…And the World Changed.

Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Psalm 148; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:22-40

And here we are. There is fighting in the Middle East. There are terrorist plots afoot. Soldiers are stationed away from home. Persia/Iran is causing trouble, just as it has for hundreds of years. The price of food is high. People around the world are being tortured for belonging to the wrong group of people. People are killing other people because of the way they are dressed or which group of people they belong to. Taxes are too high – there are many homeless – the hotels are overbooked this season because of all the travelers. Increasingly, the politics in the capitol are distant from the concerns of ordinary people. Pagans are sacrificing animals to gods we’ve never even heard of. The rich are getting richer while the average family struggles to survive. In short, the world is a mess. And there was a special child born recently. Of course, I speak of the world of 4 BC, the year that Jesus was most likely born.

Those of you that have been blessed with children will understand that there are certain things about your own children which are different from all other children in the world.

First of all, your own children are special. At an early age, you know that they are different from all other children in the world. For example, our eldest son Ian, walked when he was eight months old and we were sure that he’d be athletic. When he was 18 months old, we were living in New Jersey and stopped by the Sidling Hill Geology roadside park on I-68 in Maryland. While we walked the exhibits, Saundra was occupying Ian by saying to Ian, “This is a metamorphic rock, this is an igneous rock, this is a sedimentary rock.” A few days later, in New Jersey, at 18 months old, Ian walked up to our friend Diane, held up a rock, and said, “Miss Diane, this is a metamorphic rock!” Diane turned and said, “Saundra, did I hear him correctly?” I’m sure you all have similar stories about how you knew that your children were special, blessed of God in some special way.

Secondly, your own children are specially designed by God to embarrass you and keep you humble. That same child of ours, a year or so later, was standing in the front yard of our new home in front of our new neighbors in Georgia, standing there with no clothes on, watering the lawn as only a little boy can – no, he didn’t have a water hose. Once again, I’m sure that all of you parents have similar stories about how your child embarrassed you.

Third, the mere presence of your children tells you early on, very early on, that first night when you hear a little cry at 2 AM and you are instantly awake, you recognize that the world has changed for you and it will never be the same again. The very simple life that you and your spouse led will soon become a very complex life that involves Huggies, music lessons, Little League baseball, soccer, football, kindergarten, schoolwork, a GIRLfriend!, college, a WEDDING?, and grandkids. Your world changes.

And so it was for Mary and Joseph. When Jesus arrived, they waited a few days in Bethlehem, and then traveled the 3 or 4 miles to the Temple in Jerusalem. (And no, the wise men had not arrived – We’ll talk more about that next week). They were going to the Temple because the law of Moses required that Jesus be circumcised on the 8th day, and a sacrifice of a pair of doves be made at the Temple.

The walk was an easy walk by the standards of the time. The bright sunshine would come down around them, with the dry blue sky that is common in Palestine most of the year. Because of the sea, the weather rarely gets cold and snowy there. After all, even here in West Virginia, we’ve had weather near 70 degrees this week. I’m sure that Mary, just as all new mothers, was fascinated with the little hands and legs and every expression that His tiny face made. He was special, as all newborn babies are special, and His mother understood this.

But Jesus was extra special, and Mary and Joseph soon found this out.

First of all, …. “there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. 26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. 27 Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, 28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:

29 “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you may now dismiss[c] your servant in peace.
30 For my eyes have seen your salvation,
31 which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:
32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and the glory of your people Israel.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but that would certainly get my attention and it got the attention of Mary and Joseph. What a glorious child! Simeon’s first prophecy lifted up Mary and Joseph.

34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, 35 so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

Simeon’s second prophecy was much more ominous than his first prophecy. “A sword will pierce your own soul too.” is not the sort of thing a new mother wants to hear about her newborn son.

Then this ancient woman Anna hobbles up to them.

“She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, 37 and then had been a widow for another eighty-four years. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. 38 Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.

Ok, so we have Anna, who is over 104 years old and still living at the temple, who tells everyone around that This Child will redeem Jerusalem. How can He redeem Jerusalem? – The child barely can keep His eyes open in the bright sunlight of that intensely blue Mediterranean sky. And the day came to a pleasant close as they walked back to Bethlehem, packed up that night, and headed for Nazareth, a hundred mile journey.

39 When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. 40 And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him.

It was time to go home. It was time for a return to normal life. But Mary and Joseph would never again have a normal life. They had a special child.

Time passed. And we know the end of the story. We know that this child grew to lead a movement of thousands of people and was eventually arrested by the powers-that-be. We know that this Rabbi, this great Jewish teacher eventually claimed to be God Himself, the crime that He was arrested for and executed for on a Friday in the spring of 33 AD. And we know that just a few days later, early Sunday morning, he began to appear alive and more healthy than ever to eleven separate groups of His followers – even to one man who was leading a persecution against his followers. Jesus gave His followers final instructions, and they then began to change the entire world with His message of hope: “we can live forever” – His message of love: “ treat other people as you would like to be treated” – and His message of joy: “the promise of eternal life does not require gold or power or lands or education, but only the humbleness to understand that there is One who is greater than you and His name is Jesus Christ.”

It is amazing how simple ideas can change an entire world.

In 1955, several young men and women who were graduates of Wheaton College in Illinois became missionaries in Ecuador. They heard rumors of a tribe that kept to itself, that still lived in as their prehistoric ancestors had, deep in the Amazon jungle. The Waodani were dangerous – they killed all outsiders. One day, a Waodani woman came out of the jungle fleeing others. She told a terrible story. In this tribe, every person had complete autonomy – there were no laws, just individual freedom. Anyone could do anything they wanted to do – include kill anyone that annoyed them. And all of the men were expert hunters with spears. They had to be – their religion told them that when they die, they must fight and pass by a great serpent.

Unfortunately, because there were no laws, no government, if a man became angry and fought with another, they usually settled the issue with spears. The murder rate in this tribe was 40%. Each person had a 40% chance of being killed by another Waodani during their lifetime. They were literally killing each other and destroying the tribe.

The young men from Wheaton College made contact with the tribe and camped out near the village. One morning, all the men from Wheaton College were killed by the tribe. The story the Waodani woman had told was true – these people were indeed very dangerous and hostile.

So the wives of the young men from Wheaton College did what any Holy Spirit-filled wives would have done – they packed up their children and their supplies – and walked into the village. While they were there, they began to teach the Waodani Christian ideas – in particular, the idea that God doesn’t like the killing of one man by another, and the idea that God gives the gift of eternal life to all – even the weakest among us, the tiniest children, the least healthy, those who cannot hunt or fight.

And things began to change.

Today, murder is virtually unheard of among the Christian Waodani. Until his death a couple of years ago, Mincaye, the man who led the attack upon the young men from Wheaton had become a jungle dentist, flying an ultralight airplane himself between jungle clearings and spreading the Word of God.

Ideas can change the world – especially if they are backed up by the Holy Spirit of God. The story of the Waodani can be found in the films “Beyond the Gates of Splendor” and “The End of the Spear”

Today, we will be baptizing some young people. Oh, the joy of baptism, especially to be baptized during the Christmas Season!

There are some of you in the audience that may be uncomfortable with the idea that young children are being baptized, children who cannot make this decision for themselves. Let me say a few words about our Methodist baptism customs.

If there were a couple of adults here who were physically unable to speak, would we accept that these people couple be baptized? Of course we would.

If there were a couple of adults here who mentally were so impaired that they could not give their assent to being baptized, would we baptized them upon the agreement of their guardians? Of course we would.

And so, why do we say that an adult with an infant’s mind can be baptized with the agreement of a guardian, but that an infant cannot? It makes no sense. Further, it assumes something. Those who oppose infant baptism deep down believe that baptism is something done by the pastor or something done by the one baptized.

Yet it is God who does the action in baptism. During baptism, God reaches into the heart of the adult or child being baptized and changes the heart of that person from its in-born sinful nature to a nature that inherently wants to do good. God does this – we only give God permission for it to happen. God will never have to do this work again, because it is the work of God – not the work of a man.

And after I put the water on the child, I will pray for the child to receive the Holy Spirit of God. It is that Holy Spirit which now indwells the child that makes the most difference in the life of the child. For this is now God acting within the child.

At a point in their lives, the children as teenagers will be asked to take these vows for themselves. This is our confirmation. This spring we will have a confirmation class for our teenagers. And then they will join the church as full adult members.

One other aspect – there are always people who feel that the only valid baptism is one which involves immersion. The earliest written works we have, in particular a document called “The Teaching of the Apostles”, which is actually older than the Book of Revelation, speak of three methods of baptism as being equally valid: “Sprinkling, pouring, or immersion”. All of these methods have been used throughout the history of the church. For obvious reasons, we will not be taking a swim in Elk Creek today.

Look around you. Compare what you see in this world with the vicious, cruel world of 4 BC, and you’ll see that while some things have not changed, other things have changed considerably for the better. We have hospitals – a Christian invention. We have a world where we are allowed to worship as we please – something that Christian nations allow and many non-Christian nations do not allow. We have a basic sense of fair play and limits to the personal freedom to harm another – In China, Ian met a boy who was proud that his father hung him upside down and beat him for poor grades.

