First United Methodist Church - Fort Collins, CO

These sermons sometimes take on minds of there own and when you begin them you never know where they are headed. That is the case with this sermon.

I intended to look at the issue “take your life and live it”. I had thought I would spend time looking at the factors that prevent us from doing that. Now, instead of looking at the factors that prevent us from doing that, I am looking into the lives of our church members to show how people who come to our church have learned to live heroically.

Three examples:

1. Andy Mair who came from Wellington, Colorado. He came from no place and went some place. His background didn’t hold him back; it launched him toward an interesting life where he got to meet very talented people and world leaders.

2. Ruth Reed who learned to cope with the Great Depression of the 1930’s. She understood that back luck is not the last word.

3. Brook Jostad who discovered how you take the given in your life and you deal with it. Brooke was born blind but she refuses to see herself as handicapped. She approaches her limitations as no factor in what she wants to do with her life.

There are inspirational people all around us in the church. It is the people in the church and the relationships that make the church what it is. There are heroic people whose lives are quiet and whose stories are profound who come to worhsip here.

They will be here on Rally Day.

When we think of how we take our life and live it we think of people who have shown us ways to do it. Can you think of others who are an inspiration to your life. Write me at charlesschuster@fcfumc.net. If you are willing to have others read your responses click on the ‘comments’ box below.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Charles Schuster

“Take Your Life and Live It”

What keeps us from “living our lives”? What are the blockages for our having an opportunity to live a full and rich life?

I suppose there are many things that contribute to this problem and I will try to come up with three.

1. Background is a problem. It’s hard for us to make much of our lives if our background is prohibitive. Sometimes it is so difficult to rise above our background that it seems we are destined by it to be less then we can be. We cannot get very far unless we are able to push away from where we got our start.

2. Bad luck is a problem. There are periods in our lives when the only luck we have is bad. We make wrong choices and try to make things better only to realize we have come to make things worse. We seem to be defeated before we have a chance to overcome. We have to turn our bad luck into something better. We have to understand that we must play the hand we’re given and move from the point of discouragment with courage to find out how we can change our luck.

3. Bad health is a problem. There are times when we realize we haven’t been given the physical tools we need to accomplish what we need to achieve in life.

All this can force us to lose our sense of adventure. All this and other things can make us refuse to take our life and live it, and spend our time regretting our life as we have it. And we will have become salt that has lost its taste.

What causes us to become less than we can be and live less that we could? If you have thoughts on this write me at charlesschuster@fcfumc.net. If you are willing to share your thoughts with others click on the ‘comments’ box below.

Charles Schuster

Sermon for Sunday, September 9th

“Take Your Life and Live It”

Konrad Lorenz in his book, The Waning of Humaneness gives us an important perspective. He writes: “The increasing intolerance of the unpleasurable on the part of civilized humans transforms the naturally inevitable highs and lows of our normal lifes into an artificially flattened expanse of monotonous gray, without any of the contrasts of lights and shadows. In short, this produces boredom and in so doing becomes the cause for so many humans needing to be coninually entertained.”

What does it take to wake us up and to enable us to live every moment?

Thornton Wilder in his play “Our Town” gives us much to think about:

“Yes, now you know. Now you know! That’s what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down tranpling on the feelings of those…of those about you. To spend and waste time as though youhad a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another. Now you know–that’s the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness.”

It seems to me there is something better than this. It seems to me the Christianity offers a life that is lived fully and completely in which every moment is taken as sacred.

This sermon will push the issue of life and how we live it, and it will bring to the issue the message and truth of the Gospel.

What do we do to live a full life?

What calls us to wake up in the morning with joy and expectation?

If you have thoughts on this write me at charlesschuster@fcfumc.net. If you are willing to have others read your thoughts click on the ‘comments’box below.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Charles Schuster