medical team, we were able to track the source for these sores to Seth's wheel chair. While Seth has grown over the last two years, his wheel chair has not, which was causing him to be "compressed" in the way he was sitting, resulting in some high pressure contact with the seat cushion and other parts of the chair. After readjusting (or as the equipment people call it, "mapping") his wheel chair to accomodate his growth, his is sitting and riding much better. All this has been a big reminder for us that we are the ones who must educate ourselves on what is needed for Seth, and then to advocate strongly on his behalf.

As I mentioned before, in the last few months Seth has lost some of the advances he had made before. This, along with our lack of funds, has caused us to put on hold our next trip to Project Walk. Many of you have been very generous, and we are so thankful for the first Project Walk trip and the acquiring of the rehabilitation-grade Total Gym for the home exercise program. Yet, I know that life goes on, and that it is difficult to ask people to maintain a high level of interest in Seth's recovery. Nevertheless, we continue to ask for your thoughts, prayers, and support as we continue to seek the greatest possible recovery for Seth, while also seeking God's intervention for the impossible --- seeing Seth walk again.

As always, we seek your prayers for Seth and for our family. Pray that God would open the way for us to be in a much better place for employment, finances, and resources. This would allow us to do so much more to further Seth's recovery than we can do in our present situation.

Again, thank you all for your thoughts, prayers, and support. Without you, we would certainly not have the courage and hope that comes from knowing you care and that you desire the best for Seth. Keep on praying....

Blessings!