We have basic sanitation – travelers to India and China talk about the absence of street toilets – Because of this absence, the streets literally have become the toilets.

We have a concept that people all have inherent value, the value that comes from being an image of God. Think of all the people who endured slavery in their families for centuries because people did not think this way. Think of the men who are being killed and the women turned into slaves in the Middle East today by ISIS, just because they are not Moslems.

The world has changed considerably from 4 BC. You were once a little child, special to your parents. As you grow and become a Christian leader, think of the things about this world that you can change -- with the power of God beside you, the Word of God going ahead of you, and the Holy Spirit of God guiding you -- Think of the things about this world that you can change. And do so in your specialness.

Christmas Sermon, 2014

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

And so the waiting is over and we have come back to the beginning. This Advent season, we have emphasized waiting. We have talked about the promise that God would appear, we have talked about how God would appear, we have talked about what God requires of us, and we have talked about the waiting required of us. And tonight, the waiting is over and we have come back to the beginning.

“In the beginning was the Word….and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”

When God first brought existence into existence, God was composed of three parts. There was the powerful Creator, God the Father, whose name as told to Moses – “I am that I am” – tells us that God the Creator is the creating power Itself.  God is what creates – there can be nothing before or deeper than God.

Connecting together all creation is the Holy Spirit of God, underlying and flowing through all things, including those who have accepted that same Spirit. Communication, guidance, and counsel is the Spirit’s function, drawing us ever closer to the Three-in-One that is God.

Guiding the Creation is the Wisdom of God, who goes forth as the Word of God, and who came to walk on this earth as a human boy-child over 2000 years ago. If you wanted to send a message to an alien civilization, you might write a note or make an audio recording. Still better would be to send a DVD telling who we were, and what our intentions are. But even better yet would be to send an Ambassador, a walking, talking, teaching intelligent Message of who we are, both messenger and message at the same time. But then, we would have to choose which person would be the messenger and the message. For if you think about it, sending an army general to deliver a message is very different than sending an entertainer…or a child.

God has many things God wants to say to us. God did not send a military leader to earth to threaten us with destruction. God did not just send a philosopher to earth to teach us new way of thinking. God did not even send us a normal ambassador to negotiate a treaty with us, nor a scientist to teach us new technologies. No, God sent us a very human, baby boy, born in the normal way that first Christmas night. God sent us perhaps the most fragile, least fearsome of all possible Ambassadors – He sent us His Son as a tiny newborn baby.

“Fear not. I bring you tidings of great joy!”

Fear not.

The Babe of Bethlehem does not wish to destroy your soul. The Babe of Bethlehem does not wish to destroy your body. The Babe of Bethlehem does not wish to harm you in any way.

Instead, the Babe wants to bring you into a relationship with the God who is Three-in-One, a friendly, loving relationship, such as a great, wonderful family has.

I realize that some Christians you have met in the past have harmed you. They have said hurtful things to you, done mean things to you, and generally behaved in ways that the Babe would rather they didn’t. But that is because they are learning.

Each person comes to meet the Babe in different ways. Some men have met the Babe when they were in foxholes under enemy fire and helpless to do anything except to call upon Him. Some women have met the Babe in childbirth when they were helpless to do anything except to call upon Him, and others have met the Babe as they held their newborn in their arms and reflected upon the miracle that is a child. Still other people have met the Babe while moving, as a plane encounters turbulence or a car spins out-of-control on an icy road. Even others have come to the Babe when they realized that they were helpless in the face of chemicals or alcohol, and needed Somone else to lift them from their addiction. When we are helpless, we turn to the One who became helpless for our sake. 

But others have come to know Him in other ways - the result of careful study, the result of despair, the result of a long upbringing by Christian parents. One man is recorded to have come to know God when God appeared to him as a talking bush that was on fire. We all become Christians in different ways.

The day you become a Christian does not remove your sinfulness. All people have learned deeply ingrained, ugly habits. It takes a lifetime – often longer – to remove those ugly habits.

Here is where we learn to shed those habits. Here is where we learn to put aside our fears, our concerns, and stride forward in hope, joy, and love. Here is where we learn to heal from the damage done to us by other people, other people who once were – or still are – in rebellion to God. It is in the company of other Christians that we learn to walk in a new way, following Jesus Christ into a world which is far, far different from the world the Babe came into.

Have you ever wondered why Mary and Joseph didn’t simply go to a hospital? The answer is simple – they didn’t exist. Hospitals were invented by Christians. Did you ever wonder why Mary had to ride a donkey a hundred miles? The answer is simple – trains and cars didn’t exist. These are both the inventions of Christian nations. Did you ever wonder why the world today is so different from the world of the time of Mary and Joseph and the Babe of Bethlehem?

The answer is simple. The Word of God, brought by the Babe, has changed the world. Compassion has flourished, Wisdom has spread, and Loving Your Neighbor is recognized as a sound truth today. It wasn’t always that way. It isn’t that way in non-Christian countries today – look at the lands controlled by ISIS today. The selfish world that turned away pregnant Mary from the inn has faded over the last two thousand years. Today, someone would at least call 911 and get the EMT’s to come to the stable.

Whether or not you believe in Him, the Babe of Bethlehem has changed your world. Whether or not you follow Him, the Babe of Bethlehem has gone on ahead of you, improving the world and making it a warmer, nicer, place. Whether or not you call Him Lord and Savior, the Babe of Bethlehem wants a friendly, loving relationship with you. Will you choose to follow Him today?

And Now Creation Waits…

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Romans 16:25-27 ; Romans 8:5-25; Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26

And now we wait. Christmas is still a few days off and the children are getting unruly – we always found ours shaking the packages and discussing what it could be that made that tinkling noise like the sound of broken glass. The entire house smells like Christmas, with pine needle smell and the smell of baked goods. Christmas carols are playing on the radio, Charlie Brown has been on television this week, and the ads practically scream – You’ve got to buy this product or your family will hate you!

But waiting appears to be part of God’s plan.

God created the world, Adam and Eve, put them in the garden, and then waited. After some amount of time, we don’t know whether it was a few days or hundreds of years, Eve listened to the serpent and our parents were kicked out of Eden.

God let the world develop for over a thousand years, growing more and more evil with time. But God waited. And then God acted – and it began to rain during Noah’s time and God made a new start.

After many more years, God visited Abraham and gave him a promise that he would have a son. But Abraham did not have his son for more than 15 years. During that time, he waited.

The sons of Jacob moved to Eqypt. There, they waited for four hundred years, becoming more and more enslaved. But finally, God sent them Moses to bring them out of Egypt.

Yet once more, after leaving Egypt, God had the Israelites wait in the wilderness for forty years before they could cross over the Jordan into the promised land. God had them wait.

Jesus was born in 4 BC. 10 years later, in 6 AD, Herod the Great died and the Romans began to rule Jerusalem and Judea more directly. But Jesus did not directly remove Roman rule. In fact, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD and after another rebellion, forbade Jews and Jewish Christians from entering Jerusalem except for one day a year beginning in 136 AD. All of God’s people waited. The ban was not lifted until 438 AD under a Christian Empress.

And now, we wait for the second coming of Christ, as people have since the day He ascended into Heaven.

What was it like for the early Christians? What was it like to wonder and expect the return of Christ in a few days, or perhaps a few months? When we read through the New Testament, particularly in the Book of Acts, we see a group of people who are excited about the immediate return of Christ. But as time passes, people begin to die away, awaiting the return. As time goes on, the Christian community begins to feel the need to put down on paper the stories of Jesus and the early Apostles so that a new generation will have an understanding of what is important for this life – and the next life. The New Testament was written expressly because God waited.

And finally, we have the Apostle John, who clearly writes his Gospel after the other three have been written, as if to say, “You’ve read the stories told about Jesus by the others. Now let me tell you what He was like – I was His best friend.” And then, even later, John writes from exile his vision of the far future, the Revelation of Saint John, which has told those that read it the two important facts: One day Jesus will return, and He will bring a victory over death to all who follow Him. The second fact is that we must wait.

And so we wait.

We wait for the return of Christ.

But while we wait, we look forward to something. We look forward for God’s glory to be revealed – in us!

Paul wrote in our Romans’ passage:

18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.

You see, the presence of the Holy Spirit within us brings God’s glory within us, potentially to be revealed, especially if we listen to that Spirit and follow the Spirit’s guidance. It is through following the Holy Spirit that great things continually happen in the church which allow God’s glory to shine forth, to “be revealed in us”.

In the late 1700’s, William Carey was a English cobbler – a shoe repairman. He heard about the great number of people in India who did not know about Jesus. He prayed and listened to the Holy Spirit and founded the first Missionary Board in the modern world – and then went to India as the first English missionary to India. He learned several Indian languages and established a foundation that is finally bearing fruit today – the Indian Church is growing like crazy among the poorest people in India. The glory of God has been revealed in William Carey.

