Today is Holy Trinity, a day the church tries to explain One God in Three Persons.  Since that's nearly impossible to do, we'll rather consider what our Triune God does for us.

          This is also Memorial Day weekend, a time to remember life.  Tomorrow all across America, people in cities and towns will watch the local parade with relatives and friends.  They'll gather at the city cemetery to hear their school marching band play "America the Beautiful" in formation around the local war memorial.

          And at the appointed time some chosen youth, fearful and trembling, will step forward and recite the Gettysburg Address.  "Four Score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."  I was in the tenth grade when I recited Lincoln's address and my mother said she was never prouder.

          Then another chosen youth, perhaps a girl this year, will step forward, raise her trumpet and play taps and tears will flow.  And another bugler will echo taps from a distant tree, and then six over-sized men in badly fitting uniforms will lurch forward, raise their rifles and fire three volleys into a distant tree.  Grandma will feel faint, but others will wonder if perhaps that was the tree where the bugler was.

          And afterwards, people will walk around and look at the graves of the old ones, the fallen ones, the friends and relatives at rest now.  Then they'll go home, light the grill, lumpy white men in shorts, standing around eating hamburgers, maybe drinking a beer and telling their stories.  It's Memorial Day, a time to remember life!

          Life is wonderful.  It's a gift.  But many today have made life cheap, and have moved to extinguish it.  Two inhumane movements, abortion and euthanasia, have become almost acceptable.  The unthinkable has become thinkable, and to many has become even acceptable.  Among some it is even preferable.  I encourage all of you to take a stand for human life.  Life is God's gift.  We must not play God, whether in laws or in science.  God is God, we are not.  It's the truth.

          I know not all people believe this way, and some of us may even bear painful scars.  Christ came to forgive the sins of us all -- all sins by all kinds of people, my sins and yours.  I'm not here to throw stones because we all live in the same glass house.  But we must speak the truth - God's truth - in a spirit of love, the precious love Christ showed us on Calvary.

          I recently watched an amazing video about unborn babies you could see through the wonder of ultrasound.  I watched in fascination as infants mere inches long jumped and bounced and swam inside their mother.  What a wonder!  I've never been very good at biology.  I somehow missed those early classes and took my first biology class as a college senior.  And I barely passed.  Until I saw those pictures, I figured babies were just a mass of cells that somehow miraculously took shape a month or two before birth.  But seeing those ultrasound pictures showed me the miracle of life.

          There's something wonderful and mysterious about life.  God blessed me with good health.  I've never been a hospital patient so I'm not always understanding of others who get sick.  I often find it strange, when people get sick, that they spend so much time lying down!  Once when Carol was sick with the flu, and I suggested that if she just got up and got a little exercise she'd feel a lot better.  In no uncertain terms she told me to go away and that would make her feel much better!

          There's something wonderful and mysterious about life.  David speaks of that in Psalm 139 (p. 445).  His words expressed how I felt watching those tiny ultrasound babies.  I like the word picture - "You knit me together in my mother's womb ... I was woven together ... My frame was not hidden from you ...You saw my unformed body."  God is a weaver.  He knows anatomy.  He wrote the book!

          God is our Wonderful Weaver.  A weaver takes thread and weaves it into cloth.  He takes old rags and makes a rug.  The weaver uses a loom with thousands of strings and passes the shuttle back and forth, introducing colors and designs into the whoop and whorf.  That's God.  He gives us life, and we shape it by what we do.  There are good times of gold or red.  There are normal times of brown and gray.  But sometimes sorrow creeps in like black threads that shouldn't be there.

          Whatever the pattern of your life, remember, God is the Weaver.  We may choose colors, but He puts them together.  He wove us together with a body and a personality.  He gave us certain characteristics, if we're a male or female, have blue eyes, or are left-handed.  God gives us unique features that make us short or blond, or if we have big feet or a soprano voice.

