#dailydevotionals

Start your day with morning coffee and a devotional.

Crowdsourcing

Posted on by Betsy

Crowdsourcing is a way of outsourcing a task or obtaining information for a project by using the input of a large group of people, typically on the internet. Social media, smartphone apps, and electronic surveys are just some of the means by which interested parties can source work or gather information. People are invited to collectively contribute ideas, time, expertise, or funds to a common goal. For example, traffic tracking apps such as Waze use driver/rider generated reports to communicate accidents, objects in the road, construction, and police on your journey. Uber pairs drivers with people who need a ride, an example of crowdsourced transportation.

Lays Potato Chips has really maximized the concept of crowdsourcing in its campaign “Do Us a Flavor,” where they asked people to submit ideas for potato chip flavors. Then the public was invited to vote on the flavors they would like to try. The top four submissions became actual products. So new flavors such as Crispy Taco, Flamin’ Hot Dill Pickle, and Beer Cheese have been crowdsourced from inception to having the final selection available at your local Wawa. I don’t know who came up with the idea of Flamin’ Hot Dill Pickle potato chips, but I want some.

At the heart of crowdsourcing is the notion of people coming together to help each other. I once traveled to Florida using Waze, and saved close to two hours in traffic. Others ahead of me reported a crash that had shut down the highway, and WAZE suggested a faster route.

Crowdsourcing existed in the early church, but they didn’t call it that. Martin Luther was an original crowd-sourcer. His frustrations with the institutional Church led him to write his “Ninety-Five Theses: A Disputation on the Power of Indulgences” and nail them on the door of the church in Wittenberg, which was located in the heart of the city on the public square. People read it, printed it, translated it, and shared its ideas with others throughout Germany and the rest of Europe, and thus the Reformation began.

But Jesus, of course was THE original crowd SOURCE. He spent a good deal of his ministry among the crowds. In the wonderful miracle known as the “Feeding of the Five Thousand,” we see him at his crowdsourcing best:

Matthew 14 (The Message)

Supper for Five Thousand

13-14 When Jesus got the news, he slipped away by boat to an out-of-the-way place by himself. But unsuccessfully—someone saw him and the word got around. Soon a lot of people from the nearby villages walked around the lake to where he was. When he saw them coming, he was overcome with pity and healed their sick.

15 Toward evening the disciples approached him. “We’re out in the country and it’s getting late. Dismiss the people so they can go to the villages and get some supper.”

16 But Jesus said, “There is no need to dismiss them. You give them supper.”

17 “All we have are five loaves of bread and two fish,” they said.

18-21 Jesus said, “Bring them here.” Then he had the people sit on the grass. He took the five loaves and two fish, lifted his face to heaven in prayer, blessed, broke, and gave the bread to the disciples. The disciples then gave the food to the congregation. They all ate their fill. They gathered twelve baskets of leftovers. About five thousand were fed.

Did you notice how that went? The disciples were expecting Jesus to come up with the meal. Jesus told the twelve to figure something out. They came up with five loaves and two fish, and lunch was served on the lawn. So Jesus sourced the miracle, and the crowd sourced the “re-source.”

What resource are you holding onto that would be better shared with the crowd? Where can you offer your expertise, your ideas, or your opinions in a way that constructively benefits others? Where is God calling you to take the Good News out into the public square and re-form the people?

Whatever your resource may be, God calls us to break our loaves and fish open and offer them to the world. And whenever you have served the least of these with whatever you have, you have served the Lord. And don’t forget to pick up the leftovers.

Fishing off Avalon Pier by Michelle Robertson

Keep Your Head Up

Posted on by Betsy

Memorial Day Weekend brings many things to the Outer Banks: tourists, traffic, revenue, beautiful beach days, and good times. On the Friday prior, it brings something else: the return of the Life Guard Stands.

This acts as a catalyst for locals. When we see the stands coming out of storage from the beach houses and being erected, our pulse quickens. Summer is finally and officially here! Businesses prepare, restaurants shine up, rental agencies ready welcome packages, and I begin to pray.

The season we all depend on and wait all winter long to enjoy will bring another thing that we dread: ocean rescues. I used to get excited when I saw the Coast Guard helicopters flying overhead, until I realized they aren’t training…they are rescuing. I see the guard stands returning as a sure sign of summer, but now I see it with a sigh in my heart. Someone will lose his or her life here on our beach this summer.

The beach areas on the North Carolina coast are subject to undertows and rip tides that have a deadly force. Posted all along our beach accesses are signs with information on how to stay safe in the water. Unfortunately, many folks don’t read these as they trundle by with their arms laden with umbrellas, towels, shovels, and coolers. 80% of all ocean rescues involve getting swimmers out of rip tides.

HERE IS HOW TO SAVE YOURSELF FROM A RIP TIDE:

1. Don’t panic. Rip Tides are only about 20-100 feet wide. You can swim out of one.

2. Don’t swim directly to shore. When you feel the undertow pulling you out to sea, the urge will be to swim straight to shore. That will result in your being pulled out to sea.

3. Swim parallel to the beach. This will enable you to swim out of the the current. Think of it like a treadmill that won’t turn off: you have to “step off the side” to get out of it.