In the early 1700’s, Jonathan Edwards was a mild-mannered pastor in Connecticut. He prayed and listened to the Holy Spirit and He began preaching a series of sermons in open places in towns. People wept and screamed and cried and came to know the Lord. Unlike what many movies have made of him, Edwards was not a charismatic preacher – He simply read the words off the paper – it was the words themselves, acting through the Holy Spirit of God that was revealed in the sermons of Jonathan Edwards that changed things. God glory was revealed in Jonathan Edwards.

Newspaper reports of Edwards’ revival made it back to England where they were read by an Oxford professor, the Reverend John Wesley who was praying for a way to revive the Church of England. Wesley and others decided to try the outdoor preaching route – the Wesleyan revival hit England and the Methodist movement took off. God’s glory was revealed in John Wesley and his brother Charles, who wrote over 4000 hymns.

On the night of February 3, 1943, enroute to Greenland, the US army transport Dorchester was torpedoed by a German U-boat. The electrical system immediately died and panic began. There were four chaplains on board who calmed down the men and helped them find life jackets and climb into lifeboats. When the lifejackets ran out, the chaplains gave other men their jackets. As the ship went under the water the chaplains sang hymns and said prayers. God’s glory was revealed that night to the 230 survivors and who knows how many of those of the almost 700 who died that night.

In 1949, a Youth for Christ minister was holding a tent revival in Los Angeles. He was praying and praying for God’s Holy Spirit to bring more people to know Christ. One day, a reporter from the Hearst Newspapers did a small story on him. The owner of the newspapers – William Randolph Hearst himself – saw the story and told his editorial staff to make the young preacher into a celebrity. They did and Billy Grahams Crusades took off, bringing hundreds of thousands of people to know Christ during the 20th century. God’s glory was revealed in Billy Graham, the unknown reporter, and in William Randolph Hearst.

What are you praying for? How are you listening to the Holy Spirit? How will God’s glory be revealed in your life?

We wait for Christ’s return.

But we do not wait alone…

Paul continues:

19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it,in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

Imagine that! The entire creation is waiting – the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the valleys, the deer, the bear, the turnips, the pine trees, the third rock from the left, the bluebirds, the raccoons, the porpoises, the trout, the blue whales, the coral reefs, the ocean itself – all are waiting for the children of God to be revealed – and who are the children of God?

We are. We who have been adopted into the family of God through belief in Jesus Christ.

We have freedom. We have glory.

For some people, Christmas is a time of dread, a time when we are forced to deal with memories we’d just as soon forget. For other people, Christmas is a time of worry, a time when we worry about the bills, about the cold, about our health as time passes onward.

But for those who believe in Jesus Christ – not just the “little baby boy, born in manger”, not just the great teacher who taught people a new way to live, but for those people who believe that Jesus Christ is the answer to everything in the world, if He will just be followed – Christmas is a miraculous time.

Christmas is that time when “all things old are made new again”. Christmas is the time when “the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end” arrives upon the earth. Christmas is the time when eternity beckons to us and tells us about bad memories, “let it go, let it go”, for those memories and those events will not matter in a hundred years or ten thousand years, so “let it go” now and look forward with joy to what it is here and what is to come.

You see, “letting go” is a form of forgiveness. It is also a recognition that God is indeed in control of the Universe and has promised justice in the end. Do you trust Him with His justice? Do you trust Him with His mercy? All wrongs will be righted, all evils will be dealt with, restorations will be made, and joy will join with the followers of Christ.

As for loved ones we miss at this time of year, say a prayer for them, and continue your walk with God, that you may one day join them in your eternal home, in a new, body which will not decay, the type of body which your loved one who was in Christ will also have.

And then, after you have turned to the cross and said the prayer….stop waiting. Instead, turn back to the world and reach out into the sea of trouble that is the world, pulling people out of the sea who are drowning in despair, who are freezing in their alone-ness, who are dying because of their decisions. Lift those people up that they may sit beside you in the lifeboat of Christ and live now for Christ, even as you live for Christ, doing His will and becoming filled with joy while doing so.

All powerful God,

We wait. As with all of Your creation, we wait. But while we wait, we must live. Guide us each day in our living through your Word and Your Holy Spirit. Lift our spirits to do You will so we can experience Your joyful love. Give us energy and health in this dark time that we may look forward with joyful anticipation to Your Son’s arrival, whether the first time, the second time, or the 77th time. In the name of the Holy Infant of Bethlehem, the glorious King of the earth, the triumphant One who conquered evil and death for us, Jesus Christ, Your Son, we pray. Amen.

What Does God Require of Me?

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Luke 1:46b-55; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28

As we continue in the season of Advent, we have reached the third week. And this year it seems as though the world is falling apart, with Russian tanks in the Ukraine, North Koreans hacking the computers of Sony Pictures, violent demonstrations in many cities against the police, ISIS terrorists attacking people in Iraq and Syria, Iran very close to nuclear weapons, and the Ebola virus that kills half of the otherwise healthy people it infects in West Africa. Heroin usage is up, pot has been legalized in two states, and marriage laws are in a state of change. Thankfully, gasoline prices are falling, but there is also the possibility that this will mean the end of the drilling boom we’ve been having here.

And this is the week when we remember the sacrifices that Mary had to make for God. Without sacrifice, there cannot be a victory. Mary – or Miriam, as she was known to her friends, made two terrific sacrifices for God. Her entire life was affected by those sacrifices.

Most of us know the story very well. Mary was a young girl, about fourteen or fifteen, which was marrying age in ancient Israel. She was engaged to a man named Joseph who was a carpenter, a highly skilled profession for the time. One day, the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and said to her: “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. …38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.

It wasn’t long before Mary had to explain to Joseph what was going on. It is clear from scripture that Joseph knew that he wasn’t the father of his fiancee’s child, and we’re pretty sure he had some difficult questions for Mary. But God came to the rescue and Joseph had a dream in which an angel assured Joseph of the truth of Mary’s story.

But those of you who have been in Mary’s shoes with an unplanned pregnancy, or have had a relative with a similar circumstance understand that Mary endured a lot of trouble over the next few years. Even today, two thousand years later, there are people who claim that Jesus’ real father must have been a Roman soldier. But it is also true that the boy Jesus was a source of great delight and wonderment to his mother.

Mary had another sacrifice to make, though. When she was an older woman, in her forties, she had to watch her now-famous son tortured and executed by the Romans. Mary stood at the foot of the cross that afternoon outside Jerusalem and watched her son die, bleeding from dozens of wounds, struggling to catch His breath. Mary watched and listened as Jesus commanded the Apostle John to take care of Mary as her son. Mary watched them take down his lifeless body and carry it to the tomb. I’m sure that Mary wept that weekend as only those who have lost children can weep. Those who are central to God’s story have always struggled with events that are worse than most of us experience. God’s people may or may not receive a special protection – but God’s people do experience joy in the end, at the end of all things.

Mary had the joy of seeing Jesus alive again, resurrected and walking and teaching again, and Mary watched Him ascend to heaven a little over a month later. Church tradition records that after the Ascension, after Pentecost, after Saul’s persecution forced the church to leave Jerusalem, Mary eventually went with the Apostle John to live in the great Greek town of Ephesus in what is today western Turkey, and there she died and is now with her Son again.

And so, having seen what God required of Mary, we may ask, “What does God Require of Me?”

Let me answer this way – it depends on who you are and where you are in your life’s journey.

If you do not yet have a relationship with God, let me say that God’s chief requirement of you today is that you look at your life and recognize that you have been in rebellion to God through much of your life. You have ignored God or even openly flaunted God and God’s commands. Perhaps you can claim to be a good person – that is ok, you have still been in rebellion to God and that is the most critical thing that God asks you to change. For God knows that if you will follow His Son Jesus, the two of you have plenty of time to work out the kinks in your relationship. But if you will not follow Jesus as your King, you are in rebellion to God and, like any King, God’s first command to a rebel is to stop being a rebel and to turn back to God.

Thus, recognize your rebellion for what it is and turn back to God, apologize, ask for forgiveness and follow the leadership of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. This is what God requires of you – of me – of us all before anything else.

But let’s assume you’ve already done that. You’ve already chosen to follow Jesus Christ and accept Him as your Lord and leader and King. If you are attempting to follow Jesus as your Lord, as your leader, as your King, then He will ask you to change your lifestyle. The life of a soldier is rather different from the life of a civilian. You will need to become disciplined, get in shape, and be worthy of the title which you have.

In the same way, the title of “follower of Christ” requires us to work to become worthy. We must become disciplined, trading out sloppy, degrading habits for good habits. We must get in shape spiritually, changing our thinking and attitudes, getting rid of the negative things and speech which are common in the world and substituting a more positive outlook and speech, which will put our soul in shape. We call this “becoming holy”. What is the program?

Each of us has a drill sergeant that is called “The Holy Spirit”. And like the best drill sergeants, the Holy Spirit knows exactly what your weaknesses are and what you need to work on next. But unlike your friendly drill sergeant, the Holy Spirit doesn’t usually shout. The Holy Spirit speaks to you in a still, small voice into your heart, through the voices of godly friends, and through the words of holy scripture. God allows your following to truly be voluntary. But God wants you to become holy. God asked Mary to remain holy for His Son.

