A Well-Known Book

 

There’s something special about returning to a well-loved book, even if you know how the story goes. One of my favorite authors is Jane Austen, and I am currently reading, for perhaps the third or fourth time, Sense and Sensibility. We read a story differently when we know how it ends; we pick up on details we missed before, we slow down and appreciate the descriptions and dialogue more, and we experience the characters as people we already know and love. Additionally, we may have had life experiences since the last read-through that give us a greater understanding and sympathy for what the characters face as we read it this time. There are plenty of books I have read that I have no desire to turn back to, but the books I’ve loved most are a delight to immerse myself in once again.

I was thinking about this today in regard to Pastor Adam’s new series. For many of us, the book of Philippians is a well-known book. We have heard it preached through in a Sunday morning series (perhaps more than once), and we may have studied it in Sunday School, and/ or on our own at home. Out of my own personal love for the book’s message, I even chose to memorize it back in 2005. It took all year, but it has been a great blessing in my life to know its words so well. But despite all this, when I found out that this was the next series we would be going through in church, I didn’t say, “Not again!” Instead, there was joy in returning to a deeply-appreciated book that I do know well. For as in the reading of Sense and Sensibility, and even more so because Philippians is part of God’s living and inspired Word, I will see things I haven’t seen before. I will be impacted in different ways than when I heard it preached last. Meanings of words and depths of truths will open to me in fresh ways and will take deeper root in my heart. My life experiences since the last time I studied this book will help shape a greater understanding of how to apply what Paul wrote so many years ago.

So, whether this is your first time to study Philippians in depth or the tenth time, I hope you, along with me, will open your heart to hear what God wants to say. I pray that we would see His glory shine through the words He spoke through Paul. As we study this epistle, may the Lord change us to be more like Christ and less like the world as we “press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil.2:14).

--Amy O'Rear

Random Thoughts from Genesis

Here in the beginning of January I would like to share some random observations from my reading in the book of Genesis.  Like many of you, I have begun reading through the Bible again, beginning in Genesis.

 

Genesis 2:9, I read, “The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.”  God was concerned with both emotional health (pleasing to the eye—beauty!) and physical health (good for food). Since the tornado on Easter Sunday I have grieved over the loss of trees in the area hit.  My daughter and her husband lost 23 trees just from their lot.  Next door to them a wood chipper roared for days, grinding the remnants of trees lost on that property.  The toothpick-like stumps throughout the neighborhood remind me that the area will take years to recover.

 

Genesis 2:15 reads, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.”  Work is not the consequence of sin, but what we were designed for.  My son-in-law was in training for his dream job when Covid hit with its shutdowns.  Because the job is a federal one, his training immediately shut down.  Now these many months later, training has not resumed.  My son-in-law has been very frustrated in this period of idleness forced by the pandemic.  He has had plenty to do with repairing storm damage, but he has not had a regular work schedule.  How many senior citizens have retired, only to find out they want to work.  They start a new career or they go back to the old. My officemate before I retired did not have a life outside of work.  He died within months of retiring.  We need work.

 

Genesis 2:18, “It is not good for man to be alone.  I will make a helper suitable for him.”  I am so glad I did not have to choose my children’s partners, but so blessed to see how each couple fits together, is suitable, are helpmates.

 

Genesis 3:1, “He (the serpent) said to the woman, ‘Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?’” He was trying to sow doubt and he succeeded. Genesis 3:2-3,  “And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.” Eve was honest enough to admit that God had not said they couldn’t eat of any of the trees, but she added to His command, “Neither shall you touch it.” How easy it is to first challenge the authority and then distort the commands by adding to them. Isn’t that what we do sometimes today? We add and distort what Scripture actually says, elevating our opinions to the level of God’s authority. In our world of constant cultural change, the temptation is to say, “That’s not what God really meant.  That’s just for that time, not for today.”  

 

Genesis 3:12-13, Adam said, “The woman gave me.”  Eve said, “The serpent gave me.”  How typical! It’s not my fault! One of the most important principles I tried to teach my children was that of personal responsibility for their actions.  We cannot blame others for our poor choices.