4. If you are too exhausted, just relax and float. Tread water until the current dissipates, and then slowly make your way back, swimming parallel to the shore at an angle. Signal for help and wait for the Life Guard to come to you.

5. Learn how to spot rip tides. They look like disturbances in the wave line. They can be a flat and glossy break in the wave pattern, or a foamy one. While the waves come parallel to the shore line, rip currents run straight out to sea, cutting the wave in half.

We struggle with rip tides in life as well. There comes a time in everyone’s life when a rogue wave suddenly breaks on your shore, cuts you off at the knees, and threatens to sweep you out into the deep. Death, divorce, cancer, job loss, the discovery of a spouse’s betrayal…all the things that catch us off guard can feel like we are caught in an emotional current of foamy power, and we can’t even keep our heads up.

But just like a real rip tide, with God’s help you can swim out of yours. Even if all you can do is tread water and float until rescue arrives, you can survive. The trick is to keep your head up. Stay focused on God’s activity in the midst of your panic. Keep praying toward heaven for help until it arrives. Lift your eyes upon Jesus and don’t look down.

Isaiah 43:1-5

“Israel, the Lord who created you says,

    “Do not be afraid—I will save you.
    I have called you by name—you are mine.
When you pass through deep waters, I will be with you;
    your troubles will not overwhelm you.
When you pass through fire, you will not be burned;
    the hard trials that come will not hurt you.
For I am the Lord your God,
    the holy God of Israel, who saves you.
I will give up Egypt to set you free;
    I will give up Ethiopia and Seba.
I will give up whole nations to save your life,
    because you are precious to me
    and because I love you and give you honor.
Do not be afraid—I am with you!

No matter what it is you are floating in, God is with you. As big and frightening as your troubles are, they will not overwhelm you. YOU belong to God.

Gracious and Loving God,

Save me today. My head is going under for the third time and I can’t breathe. The weight of this wave of despair holds me down and spins me senseless. Come into my troubled waters and save me. I am yours, and you are mine. I wait, and I watch. My deliverer comes! Help me in my waiting. AMEN

Be Safe by NOAA

A Future With Hope

Posted on by Betsy

April 25, 2019

This morning I am waking up in an off-season beach rental, with a cup of caramel flavored coffee in my hand. The early morning sun is streaming onto my propped up feet and I can see that even with a good rinsing, I still have beach sand and tiny pebbles on my feet. As for my coffee, when it comes to mugs, size matters! I like a big mug. It has to be big enough, but not too big. But I dislike the jumbo ones, because the coffee goes cold too quickly. I am a mug snob.

The sun arose and lit up the room with its wake up call. There is no sleeping in at the beach. Even black out curtains won’t prevent its strong alarm, and so I get up to find a favorite chair by the window to write.

God is working something out in me. My journey through the recent Lenten season, when I woke up every morning to post a Lent devotional on my church’s Face Book page, has left me wanting more. I want the discipline of sitting down to write every morning. I want the first thoughts of the day to be focused on scripture. I want to feel the Holy Spirit moving through words, images, fingertips on keyboard, and gazing out my window and looking at the water’s edge where I live in the Outer Banks in North Carolina.

Today I am literally on the water’s edge. The Atlantic Ocean is right outside my open sliding glass door. My daughter and I have “evacuated” to this beach house to escape the repairs to a broken sewer line that are being done on my home by the sound. I can hear the waves and the calls of the seagulls searching for their morning meal. There has always been something calming and inspirational for me whenever I stand on the beach and gaze out at the infinite edge of the ocean. I take deep breaths of salt air and immediately feel centered. God is so present to me by the sea, and has been ever since I was a little girl growing up on the beaches of New Jersey and Delaware.

Writing the daily Lent Devotionals was purely by accident and not by design. After preaching on Ash Wednesday, my music director paid me a high compliment by suggesting that I post the suggestions I had made in my sermon on the 7 Lenten Disciplines. So the next morning I got up, sat in my chair by the window overlooking the marina that leads out to the Albemarle Sound, and cut and pasted. Lo and behold, people asked for a daily reminder of Lenten practices, and thus a 40 day journey began. I was suddenly on task to write something every morning, and when Easter arrived, I realized that God was calling me to continue this discipline in another format.

And so here we are, at water’s edge, looking for hope. A lifetime of standing at water’s edge has led me to appreciate the moment of leaving everything behind and staring out onto a body of water full of possibility, meaning and purpose. I sorted out my relationships, my frustrations, my failures, and my calling while walking the East Coast beaches. Here is where contentment lies.

“At Water’s Edge” is a place you can come to find the peace you lack, the answers you need, and the comfort of searching the horizon and finding a friend. God meets us here to take our hand and lead us through our day. I hope this blesses you as much as it blesses me.

And while I had no plan that first day of writing to spend the next 40 days producing a daily devotional, it appears that it was God’s plan all along.

Our Old Testament friend Jeremiah stood at the edge of Jerusalem and watched it’s destruction at the hands of the Babylonians. The Israelites had fallen into idol worship and were far away from God. Jeremiah and his people were carried away into exile, leaving the place that they loved. Yet, even then, he wrote these words:

Jeremiah 29:11 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

11 For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah+29&version=NRSV

God has a plan for you. Let’s find it together at water’s edge.

Photo credit: Michelle Robertson