God sends you to work to be there for others. God asks you to learn from and to teach the people with whom you work or study. Even when you are tired, God asks you to give time to teach others about Him. Even when you are poor, God asks you to spend money or donate money for His work. Even when you feel like you don’t know anything, God asks you to use your talents, gifts, and wisdom to help others learn about Him. Even when all you can do is sit quietly in a room, God asks you to be there for others. God asks you to treat others as you would like to be treated – kindly, with love, with compassion, with gentleness. God asked Mary to be there for His Son.

As you age, God puts more people into your path and what God requires of you changes again. God may send you children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, school children, or other young people to lead to the knowledge of God and Christ. God may have you train these young people to become holy – or simply to listen to the Holy Spirit speak to them. God asked Mary to train His Son.

Later, God lets you retire from active daily work, and then He expects even more of you, for there are two ways to retire. The first is to sit down and drift slowly into the arms of Jesus, falling asleep in your chair. The second is to remain active, using your pension to fund your activities and your new-found time to accomplish those things you’ve always wanted to do for God. The greatest underutilized resource in the world is the power of the God-inspired Christian retiree to change the world for the better.

Now, you have wisdom to give, recognized by younger people. Now, you have time to work and plan. Now, you have experiences to share. Now, you have financial and material resources which allow you to live even without an employer. Life may be tight, but you can take risks that younger people with families to support cannot take. And God asks you now to use that wisdom, that time, those experiences, those resources to change the world. And with God’s help, you can do it! Mary told people what she had seen and what she had experienced to many other people, in particular telling Matthew and John and Luke of what she had known of the early Jesus, and they wrote those experiences down.

Finally, you end up in a hospital or a nursing home. And you may feel you are done, but God has one more task for you. God asks you to show your visitors, your nurses, your Moslem doctor, your Hindu physical therapist, and even your hospice nurse how much God means to you and how much Jesus has changed your life. You now have time – nothing but time. And each of these people has come to see you and talk with you. Near the end of his life, the Apostle Paul was chained to Roman guards eight hours at a time, but those Roman guards were chained to the Apostle Paul eight hours at a time and had to listen to him. And so we find Paul writing to Timothy that the entire guard detachment now knew the Gospel of Jesus Christ. You can do the same, sharing the Good News with everyone who cares for you. And if you have assets, you can even plan for them to be used for ministry after you die with a bit of planning in your will. Your life of ministry can continue for years after you join Christ in the flesh. Mary’s story is told today and her ministry continues over 2000 years after the visit of the angel to her.

And so what does God require of us? God requires nothing less from us than we truly follow God’s Son, Jesus Christ, who has formed us into an instrument by which we have changed the world – are changing the world, and will change the world.

The world, you see, is changed for good in two ways by Christians.

First, there is the combined effect of the mere presence on earth of more and more people living without the fear of death, with the desire to follow the golden rule, with a desire to live holy lives. When one person lives this way, people make fun of him or her. When a hundred people live this way, a town is changed. When a hundred million live this way, the world is changed. And today, about 2 billion people claim to be Christian around the world.

The second way the world is changed for the good is through the good works that are done for other people for the express purpose of bringing them to know Christ. When we give people food through the food pantry, we change their lives and bring them closer to knowing Christ. When we help people through an AA meeting, they become stronger people, more likely to do good and less likely to do bad – and they come closer to knowing Christ. When a child receives an angel tree gift or joins Pioneer club, they are less likely to cause trouble and more likely to help others in their life – and they come closer to knowing Christ.

And so we change the world as well as our own lives by following Christ and doing what God requires of us.

There is the story of a teenage girl, like Mary, who heard the story of Mary and wanted to do something for the people around her. She saw that her country was falling apart, that the world was disintegrating around her, and that the future of her town looked grim. She lived in a housing development with about a hundred homes. And so what she did was very simple. She went outside one night and asked God what He wanted her to do. With the snow falling she stood under some lights on the corner and asked God what He wanted her to do. Then she listened. And God spoke to her.

In previous years it would have required much effort and much work, but technology had advanced, so she went home, took her computer and wrote up a brief invitation. This invitation said the following:

Dear friends and neighbors –

At this dark time of the year, I thought that we could come together for a brief Christmas celebration in our little place. Meet me at the corner of Main and High Street under the lamppost at 8:30 pm Christmas Eve, and we’ll have a little neighborhood celebration of Christmas. It should only take about 15 to 20 minutes. We’ll sing a couple of songs, say a prayer and read about the birth of Jesus. Bring anyone you like. If you have any questions, call me at xxx-xxxx

And then she printed up a hundred copies and put them on every door in her neighborhood about three days ahead of time. Then she went home to wait for phone calls. And a few phone calls came, a couple of suggestions were made, and some assignments were given.

Christmas Eve came and she was there under the lamppost at about 8:15. A few people walked up, and by 8:30, about 25 people were standing there under the lamppost. The girl handed out a song sheet. Everyone sang “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” A Baptist man named Fred said a prayer, a Methodist woman named Lucy read Luke Chapter 2, and everyone sang. “Away in a Manger.” A Lutheran man said a few words. He said:

“My name is Bill. We’ve mostly lived in this neighborhood together for more than ten years, but we don’t know each other very well. We all have different backgrounds, we’re from different places, with different sets of ancestors. I’ve seen most of you coming and going for years, but we never talk. As I look around here, I see that we only represent about 1 person in ten in this neighborhood. That’s ok. Some people who would have liked to come out couldn’t come, like Mrs Johnson in 629, who is having cancer treatments and can’t go out in the cold. Others probably are at church somewhere – we’ll go to an 11 o’clock service at our church. And many don’t want to leave their presents and Christmas trees.

You know, we Christians are supposed to be salt for the world. We are supposed to be a good seasoning for the world. Since the world is having trouble this Christmas, it’s time for us to begin to work together. If we don’t change the world, no one will. So, even though there may be other neighborhoods where people are fighting, let’s understand who we are – we are the children of God, and we will stand together against the evils that are tearing down our country and world.”

“So, Maria has brought some bread tonight to share. It’s not holy communion, it’s not the Eucharist – it’s just a group of Christian friends sharing a loaf of bread. But it’s a start. Let’s see how we can work together this year, and maybe we can have twice as many people here next Christmas Eve.”

A Catholic woman had brought a big loaf of homemade bread. They broke the bread and passed around the chunks and they each took a bite. And then they held hands and said the Lord’s Prayer together. One man mentioned that they should pray for their neighbors who were sick or ill. And a bunch of names poured out. Among them was a woman standing there who had lost her job. Someone mentioned they ought to start working together right then and there and so they all gave some money and came up with $215.25 for the woman who had lost her job. The teenage girl then stepped forward and said a prayer that covered all the worries and concerns. Then they all sang “Silent Night” and went home.

And something changed that year in that neighborhood. The gathering of the Christians in the neighborhood changed the neighborhood for the better. Things were friendlier. Several men in the neighborhood built a wheelchair ramp for Mrs Johnson, the woman with cancer. One of the women began a home daycare for kids in the neighborhood. The neighborhood even had a community picnic on July 4th. And the next Christmas Eve, there were 60 people at the little gathering.

Perhaps you can do the same in your neighborhood, your development, or your apartment building. You’ll find a sample invitation in your bulletin that you can fill in and make copies of. I’ve even put Bill’s little speech on the back for you if you don’t feel comfortable starting your own. This year, you can begin to change the world in your neighborhood. This year, you can begin to make a difference.

But making a difference requires the power of God working behind you, through you, and ahead of you. Come to the altar today to ask for that power for you, for someone you love, for the world.

All powerful God,

Send your Holy Spirit upon us, that we may have your guidance, direction, and counsel. Send your great power to work ahead of us, to work through us, and to finish the job behind us. Help us to find in Your Word the Wisdom that is necessary for your great works to be accomplished swiftly, efficiently, and without evil. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, your Son. Amen.

How Will God Appear?

Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; 2 Peter 3:8-15; Mark 1:1-8

This is the second Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the Christian Year. We are awaiting the arrival of the Infant Jesus. Most of us have at least some Christmas decorations up, the radio is playing Christmas songs, and the weather has turned yucky!

Those of you that teach school or attend school also know that this is the time of year when children’s minds are NOT on the classroom. Every time a few snow flakes fly past the window, the heads turn and it takes a few more minutes to get back into the lesson. Football has been replaced by basketball, the trees are brown, and the drive home from work for most people is a drive in the dark on a cold, rainy highway. All we want to do is to get home to a warm supper, perhaps a fireplace, and fall asleep earlier than normal.

But that’s today. That is the Advent season today. It wasn’t always this way.

Imagine yourself as one of the early hearers of this Good News that Mark has written. Imagine that you are alive in the ancient Mediterranean world, and that a new scroll has arrived at your synagogue, which is the building where you worship every week. Because you are Jewish, you make a point of going to the synagogue on Saturday morning to listen to this new scroll read, a scroll that you’ve heard tells of God’s miracles near Jerusalem over the last few years.