 

Genesis 3:17-19, “Because you have eaten of the tree which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you. . . . .By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.” Suddenly work became difficult, painful, thorns and thistles.  Oh, I believe there is still pleasure in work, but along with the pleasure come sweat, sore muscles, sunburn, even arthritis pain.  I love working in my flowerbeds, but I know I will pay a price, one price of the original sin.

 

In Genesis 5 is a long genealogy with long-lived men.  Adam lived 930 years.  Adam was still alive in the days of Lamech, father of Noah.  One comment I read said that gave Adam many generations to influence through his personal testimony of creation and his own fall and ouster from Eden. But in spite of Adam’s testimony, one generation later, God saw only evil continually.

 

Genesis 6:5-8, “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness had become and was grieved.”  If not that Noah found favor in the eyes off the Lord, God would have destroyed mankind, wiped him out, but “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time and he walked faithfully with God.” So God provided a way of escape from judgment.  As Noah and his family walked off the ark after the flood had subsided, God gave a rainbow as a sign of His covenant. When I was in high school I was in a trio that sang, 

            “Every time I see a rainbow shining in the sky above, 

            I remember God’s great mercy and His faithfulness and love.”

I still sing that song when I see a rainbow.

 

I have given you a taste of my random thought on the first few chapters of Genesis.  Because I have read through Genesis so many times in the sixty-eight years I have been a Christ-follower, I sometimes read these chapters automatically, even skimming through them.  I want this year to be a year of contemplation, thinking about what I read, not merely skimming. May this be a year of consistent focused feasting on the Word of God.  

 

“Your words were found, and I ate them, and Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart; For I am called by Your name, O Lord God of hosts.”  (Jeremiah 15:16)

 

                                                                        ~~Faith Himes Lamb

 

 

New Every Morning

 

I have pondered and pondered about what to write this week. I thought about making a list of suggestions for how to approach a new year. I considered inviting you to list your best ideas or some inspirational verses. But the truth is this: we have a book full of inspirational verses; we just need to read and obey it. We all have great ideas for how to make the new year the best it can be, to give ourselves motivation and incentive. (Can there really be any better incentive than that God wants us to love him and love others?)

No matter what I thought of, I kept coming back to this poem. I have probably shared it before and may do so again. It’s worth a re-read. I hope you take it to heart.

New Every Morning
Susan Coolidge

Every morn is the world made new.
You who are weary of sorrow and sinning,
Here is a beautiful hope for you,—
A hope for me and a hope for you.

All the past things are past and over;
The tasks are done and the tears are shed.
Yesterday’s errors let yesterday cover;
Yesterday’s wounds, which smarted and bled,
Are healed with the healing which night has shed.

Yesterday now is a part of forever,
Bound up in a sheaf, which God holds tight,
With glad days, and sad days, and bad days, which never
Shall visit us more with their bloom and their blight,
Their fulness of sunshine or sorrowful night.

Let them go, since we cannot re-live them,
Cannot undo and cannot atone;
God in his mercy receive, forgive them!
Only the new days are our own;
To-day is ours, and to-day alone.

Here are the skies all burnished brightly,
Here is the spent earth all re-born,
Here are the tired limbs springing lightly
To face the sun and to share with the morn
In the chrism of dew and the cool of dawn.

Every day is a fresh beginning;
Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain,
And, spite of old sorrow and older sinning,
And puzzles forecasted and possible pain,
Take heart with the day, and begin again.

Happy New Day, Friends!

--Sherry Poff

Happy New Moment!

 

Have you given up on New Year’s resolutions? I have. Long ago. History (mine) shows if I want to make a change in my life that is big enough to require a “resolution,” I’m not likely to keep it for a year, much less a lifetime. Of course, I have made some beneficial changes in my life, but not usually connected to a calendar date.