          But God doesn't stop with our body.  He gives us a unique personality.  Our personalities can be similar, but we're still different.  Some of us are like lions who take charge.  Others are like golden retrievers, kind and gentle.  Some are carefree and playful like otters, and still others are busy beavers, always doing things right.  God, Wonderful Weaver, makes us all different.  That's what makes life such a blessing, and often such a challenge.

          But there's one more ingredient in the pattern we can't forget - Sin.  Sin is not just a different thread, it shouldn't be there at all.  Sin is the gum in the hair, the fly in the milk, and the doggy-doo on the shoe.  It stains and ruins the pattern.  It's out of place, and it destroys everything.

          Sin doesn't belong in our life and God didn't put it there.  Our parents have passed on original sin, a part of the mess, but you and I are still responsible to clean it up.  But therein lies a problem.  There's not a brush or a solvent strong enough to remove sin.  We can't fix it by ourselves.  It's always with us, and only God can remove it.  In faith we must humbly we ask Him to.  When we do, He forgives us and cleanses us.  Sin will show up again, like spaghetti sauce on your white shirt or grass stains on your knee.  But He's there to forgive again.  That's why we need God all the time.  There's never a moment when we don't need God's forgiveness.

          Sin shows its worst in our pride.  Pride shows up everywhere, whether obviously like when we make fun of people or subtly when we just ignore them.  Pride is behind world wars and it's behind family wars.  Pride moves people to mock and to ridicule, to hurt and to scorn.  It moves us to abuse and to kill.  The sin of pride is behind all attempts to get rid of people we don't want, whether it's six million Jews or a hundred and sixty million abortions.  Pride moves us to think we don't need God.

          You and I would never accept the elimination of retarded people or left-handed people.  So why have we come to accept the elimination of unborn people?  All those unique little ones, woven together by the Lord - they'll never have a chance to show their colors, because they were inconvenient, or unplanned, or unwanted.  Being unwanted says nothing about a baby, but it speaks volumes about the one who doesn't want the baby.

          If you think of it, baby Jesus was not convenient.  He was not planned.  By some in Mary's family, He was surely unwanted.  He rudely interrupted plans, sullied reputations and could have ruined careers.  The Marys of today can quickly rid themselves of this inconvenience.  Or they can give the child a chance to live.   Ask yourself, "WWJD" - What Would Jesus Do?

          Jesus wasn't convenient when He grew up either.  He said He was the Son of God, the only Way of heaven, and that made Him a thorn in the side of the church.  He was hated by those who didn't want to hear Truth.  But Jesus is the Truth, and the Way and the Life, and on Calvary He laid down His Life for us.  Because He did, we are made right with the Father.

          You and I are His special people, created in His image.  Do you believe that?  Then let's live like it!  Let's value life.  Our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit.  Young folks - You've been given a life to live and so have I.  But the world doesn't owe you a living.  You and I are alive in an amazing moment of history.  What are you going to do to repay God for the life He's has given you?  What are you going to do to make the world better?  What are you giving back for all you've been given?  We all must give something back, not just keep taking and taking.

          David said, "I praise You, O God, because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;  Your works are wonderful and I know that full well."  Praising God involves more than words.  It means sharing the hope we have.  It means sharing our hope with those who've lost hope.  It means sharing truth with those who play God with life.  You and I must stand for the truth, yet do so with love.  When we stand firm in the truth, we give people hope.

          God is our Wonderful Weaver.  He brings the threads together into a pattern that we might not choose, but one that's best.  We don't always see the pattern, but it's there.  There are two sides to every weaving, the upper side with its delicate design and the under side with its random strings.  There is poem I love that helps us understand how God works in our life:  It's called:

          The underside of life will not always make sense.  One day God will unroll your canvas and show you what it all means.  This Memorial Day let's remember whose we are - we're children of the King!  Let's thank God for life and for all who've gone before us.  "I praise You, O God, because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;  Your works are wonderful, and I know that full well."  Amen!

Copyright © 1999 by Pastor Bob Tasler.  All rights reserved.