“Holy Spirit, fill this hall today. Speak to us in our minds of what Christ would have each of us do.” Amen.

You are a faithful worshipper of God. All your life you have heard the Old Testament scriptures. You have heard the stories of Moses, of Joshua, you have read the scrolls of Isaiah, you have heard the Psalms, YES!

You have sung the Psalms, including that wonderful Psalm 2, and the 7th verse:

7 I will proclaim the decree of the LORD:

He said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have become your Father.
Who is this Son of God? Who is this Holy One? Who is this Jesus that Mark calls the Son of God?

To make doubly sure we know this, to understand this, to drive home the point, Mark pulls in a quote from memory and partially quotes Malachi:

3:1 “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the LORD Almighty.

Oh, YES! We know, as students of Holy Scripture, We know, as good Jews, We know, as the Chosen People who the messenger is. He is the messenger who will clear the way before the Lord Himself comes to his Temple.

But Mark isn’t ready to let it go at that.

3 “a voice of one calling in the desert,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.’”

We know that this comes from halfway through the scroll of the great prophet Isaiah. Chapter 40 begins:

1 Comfort, comfort my people,
says your God.
2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed,
that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the LORD’s hand
double for all her sins.

3 A voice of one calling:
“In the desert prepare
the way for the LORD;
make straight in the wilderness
a highway for our God.
4 Every valley shall be raised up,
every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
the rugged places a plain.
5 And the glory of the LORD will be revealed,
and all mankind together will see it.


The LORD is coming, The LORD is on His way. Someone will arrive who will tell us about the Lord. The excitement builds in our listener, in YOU as you sit there in the synagogue listening to the scroll being read. And the scroll continues:

4 And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

It is hot in the desert. Would you choose to live in the desert, without air conditioning, without electric fans, without the money to build a big cool house? I know I wouldn’t. I lived in Atlanta for ten years, in drought conditions and I can still remember what it’s like… So I can just imagine you and I standing in the desert valley near the Jordan River, east of Jerusalem just north of the Dead Salt Sea…



You stand in the hot sun and lower your eyes to avoid the heat on your face. You look at the ground and the hot ground reflects back heat right into your eyes. You sweat. You walk along, and it seems like even the rocks you touch are burning. There is heat everywhere. Even though you are wearing sandals, your feet are hot on the bottom as you walk over the dry rocks. You get a whiff of an unpleasant sweat smell from the other people around us as we walk down the hot, rocky path.

But you hear a noise. Does it sound like water running? That pleasant sound, that fssssss noise with a bit of a gurgle. It says water. In fact, you can even smell the water, you can feel the humidity increase noticeably as you walk down the rough path and around the bend and there is a river! Not a big river, not like the mighty Ohio or Mississippi, but rather like Elk Creek.

And standing there, in the creek, there is a bearded man. A strange looking man.

He has brown clothes on – everyone else wears white or white and blue robes. His clothes are made of camel hair – he probably gathered it himself and made the clothes himself.

He has a leather belt, it looks homemade. Good Jewish men don’t work with leather, it’s unclean. There’s something really odd about him.

He has a strange smile, though. “Why are you here?” he asks you.

“We’ve come down from the city to hear you.” You had come from the city because you heard this man was here. John is his name, son of a priest named Zachariah and a woman named Elizabeth. Elizabeth was older when she had him – and there was something odd about his father…THAT was it. His father could not speak during the pregnancy and later claimed an angel had visited him about his son. It was a strange family – John had suddenly shown up here a few months ago.

His eyes are focused upon you with a steady look. “It’s a long walk”, he says. “Let me tell you some good news.”

Honestly, the guy is beginning to creep you out. His looks, his demeanor – rumor had it that all he ate was wild honey and locust tree pods – he surely looks like he could use more food. But he was speaking again…

“There is One who is coming who is much more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.” Now THAT would be a trick. This guy – he didn’t have two copper coins to rub together, with a nutcase for a father…He looked like the worst sort of slave, but said that he wasn’t even worthy to untie a man’s sandals.

You look down at your own sandals, new – or they were new when you bought them last week. The walk through the desert has torn them up a bit and the sandals and your feet are covered with animal droppings you stepped in on the road. It’s getting hotter and the smell of sweating people around us is getting stronger, but the odor from your sandals is stronger.

A slave that was unworthy to do the lowest form of work? A slave that said he was too low to put his hands on those dirty sandals and untie them? Or was he saying that the sandals of the One to come were so pure that only a pure and holy person could untie them? But who that was pure and holy would stoop to such a job, such a task, such a lowly occupation?

Pure and holy people were too good to do those things. Yet the crowds back in the city talked of this man being the most holy man they’d ever met and he talked about being lowly. Was it possible that true holiness meant bending down and doing what proud men and women would never do? Surely not! But yet?

John looks again at you and speaks:

“ I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

“Who will baptize me?” you ask.

“The One who is to come”, Is the reply. “I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

Water baptism. John took people and got them wet. It was a washing, they said, a removal of sins from you. If John, who was so holy, washed you, you would be clean of all your sins before God. Of course, until the next time you sinned.

The word baptize, a Greek word not an Aramaic word, it meant the change in state that happened when a cucumber became a pickle. John’s baptism would change you. John’s baptism would change your heart, it was said.

But what was this about the Holy Spirit? You remember that the Holy Spirit came upon King Saul and he prophesized. You remember that the Holy Spirit came upon Samson and he slew hundreds of Philistines with just the jawbone of an ass. But what would it mean to be baptized with the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit would be the Holy Breath, the Holy Breeze of God. The same word meant Spirit, breath, and breeze.

John is impatient.

“Are you ready to be baptized?” He asks.

“Why should I be baptized?”, You say.

“If you are ready for the coming of the Lord, you should stop doing what you want, and start doing the things that God has asked you. If you want to stop and be cleansed of your sinful past, and forgiven, I will baptize you.” He looks at you, awaiting your decision.


The hot sun is still beating down. The cool water is there, just behind John. A small crowd has gathered. A fly starts to buzz around your head. Others are buzzing around your feet. Your thoughts are buzzing around in your skull with the heat and the sun and the sweat and the smells. Are you willing to change? Are you willing to stop pretending that you are a good person and really become a good person?

Thoughts go through your mind. You think about the time you shouted at your children. You think about the time you walked right past that poor woman at the market, who didn’t have enough money for her groceries. You think about what you and your friends did last Saturday night. You think about how you shouted at your mother this week. You think about the really nasty things you said about your neighbor. You think about your other neighbor, and her poverty that you haven’t done a thing to help.

Are you really a good person? Or do you just think that you are, just because you go to the temple once a week and study scripture. Do you pray for others? Or just for yourself? Do you stay away from outsiders – or do you make friends with those strangers?

It’s getting hotter. The water looks cool.

What will you do, standing there in the heat, with the flies buzzing around, with the stink of your sweat around you and everyone staring at you?

Is God important enough in your life that you will admit you’ve done wrong? Do you care what He thinks – or only what His creatures think?

Perhaps it’s time to go down to the river, to step out into the water, to kneel at the foot of the one who tells of the God who is, who was, and who is to come. Or perhaps you can wait.

The crowd murmurs. Someone is walking down to the river. A tall man is walking down the path behind you. Someone say, “It’s Jesus of Nazareth!” John’s face lights up. And suddenly, you realize that the time for your decision is about to run out. Somehow, you understand that you are about to lose your chance. A slight breeze begins moving around.

And you know that God is about to appear. In that moment, you realize that if you don’t take advantage of this time, today, this hour, this moment, you may never have another chance. God has appeared at the riverbank in the person of that tall man Jesus walking down the path. You don’t know how you know, but you know. You know that you have very little time and the decision is between completely following – or not following, because He is God and God doesn’t go halfway. In your mind, Jesus speaks to you as He walks down toward the river – what does He say?

And here today, back in this room, you have that same decision to make. Will you follow God completely? Or will you continue to stand on the riverbank in the hot sun, going to God’s temple every week but coming up with excuse upon excuse why you can’t commit totally to following Him?

You see, eventually Christ appears and walks past you into the water. Eventually Christ appears in the clouds and destroys this planet. Eventually Christ walks up to you and says to you: “Follow me”. He is very definite about this and He means it.

You have a choice. Do you believe that Christ is the Son of God and worthy to be followed? Completely. Or do you believe that Christ is myth, a metaphor, a creation of human beings who are simply telling you a story? Is Jesus Christ the Son of God or not?

You see, If you truly accept that Jesus Christ is the real Son of God, then following His every command, hanging on His every word, becoming a full-blown capital D Disciple is the only way to live your life. Face the facts – God has appeared in flesh upon this earth and given clear instructions to us all – and those instructions do not give us the option of living a “normal” life. We must choose to belong to the world or to change the world, to belong to the ordinary life around us or to live extra-ordinary lives following Christ, to become whole-hearted Disciples of Jesus with all the sacrifice that means…or to live on the fence, watching the Disciples of Jesus fight to change the world as the world fights to destroy itself.