If we wanted to make a New Year’s resolution on the New Year, which New Year should we use? Our Gregorian solar calendar names January 1 as the beginning of the year. It was decreed by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 to replace the Julian calendar, which made each year too long by .0125 days per year. It took some Protestant countries 70-ish years to agree to the change, so they operated on slightly different calendars. Chinese cultures use a lunar calendar, beginning in what corresponds to January or February on our calendar. On the Maori (New Zealand) calendar, Matoriki Day may be sometime in June or July, and different people in the culture celebrate it on different days. In Iran, Nowruz is celebrated for two weeks in March and April. Many cultures, including Hindi, name their new year in March or April, as spring seems a good time for new beginnings. And the Jewish first lunar month, Nisan, “the beginning of months,” established by God as the beginning of their year, falls in the Gregorian March or April. By the way, this year is 5781.  In addition, the Jewish calendar year has three other feasts called “New Year!” Actually one, the Feast of Ingathering, is called, “the departing of the year.”  Happy Old Year?

OK, now we’re getting somewhere. In the event I couldn’t make my resolution last for an entire year, I wouldn’t feel like such a failure if another chance came up sooner. So a broader understanding of the world would give me more chances to straighten up and fly right. I’m sure if I looked hard enough I could find more New Years, therefore, more chances to improve myself.

Or we could just look in God’s Word. God, Who does not change and does not need improvement, nevertheless renews his compassion, faithfulness and justice “every new day.” Lam. 3:22,23 and Zeph. 3:5.

When King Solomon intended to build a temple for the honor of God, he pledged to make “burnt offerings every morning and evening and on the Sabbaths, at the New Moons, and at the appointed festivals of the LORD our God.”  II Chron. 2:4.

The apostle Paul, facing death daily, claimed, “though our outward man is perishing, the inward man is renewed day by day.” II Cor 4:16

Both Eph. 4:25-32 and Col 3:5-10 contain lists of behaviors Paul is urging on believers, which are to be continually practiced, not merely attempted once at the beginning of belief in Christ.

God allows and accepts our repentance and renewal every moment! We don’t need to wait five more days to turn over a new leaf. And when we fail at 12:10 am on January 1, we don’t despair and wait 365 days to try again! Yes, we fail. Even the apostle Paul, who tried really, really hard to do right, admitted continual failure. But we don’t need to continue to feel like a failure. We can go ahead with our New Moment’s resolutions any and every second of every year!

--Lynda Shenefield

Christmas--For Such a Time as This

 

A recent widow celebrating Christmas without her beloved spouse this month. A husband and father lying in an ICU hospital bed fighting for breath in hopes of staying off a ventilator while his wife battles the disease alone at home, and their grown children unable to visit either parent. An elderly lady lying on her deathbed while her children know her time will be coming soon. Families unable to spend Christmas with their loved ones due to the virus. Business owners working hard to stay afloat in the midst of a second wave of the pandemic. Christmas parties and celebrations cancelled. Traditions broken. What is there to celebrate this Christmas?

I did not have to make up the above circumstances. These people are among my friends and acquaintances. I’m sure you could add to this list. Christmas has always been hard for people at various points in their lives due to difficulty and challenges, but this year the grief and hardships seem so much more universal with the effects of this terrible virus, the record numbers in the hospital in our own city, as well as the financial and social challenges the disease has brought about. So how do we approach a Christmas that doesn’t look like the kind of Christmas we know and love with its lack of Christmas parties and concerts, trips to see Santa, fighting the crowds for last-minute shopping, and gathering with extended family for Christmas?

But what if those things are not actually necessary for a true and meaningful celebration of Christmas?  And furthermore, what if the message of Christmas actually speaks hope into the situations in which we find ourselves? What if the truth of Christmas can be a balm to the one lying in an ICU bed on Christmas Eve? What if the meaning of the holiday can bring joy to the one alone in his apartment in a nursing home?  What if the family who can’t travel to the grandparents’ house for Christmas can find unique comfort this year in remembering what Christmas is all about? Perhaps this year, we have all the more reason to celebrate. For against this dark current backdrop the beauty of what happened at Christmas can shine all the brighter. When the family gatherings, the hustle and bustle, the parties, and the special services are replaced with stories of hospital beds, separation from family, loneliness, and sickness, doesn’t it overwhelm us all the more that God Himself came down into this mess to live among us and to save us from this broken and fallen world?

