In the Middle Ages, stained-glass windows told the story of salvation to the many illiterate people in the pews. Today there is a resurgence of visual storytelling, most notably through social media sites like Instagram. The goal of Instagram is to share photos of your life with others. As a Christian, then, your Instagram posts can serve as stained-glass windows displaying your life in Christ to the World.
 

What image are you sharing? What can people learn about you from the pictures you put up on your Instagram or Facebook page? Take a quick look at your image-posting history. Can people see that you are a Christian from these images? If so, then great! If not, what can you include in future image postings that reveal your commitment to Christ and the central role he plays in your life?

So much of social media history imagery is about me, myself, and I. But as Christians we say it is all about him as we point to Jesus Christ in our social media stained-glass windows.

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

I love the language of 2 Corinthians 4:8-9

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed. We are pressed from every angle with the demands of work, family, home and church, but we are not crushed. Nothing can be a crushing blow when we have Christ within us.

Perplexed, but not in despair. We may be confused, frustrated or angry about our lives, but we should never let that angst turn into despair, tempting us to give up on God, on ourselves or on others. We cannot throw in the towel shen God is fighting for us.

Persecuted, but not abandoned. For the early Christians in Corinth, persecution was a real threat. Suffering is a given for Christians in this world. Sin and the devil will make sure of that! But we will never be left alone to fend for ourselves. The Triune God loves us and comforts us in every struggle. Our God will never go away.

Struck down but not destroyed. We may be struck down by illness, a harsh word or rejection. We will be knocked down, but we will never be obliterated. Isaiah tells us that God will not snuff out even a dimly burning wick. Christ destroyed the powers of death, sin and the devil through his life, death and resurrection. He will never destroy us.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

2 Corinthians 3:2-3  You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

We don't write letters too much anymore, but in the early Church, handwritten letters were the only way to receive information from a great distance. The epistles were originally simply letters from one friend to another group of friends, talking about the life of faith in Christ. Today these letters are studied and valued for their importance in guiding our lives as Christians.

Letters were so important to the early church that Paul refers to those who receive his actual letter as letters themselves. We, too, as recipients of Paul's letters, are letters. We are not letters written with ink that fades, but we are written with the Spirit of the living God. We have vibrancy and force that will last forever. We are not written on cold and unfeeling stone. We are letters written on beating human hearts that supply lifeblood to the world.
--Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,
 

In the art world, the term provenance refers to the history of ownership of a work of art. Museum curators go to great lengths to determine who owned a particular piece and when. The more known about the history of a painting and its owners, the greater the value of the masterpiece.

As God's masterpiece, we do not have to track down our provenance. Since baptism we have had one owner: God. We belong to him, and we are more precious to him than the Mona Lisa. As the Bible says,

          Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. Isaiah 43:1

  So what do we do with this information?

           For you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.  1 Corinthians 6:20

All we say and do with these works of art we call our bodies must be to God's glory, to honor the One who crafted and designed us and purchased us at a great cost. Each word and action is like a divine brushstroke guided by the hand of the Master. We may not be museum quality, but because of Christ and his cross, we have a place designated for us in the halls of heaven.

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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,
 

Judges 6:14  The Lord turned to Gideon and said, "Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian's hand. Am I not sending you?"

When we feel ober-busy, the words "go in the strength you have" really register with us, giving us hope and confidence that we can accomplish the multiple tasks that lay before us. We may not feel the strongest we have ever felt, but God has given us the strength we have to do great things.

This verse is also a message from God telling us that he is sending us. He knows the challenges we face and he will not abandon us to go it alone. He has faith in us to carry out the mission he has for us. He knows our capabilities better than we do and, if we run into any trouble, he will be there to get us through it.

In the mornings when we haven't felt much like getting up when the alarm goes off, we simply say to ourselves, "Go in the strength you have." That gets us moving to start the day.
 

Zechariah 4:10  For whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice...

Sometimes we feel immersed in "small things" every day, the mundane tasks that must be done - doing laundry, paying bills, cooking meals, shoveling the driveway, putting gas in the car and running errands. Small things can wear us down. We find solace in the fact that Zechariah acknowledges those who "have despised the day of small things." We are not alone! Zechariah assures us that we despisers of small things will rejoice because the eyes of the Lord will "range through the whole earth" (Zech 4:10). Our Lord is taking care of the big picture, making sure that his grand plan for all things is coming together.

We are on a forward-moving trajectory that is taking us ever closer to the hallways of heaven, where the purpose of all the small things in life will be revealed at the throne of our crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ. For us he became small so that we might live large in his presence forever.

So don't be frustrated by the small things. Those small things are bringing us ever closer to the Last Day, when we will live life to the fullest for all eternity.
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1 Corinthians 1:22-23  For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified...

When I graduated from the seminary I received a gift from my adopt-a-student congregation. It was a ring with a cross at the center. But in my first weeks as a new pastor a member of the congregation observed, "You're wearing that ring all wrong. You have the cross facing you. The cross should be facing out to the people you meet." I wore that ring facing out after that.

It's tempting to treat Christ's cross as something that is just for us. We can look at it as a personal memento or a secret comfort. Is that God's desire? The message of forgiveness and heaven is meant to be something that we share prodigally in our daily lives. The cross of Christ should be "facing out" in the way we love, forgive and care for others as Christ loves, forgives and cares for us.
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Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,