Do you want to make the commitment?

Come to the altar today. After you take the bread and drink the juice of Holy Communion, come kneel at the altar and make your commitment to God to truly follow God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

For God has appeared to you today, speaking to you in your mind, as you looked in the imagination of your mind, God has appeared to you today. Jesus has spoken something to you through the Holy Spirit. Listen to Him.

For God is not limited to the paltry flesh-and-blood of a human being. God does not speak only by sound waves in a single place, only in Jerusalem of 33 AD, by the unamplified voice of a man. God, in the person of the Holy Spirit can and does appear to many people each and every day, in a soft, still voice speaking directly into your mind, through the gentle voices of godly friends, through the reading of holy scripture – God appears to us.

And today, God is here. Within and around the bread and the juice, God is here. God is listening to you, God is speaking to you, God is present with you, and is ready to guide your life to new heights.

God Will Be There

Isaiah 64:1-9; Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37
Happy New Year!

Really! This is the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the Christian Year. Today we begin a four-week time of preparation, a time of waiting, a time when we get ready for the great festival time that is Christmas.

Turn to your neighbor and say, “Neighbor, what are you waiting for?”

Have you ever noticed that in our lives, we are always waiting for something?

• When we are toddlers, we are waiting to go to kindergarten.
• When we get to kindergarten, we are waiting for real school.
• When we sit in school, we are waiting to get out of school.
• When we are home on break, we are waiting for school to begin.
• When we get older, we are waiting to be sixteen when we can drive.
• When we are seniors in school we are waiting to graduate.
• When we are single, we are waiting to marry.
• When we are working, we are waiting to retire.
• When we retire, we are waiting to die.

We are always waiting. Perhaps you waited in line this week. Perhaps you waited for Thanksgiving dinner. Perhaps you have waited all week for church. We are always waiting.

There is good reason. God designed the Universe that way.

Waiting is a necessary part of life. Life can be seen as a series of growth spurts divided by a series of resting times. The resting times are when we gather together our energy, our knowledge, and our wisdom which allows us to grow.

Our scriptures today talk of times of waiting. Isaiah wrote:
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains would tremble before you!

You can sense Isaiah’s great impatience for God to come down to visit. Even Isaiah, writing over 600 years before Christ, 2600 years ago, looks back to the dim past: 

Since ancient times no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.

Asaph, who wrote many of the Psalms, was also impatient as he sang to God:
Awaken your might;
come and save us.
Restore us, O God;
make your face shine on us,
that we may be saved.
How long, Lord God Almighty,
will your anger smolder
against the prayers of your people?

But Mark wrote that Jesus warned us about the return of God to earth, saying it would be a difficult time:
But in those days, following that distress,
'the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’

Even today, we still wait. People still wait for God to come and reclaim His world.

The interesting thing is that many people, even those who are not Christians, await God’s return – with their own distorted view of what that means. I remember a few years ago that a group of people in California were awaiting space aliens, whom they worshiped, to return following a comet. They all committed suicide in an attempt to join the space aliens. I don’t know if they did, but the aliens surely did not stop to let us know about it. And the comet went back into deep space.

As many of you are aware, men have arisen from time to time and predicted the end of the world, sometimes predicting a specific date. This is more common than we realize. My son Andy is fond of saying that he has personally lived through the end of the world five times. It seems that getting specific about the day the world will end is a great way to get attention, to sell books and movies, and to pack people into churches and lecture halls. Yet the Bible is clear that no one except Father God – not even Jesus – knows when the world will end.

Even a quick reading of the Bible tells us that one day Christ will return and this world will end. Gary Auvil’s Sunday School study of Revelation, which you can still join in, goes into some details about what will happen.

Yes, we are waiting for God’s return. But what is odd is that Christians are both terrified by what we understand is coming, and yet we can’t seem to wait for this world to end. Why is that? Why do we so desperately want the world to end?

As far as I can see, it is simply stress. We are stressed out with this life and want to join Christ in New Jerusalem tomorrow. We are tired, worn out, and filled with daily stress. We simply are not happy in this world – possibly because we were made for a different world?

Scientists have been studying stress in our world a considerable amount over the last twenty years or so. And they’ve found out some interesting things.

When we feel stressed, our body alerts our adrenal glands to produce adrenaline. That’s the same hormone in our bodies that allows small women to lift cars in emergencies, that allows you to outrun bears when the bear is chasing you, and allows a mother whose child is threatened to kick a wolf ten feet through the air. The scientists call it the “fight or flight” reflex and stress happens when you cannot fight or run appropriately. After all, when someone at work is constantly hiding your lunch pail, it just isn’t appropriate to quit your job, and you can’t just punch them out these days. Besides, punching someone out or worse would get you talked about on the evening news.

At appropriate times, adrenaline can save our lives by making us stronger, faster, and tougher. For example, adrenaline increases your heart rate and helps your blood clot faster, which is really useful if a mountain lion just raked your back with his claws.

But when we are under stress, we get a low dose of adrenaline all the time, even in the middle of the night. It wakes us up, keeps our heart pumping faster than it should, makes our blood clot easier – which can give us strokes and heart attacks – and makes us feel angry and worried all the time. Stress slowly kills us because our body cannot rest and relax. And so we look forward with dread and hope to a life in New Jerusalem.
So what are the causes of stress and how can we reduce stress in our lives?

Stress happens because of two reasons – physical and mental.

Physical stress is caused by too little sleep, too little exercise, and unhealthy eating, either too much or too little. The quickest, best cure for too much adrenaline in the body is hard exercise for a half an hour. Seriously. In fact, the reason our high schools began to put sports programs in place was because the teenagers who no longer lived on the farm weren’t getting enough heavy exercise. It helped for about fifty years, but then our schools grew so large that only a few kids could make it onto the sports teams and the rest had to deal with the physical stress in another way. Many choose drugs. Some choose fighting.
If you aren’t getting enough exercise, even if you’re seventy years old, you’ll show signs of stress. Your doctor will tell you to exercise. I’m telling you the same thing.

Mental stress occurs because our mind chooses to analyze the world around us, and we conclude that there are serious, real threats to our existence. There may not be a mountain lion in our office, but there are still people who threaten to harm our livelihood. There are stories on the evening news about scary diseases, wars that may spread, trouble in our government – and there are hundreds of advertisements telling you that really bad things can happen to you unless you use their product. And of course, the medical ads are no better – “Side effects include rapid breathing, nausea, stroke, heart attack, blindness, ears turning yellow, teeth falling out and, in rare cases, death.”

Plus, if the danger isn’t to us, it’s to our parents, our spouse, our children, our grandchildren, and our puppy dogs. If we just watch television, listen to the radio, and surf Facebook, the world can become a very scary place. Even when we realize that the disease is 6000 miles away, when we realize that the war is contained, and when we realize that we’ve never used a medicine for excessive hair on our elbows – the damage is done, because our brain is processing all that information and it is always getting the adrenal glands ready to pump out the adrenaline.

So how do we deal with mental stress?

There are a few ways to deal with it. Many people choose to drink alcohol or use drugs. Others choose chocolate. Others, like myself, prefer a nice macaroni-and-cheese dinner. Still others punch someone out or yell at someone in their family.

Some people go running or swimming, preferring to deal with the physical symptoms of stress by removing the adrenaline.

But none of these methods really deals with the mental stress long term. They just take care of the situation “for now”, and the stress comes back day-after-day. The drinker becomes an alcoholic, the drug user becomes an addict, the eater adds a hundred pounds, and the angry screamer destroys their family and/or goes to jail. The runner looks good, but becomes an exercise addict, never happy except when they are exercising.

But there is another way. There is another way to deal with stress.

It is difficult, though, for we have been trained our entire life to handle stress ourselves. We have been trained in how to self-medicate for our stress. We even have psychologists telling us to “punch pillows” or to “find a happy place” when the stress gets too much.

There are two ways that the godly people deal with stress.

The first way we learn is too difficult for most of us to begin with. But it is still the ultimate goal to shoot for.
When we encounter something stressful in our lives, we first have to recognize it for what it is – a real attack upon our very persons. Never try to ignore or hide from the cause of stress. Your deeper mind is very smart – the bully at work or school really does want to hurt you and they ARE hurting you. Your mind, the deep emotional mind, reacts with fear and turns open the adrenal glands. Don’t ignore what your mind and the Holy Spirit is telling you. You truly are under attack.

But instead of trying to ignore or hide from the cause of stress, turn about in your mind and face the stress. Reach out to your source of strength. Recognize that since you are in Christ you have nothing to fear in this world. Put on the helmet of salvation to protect your mind and counter the attack by drawing the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

If you know that you are saved eternally, nothing can hurt your mind, nothing can truly hurt you, nothing can keep you from living eternally – and thus nothing should cause you stress. If you draw the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, you can mentally and spiritually combat the causes of stress.

“Vengence is mine, says the Lord.” Know that God will deal with your persecutor someday. Have a bit of patience and know that you win in the end.

