“There are no ordinary cats.”  Colette

“There was a man of Benjamin whose name was Kish son of Abiel…a man of wealth. He had a son whose name was Saul, a handsome young man. There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he; he stood head and shoulders above everyone else. Now the donkeys of Kish, Saul’s father, had strayed. So Kish said to his son Saul, “Take one of the boys with you; go and look for the donkeys.”  When they came to the land of Zuph, Saul said to the boy who was with him, “Let us turn back, or my father will stop worrying about the donkeys and worry about us.” But he said to him, “There is a man of God in this town; he is a man held in honor. Whatever he says always comes true. Let us go there now; perhaps he will tell us about the journey on which we have set out.” Then Saul replied to the boy, “But if we go, what can we bring the man? For the bread in our sacks is gone, and there is no present to bring to the man of God. What have we?” The boy answered Saul again, “Here, I have with me a quarter shekel of silver; I will give it to the man of God, to tell us our way.”  Saul said to the boy, “Good; come, let us go.” So they went to the town where the man of God was.

As they went up the hill to the town, they met some girls coming out to draw water, and said to them, “Is the seer here?” They answered, “Yes, there he is just ahead of you. Hurry; he has come just now to the town, because the people have a sacrifice today at the shrine.  As they were entering the town, they saw Samuel coming out toward them on his way up to the shrine. Now the day before Saul came, the Lord had revealed to Samuel: “Tomorrow about this time I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be ruler over my people Israel. When Samuel saw Saul, the Lord told him, “Here is the man of whom I spoke to you. He it is who shall rule over my people.” Then Saul approached Samuel inside the gate, and said, “Tell me, please, where is the house of the seer?”  Samuel answered Saul, “I am the seer; go up before me to the shrine, for today you shall eat with me, and in the morning I will let you go and will tell you all that is on your mind.” 1 Samuel 9:1-19 

We learn immediately that Saul is handsome, and stands a head taller than anyone else. He stands out in many ways from the others. In fact, G-d has told Samuel that he would encounter the next King of Israel – and upon seeing Saul G-d tells Samuel he has seen the future. Is Saul selected because of his extraordinary looks or stature? We are not told – and truth be told, Saul will be rejected by G-d in just six more chapters.

G-d has a habit of selecting unexpected people to be leaders. Moses is a murderer. David is an adulterer, and a murderer. Saul persecuted Jews before Jesus calls him to become his greatest evangelist. We may think we do not have what is needed to be leaders in the church, or even in our communities. But G-d has a different set of standards for selecting those who are to be servants and leaders in this age.

Just when we least expect it, G-d may be knocking on our door – asking us to follow – asking us to lead. And G-d does not like taking “NO” for an answer. In fact, G-d can be very persuasive.

Pastor Dave

“I have lived with several Zen masters — all of them cats.”  Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightment

“To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.”  Buddha

Here we come again to a conversation about the mind. The mind is truly a wondrous and mysterious thing. We are learning more and more about the mind every year. For example, scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and the University of Southern California (USC) have demonstrated the successful implementation of a prosthetic system that uses a person’s own memory patterns to facilitate the brain’s ability to encode and recall memory. In the pilot study, published in today’s Journal of Neural Engineering, scientists were able to show an almost 40% improvement of a participants’ short-term memory performance. “This is the first time scientists have been able to identify a patient’s own brain cell code or pattern for memory and, in essence, ‘write in’ that code to make existing memory work better, an important first step in potentially restoring memory loss,” said Robert Hampson, Ph.D., professor of physiology/pharmacology and neurology at Wake Forest Baptist.

The study focused on improving episodic memory, which is the most common type of memory loss in people with Alzheimer’s disease, stroke and head injury. Episodic memory is information that is new and useful for a short period of time, such as where you parked your car on any given day.  The researchers recorded the neural patterns or ‘codes’ while the study participants were performing a computerized memory task. The patients were shown a simple image, such as a color block, and after a brief delay where the screen was blanked, were then asked to identify the initial image out of four or five on the screen. The USC team led by Theodore Berger, Ph.D., and Dong Song, Ph.D., analyzed the recordings from the correct responses and synthesized a code for correct memory performance. The Wake Forest Baptist team played back that code to the patients while they performed the image recall task. In this test, the patients’ episodic memory performance showed a 37 percent improvement over baseline. (information in this devotion was obtained from sciencedaily.com, March 27, 2018, Source:Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center)

Our overall health is influenced by all sorts of factors, including the health of our brains. The busier we are, the older we get, and the more stress we encounter in our lives, the more our brains work to keep all of the information we encounter every day in some sort of order. It is easy to become forgetful. As such, we all need time to relax, to refresh, to recharge – if for no other reason than to do some “data dumping” from our brains. Jesus always found time alone and away to pray – and to refresh. He sought that time for his disciples as well. It is a model we all should follow.

Pastor Dave