“The gift of God is eternal life” Know that you will live forever. What can someone do to you today that will matter in a thousand years? Will it matter if the bank takes your home? Will it matter if the car is dented in the parking lot? Will it matter if John gets the promotion and you don’t? Will it matter if Ebola takes your life next month instead of viral pneumonia in forty years?

“I am convinced that nothing can separate us from the love of God…” God is standing there, loving you. He is awaiting your anger, your tears, your hurt, your disappointments.

Folks, I get tired. I get frustrated. I get depressed just like all people do. But I have learned this much through my walk with God – as soon as I turn back to God, I am ok. The times when I am most likely to have stress problems are the days when I have not been reading scripture. My sword, you see, is not sharp, and I cannot fight against the evil as well.

I’ve given several of you this advice, and today I’ll give it to everyone. When you are sad or frustrated or lonely or hurting, open up the Bible to the Book of Psalms. Start reading them aloud. It doesn’t matter whether you start at the beginning or somewhere in the middle. Just start reading the Psalms aloud and listen to them. The writers of the Psalms were people, just like you or I, and they had problems. God guided them to write these works of poetry to give us hope. If you will read the Psalms aloud, it may take five minutes or it may take an hour, but you will soon find yourself recovering from your bad mood.

I said that there were two ways that godly people deal with stress. I’ll tell you now the second way, the way that most of actually master first. It is simply to remember these things:

Jesus Christ died for your sins so that you might be welcomed back into a relationship with God and live eternally. God resurrected Jesus from the dead so that we would pay careful attention to everything that Jesus said, especially His claim to be God Himself walking on this earth. And this is a wonderful thought, for it shows that God loves us tremendously.

But Jesus also walked on this world for over thirty years before His sacrifice upon the cross. And during those thirty years, He grew from being a tiny infant, born under less than ideal circumstances to being a somewhat nerdy teenager, to being a workman respected in His community, to being a spiritual teacher followed by crowds of thousands of people. He experienced life as we know it. He experienced the world as we know it. He experienced everything that this world throws at people – and in the end, He was beaten, tortured, and killed because He taught us a better way to reach God in the next life – and to live in this world.

When you feel stressed, remember that wherever you are, God was there before you were there. Wherever you go, God will be there before you arrive. If you climb to the tops of mountains, God will be sitting up there to greet you. If you walk through the deepest valley in the shadow of death, He is there with you. Where ever you go, there are always two persons there – where ever you go, there you are – and God will already be there, waiting for you, ready to bless you.

At the outbreak of World War II, Darlene Deibler Rose was a missionary in Indonesia and was captured and imprisoned by the Japanese. After many weeks in the prison, she was skin and bones. The guards regularly beat her – in particular the two guards on the cell block. But she had developed a craving for bananas – food that was denied the prisoners. So she prayed to God for bananas, working through every person who might smuggle her a banana, but crossing them off her list as she realized how impossible it was that any of these people could help her, including the Indonesian night watchman. It was just too dangerous for them. She later wrote:

“I bowed my head again and prayed, "Lord, there's no one here who could get a banana to me. There's no way for You to do it. Please don't think I'm not thankful for the rice porridge. It's just that--well, those bananas looked so delicious!"”

The next day, she heard the guard coming down the hallway. The door opened up, and one of the two guards threw something into the cell. She looked at what had come into the cell. It was not a banana. It was not a hand of bananas like we buy at the store. It was an entire bunch of bananas – ninety-two bananas in all!

She wrote
“In all my spiritual experience, I've never known such shame before my Lord. I pushed the bananas into a corner and wept before Him. "Lord, forgive me; I'm so ashamed. I couldn't trust You enough to get even one banana for me. Just look at them--there are almost a hundred."

"In the quiet of the shadowed cell, He answered back within my heart: "That's what I delight to do, the exceeding abundant above anything you ask or think." I knew in those moments that nothing is impossible to my God.”

The story was not finished. The next afternoon, the Indonesian night watchman whispered to her in her cell, “Do you like fried bananas?” “Oh, yes”, she answered. A little while later, he smuggled her a fried banana.

(Evidence Not Seen by Darlene Deibler Rose)

Where ever you are in your life, God is already there.

Even if you do not know God personally, God is already there, waiting for you.

Even if you have never known love, God is already loving you, waiting for you to look up and find Him.

Even if you have done the worst things imaginable, God is ready to hear your apology to Him, God is ready to forgive you, God is ready to help you put your life back together. Through Jesus Christ, He will lead you through the storms of life.

Even if you have been completely successful, independent and never needing another human being, God is there ready to be your friend, your guide, and ready to carry the burdens that you have carried for so long because you could never trust anyone enough to let them down. God is already there, ready to lead you because God has already gone before you.

What we often fail to understand when we look at the Infant Jesus in the manger, the infant who was God in a very complicated way, it that even before Mary and Joseph came to Bethlehem – God was already there.
And whether we await the arrival of the infant Christ, whether we await the end of the world with the Second Coming of Christ, or whether we simply await our death, God is there, God was there already, and God will be there – Before, during, and after we finally stop waiting and arrive. God is here.

You know, we are often afraid of what people will think if we come to the altar. But everyone here knows that this altar is a place where God is ready to bless you. Most of the people in this room have been here at one time or the other, speaking quietly or weeping, standing or kneeling. Coming to the altar is not a sign of our weakness but rather it is an acknowledgement of God’s strength.

Come to the altar and pray to the God Who is here. Come to the altar and pray for a friend or relative who needs God’s help. Come to the altar and pray for our country, for the lost souls of the world, for those who are even today suffering from Ebola. Come to the altar and ask the God Who is here to forgive you of all you have done wrong and accept you into His family. Come to the altar and let the God Who is here lift you up during our hymn.

So stand up, turn to your neighbor and say, “Neighbor, what are you waiting for?”

And say to your neighbor, “Neighbor, I am waiting no longer. ”

How to be Holiday Holy

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Psalm 100; Ephesians 1:15-23; Matthew 25:31-46

Good morning!

Turn to your neighbor and say, “Neighbor, what are you thankful for?”

Thanksgiving is here. This week, we celebrate that holiday that has been called both the most American of holidays and the most Christian holiday. We stop for one day and remember the things that we are thankful for.

Other religions do not do this. The great Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement, the day when Jews confess their sins and ask for forgiveness.

The Moslem time of Ramadan is a month long fast, a time much more akin to our Lenten season than anything else.

As for the Buddhists, they tell us that all life is suffering. Why would you have a holiday of Thanksgiving?

No, Thanksgiving is uniquely Christian, although many other people have chosen to celebrate the holiday. You see, it is in Christianity that all humans find that there is something more to life than living it, something more to our lives than following rules and suffering, some greater purpose is found in our lives – discovering that God loves us and helping others discover that love.

Thanksgiving is always tied up with love. Our classic image of the Thanksgiving table given to us by Norman Rockwell shows smiling children and their parents, Grandpa is standing at the head of the table, and Grandmother is bringing a huge turkey to sit in front of Grandpa. Clearly, everybody is happy, the family is together, and family love is all around.

That love is important. Too often today, the family love has evaporated like water on a hot stove. The love in families evaporates for many reasons, but the most important two reasons are time and Spirit.

When a family does not spend time together, the members grow apart. Many studies have shown that the most important thing for an infant’s normal development is for the mother – or someone – to regularly hold that infant, to play with that infant, to talk to that infant. Children who are neglected at an early age, who are left alone and untouched end up having a huge cluster of problems as they enter school. In the worst cases, they cannot form attachments with anybody. Ever.

When the adults in the family don’t spend enough time together, they begin to form attachments with those people that they do spend time with. As Wanda Mitchell used to say, “Loneliness makes the heart grow fonder – of someone else.” A key reason marriages split up is when the couple stops spending time together and instead focus upon work and career. Farm families had few divorces. They ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner together and often worked together in the fields, in the barns, and on the fences.

So why do we focus upon our work and career and not each other? It usually comes down to one key decision made early in the marriage – how big is the house? Perhaps the most important decision that you can make in your family’s life is to restrain your desire for material wealth – and buy a small house.

Our modern standard is that we should get qualified for the largest house we can afford and then borrow the maximum we can afford, with the idea that over time our paychecks will get larger and our payments will get easier. But that assumes both parents are working full-time. If one can’t work – the other does overtime. And yet, it allows each child to have a room for themselves, and dad and mom to each have workplaces. An office for her – a man-cave for him, right? But that is simply a way for people to get away from each other.

Instead, a smaller, cozier house means that people have to be close to one another. Two brothers in the same room means two good friends develop for life. A single living room - with one television - means that people learn to negotiate and live together, enjoying things together. And a smaller house means a smaller house payment, which allows for some flexibility in work schedules, maybe even the ability to work at a lower paying job from home. Maybe a bit more money for the family to go camping or traveling on weekends. Maybe a bit more time spent together.

Think about what you could do if you had an extra $300 a month because you had a smaller house. You can still do that. You can trade down, selling your home and buying a smaller house. Or you can think and plan more carefully, so that as your family grows you can keep the house you have.

You see, most people think that material wealth and time are linked. If I had some more money, I could retire earlier and take more vacations.

But that is a lie.

Actually, the way it works is this: If I want to take more vacations or retire earlier, I must put in more time. I must work many overtime hours now so I’ll have the money to take my two weeks of vacation on a cruise ship next summer. But I’ll get two weeks of vacation either way. The real question is whether or not I’ll exhaust myself so badly between now and then that my spouse will spend time with someone else.

Instead, cut your expenses and spend time with your family now. It’s called “living small”. If you bring home $400 a week, plan to live in a place that only requires you spend $300 a week for your entire budget, with $100 a week free. If you bring home $2000 a week, plan to live in a place that only requires you spend $1500 a week. Live smaller. It’s really a key to living a more abundant life. Here’s the way it works:

When you stop working the overtime, and you come straight home after work, are relaxed, and don’t worry, you can get to sleep earlier, you won’t lie awake at night, and then when Friday comes, you won’t be exhausted, and you won’t be too tired to spend time with the family. You’ll also accomplish more at work than you did when you were exhausted. And your family life will be great.

Divorces are expensive. Counseling for children – or yourself - is expensive. Health care is expensive when you are always working hard to pay your bills – instead of planning to have low expenses. But so many of us substitute buying things for love in our lives. Spend time cultivating the eternal things of this life and the next – relationships. Relationships with people and with God.

Time spent together is key to maintain and growing love. But another key point is taking proper care of your spiritual issues.

When two people come together in marriage, it is important that a balance of power be maintained. And that balance of power gets out of balance when one or both of the parents feels that they are independent, arrogantly right all the time, a god unto themselves. This most often happens when either member of the marriage – or both – never manage to admit that God exists and has an influence upon their lives.

You see, if you do not follow God, if you are not willing to follow Christ, then you follow some other god. That god may be a quest for material wealth, a quest for power – or simply an assumption that you are completely in charge and right all the time. Or even most of the time. In effect, you are pretending that you are a god, a being with free and independent action, beholden to no one, and you demand your way or the highway. And eventually, when someone is in a marriage with this deep-rooted idea, someone hits the highway.

A proper spirit is a spirit that yields. First and foremost, that spirit yields to God’s will. That spirit attempts to find God’s Will and follows that Will, always wondering if you are actually following God’s Will, but desiring very much to be following that Will. There is a humility of the spirit in that person.

Second, that person’s spirit recognizes that other people are images of God, and are therefore very, very valuable. One who truly follows God will never desire the harm of an image of God, the harming of another person.

Third, that person’s spirit then learns to yield to the will of others, accommodating their desires, yet stands strong and happy, aware that while the others are valuable images of God, you are also a valuable image of God.

It is this mutual yielding to one another, a will to do for each other, a striving to lift up the other person that is mutual that makes for a happy marriage. And when this concept of lifting up the other becomes second nature, the children grow and learn and become strong yet humble spirits also, newly minted and polished images of God. But it is very difficult to stay on this course unless you are in church regularly, sitting in worship on Sundays, and also joining in a small group who has the time and love and desire to say to you from time to time – “are you sure that you’re heading the right direction?”

If you want a happy family, it requires time which we give to ourselves by restraining our material wants, and it requires a good spirit, humbled by bowing the knee to almighty God and His Son, Jesus Christ.

And our Gospel reading today explains to us why it is so important to have these things – Plenty of time and the spare cash that comes from living small, and a good spirit, caused by paying attention to God.

Jesus tells that there will be two types of people in His flock. He refers to them as sheep and goats. Both were commonly found in a flock, but the sheep were more valuable in those days – they had finer hair, could be milked, and could also be turned into mutton. But they were more valuable alive than dead because of their fine wool. The goats, on the other hand, while they had wool and milk, their wool and milk was not of the same quality that the wool and milk of the sheep were, so the goats were usually killed and eaten.

Jesus tells us that while many people will be found in the church – his flock – He will judge us based upon our actions to determine who is actually following Him. It isn’t enough, you see, to simply declare “I believe in God” to be a follower of Christ. It isn’t enough, you see, to be baptized and attend church. Jesus has a higher standard for His followers. He asks us to treat all people with great hospitality, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, to welcome strangers into our homes, to take care of the sick, to visit those in prisons, and to give people drinks when they are thirsty. Those who do these things are like sheep, valuable for what they provide the world. Those who do not do these things are like goats, simply to be killed.

In other places, the words that Jesus uses have spiritual meaning. For example, Jesus tells us that He is a spring of living water. When we give people drinks of water, therefore, He isn’t JUST talking about physical water, but is also talking about giving people an understanding of who Christ is. When he talks about taking care of the sick, this doesn’t just mean physically sick, but also we are to take care of those who are emotionally or mentally or spiritually sick. When he talks about visiting people who are in prison, he isn’t just talking about physical prisons, but he is also talking about reaching and visiting those people who have put themselves in spiritual prisons, in dark places where they cannot escape from.

Why does Jesus consider our treatment of all these hurting people to be the same as our treatment of Him? Because all people are created images of God – and Jesus is God walking on this earth. If you throw darts at the picture of a politician, we all know that it represents your attitude toward that politician. So the way you treat fellow images of God represents your attitude toward God Himself – whether God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Spirit. And always remember that you yourself are also an image of God. Treat yourself appropriately. Take care of that image and polish it daily.

The interesting thing about this story told by Jesus about the sheep and the goats is that the people who Jesus called the sheep were totally unaware that their daily acts of kindness that they performed in their humility was seen by Jesus as service to Him, the King of the world. They were completely unaware that they had touched Jesus when they fed hungry people, invited strangers into their homes, or looked after the sick. This shows how pure their motives were – they were not aware that their King was watching when they did these deeds. They simply did good because of their humble spirit. Jesus surprised them by telling them how great they were.

We are, after all, as Christians, we are the children of God, princes and princesses of the Kingdom. Our ancestor Adam was told to take care of the earth. As princes and princesses of the Kingdom, we are asked to also take care of the earth – and all the people on that earth. We will be judged upon how well we fulfill our roles as princes and princesses of the Kingdom.

When we became Christians, we are no longer common people. We are the nobility of the Kingdom. And we all know that the nobility of the Kingdom has responsibilities that common people can safely ignore. When Jesus and God bent down to you and said, “arise, child of God”, you were adopted into a holy family, filled with love and the power that flows in such a noble, strong family. And a truly noble family understands that they not only serve the King – but also all the other people in the Kingdom. A truly royal family member is always amazed at their ability to do good – but does it with a heart which is grateful to the Father that granted them such ability to do good. Having the power to do good, you see, is an immense privilege. We should never down or ignore that gift that God has given each of us.

Such a family, full of thanksgiving and grace, is what we belong to. Our Father provides everything for us – and for all the people outside our family. It is our responsibility to ensure that the least people in the Kingdom are taken care of. We each have that responsibility. But we are also thankful above all else that our Father loves us and gives us the strength to do good.

Look at what you have to be thankful for:

You can walk. You can talk. You can hear. You can see. You can touch. There are many people who cannot do one or more of those things. If you are one of the people who cannot walk or talk or hear or see or touch, ask yourself: Have I had life?

We all have life. Perhaps this is the greatest gift of all – and the thing we most take for granted. We often talk with people who say, “Why did God let that person die?” Perhaps the question we should all ask is “Why does God let me live?” Have you considered that question? Have you considered for what purpose God created you? Have you considered the ability to do good that is your life?

In the story of the sheep and the goats that Jesus told, the goats did not do anything overtly bad. They didn’t kill people, steal from people, or harm people in any way. They just failed to be hospitable to people. They failed to do good. And so they are cursed to eternal punishment.

Our burden, as members of Jesus’ flock, is to do good. Yet it is no burden at all. Doing good is its own reward. The surprise on someone else’s face when you go beyond what is necessary and do what is extraordinary is worth the effort. Trust me. Try it.

Look outside, later this week as you go shopping. You will see people of all types. You will see people who are strong and noble in bearing – and people who are wretched, bowed down by the cares of the world that are on their shoulders. Do your best to lift their burdens, to raise their spirits, to do for them what no one else would stop to do --- because you are a child of the Most High God, and they are images of our Father.

Go outside your comfort zone and do amazing things this holiday season. Give of your time, your presence, your skills, your treasures, and tell them of your Father who leads you to do these things. Show the world – and those particular people - what can happen when someone truly believes that God loves them, that God will take care of them no matter what, and who truly believe that they will live forever. Change our world and make it holy. Do as Christ would do!

Remember to put aside money for our gift-tithe. Set aside 1/10th of your gift expenses for collection at Christmas time for the children’s ministry (Clarksburg Mission) and the Upshire Parish House.

But don’t forget to do all the good you can do, in all the places that you can, to all the people that you can. Act like a holy prince. Act like a holy princess. Change the world.

So turn to your neighbor and say, “Neighbor, what are you thankful for?”

And say to your neighbor, “Neighbor, I am thankful that my Father is the King of the Universe.!”