It is precisely because of Christmas that we can face days such as these, filled with hope. God did not leave us on our own, stuck with the consequences of man’s fall into sin.  For God so loved the world, that He himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, came down to rescue us. That is the good news this Christmas and every Christmas. We have a Rescuer, a Savior. One who came down to save us from our biggest problem, our sin, and who will one day save us from this broken world as well. This world is nothing compared to the one that is to come. We can face its hardships, knowing that God will use them for good, and knowing that these trials do not have the final word. So, however we find ourselves celebrating Christmas this year, I pray that we would be filled with the hope that can only come from understanding that the message of Christmas does not dim when things look bleak. No, it’s perhaps in these moments that its beauty shines all the more clearly.

“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11).

Oh come, let us adore Him!

--Amy O'Rear

My Favorite Nativity

I collect nativities.  These range from the cloth stuffed one under the tree (made when my children were young so they could play with them and act out the story) to the smooth olive wood made in Israel to the vintage plastic with glitter applied liberally.  There’s a large set of pottery figures that glow with candles inside, a larger ceramic one, even an African one—straight tall figures made of dark wood.

I have many nativities I treasure, but the one that I value most is a homemade one.  My children and I made it from clothespins and scraps of fabric and paper and pipe cleaners.   When Stephen was eight or nine years old he made a crude stable to house the figures.  It is a typical nativity in that it has Mary, Joseph, the baby, shepherds, wise men, an angel choir. The children contributed animals from the toy chest to finish the tableau.  The best part is that each of the children made a figure of themselves standing in front of the stable.  (The fact that they made their own figures explains why Sarah suddenly became a blond and also why she carries a small pipe cleaner doll.) Every year this nativity holds the place of prominence in the center of the buffet directly in front of the door.

This year as I placed the nativity a new thought grabbed me.  Each of us is standing at the nativity scene in the same way the children’s figures are and for the same reason we are all figuratively standing at the foot of the cross.  You see, the reason He came was to deal with our sin.  He was born because God loved us enough to deal with that sin.  He was born to die.

In Matthew 1:21 and 22, the Lord spoke to Joseph and told him not to be afraid, but to take Mary as his wife for “She shall bring forth a son, and you shall call His name Jesus: for He shall save His people from their sin.”  Jesus was born to die, born to be crucified for our sins.  Christmas does not make sense without the crucifixion and ultimately, the resurrection, for without the resurrection, the crucifixion would have been in vain.

This theme is repeated again in Luke 2:10.  Speaking to the shepherds, the angel said, “For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”  That first public announcement said He would be a Savior.  We would need a Savior.

Other confirmation:

Luke 19:10, For the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.

John 3:17, For God sent not His son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

I Timothy 1:15, This is a faithful saying, and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

I Peter 2:24, He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.  By His wounds you have been healed.

Christmas is incomplete if we focus simply on the manger.  Jesus was born to die.

As we hear and sing the carols this year, as we view the blow up nativities and the light nativities and the plywood nativities and every variety in between, may we remember this thought.  Jesus was born to die.

My grandfather, Dr. John R. Rice, wrote a song years ago called Jesus, Baby Jesus.  The chorus says,

Jesus, Baby Jesus, there’s a cross along the way.

Born to die for sinners, born for crucifixion day.

The fourth verse continues, 

Jesus, Baby Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man,

Tempted, poor and suffering, no one knows us as He can!

Holy, righteous, blameless, fitting sacrifice complete.

Jesus, Baby Jesus, There’s a cross along the way.

Born to die for sinners, born for crucifixion day!

~~Faith Himes Lamb

Proclaim the Glory

 

https://youtu.be/BDYk2ZhJ-30

I’ve been thinking about this song lately. Who knows why or how certain songs get stuck in our brains, but this one has been a blessing. I found myself humming it between classes at school, bursting out in bits and pieces of song as I ran errands and drove home. So I found it on youtube and listened to the whole thing. It has excellent words—and that boy can sing!

There are several versions on line, but the one I have linked you to shows pictures of natural beauty. Certainly God’s creative genius is a sufficient reason to proclaim his glory; the magnificent colors of sunset, the stunning variety of birds, and the soothing beauty of flowers are only some of the details of creation that show God’s glory.

This month, though, I’m focused on the astonishing fact of Jesus’s coming to earth. As I drive down the road, it seems to me that every light strung in the trees or tacked up on someone’s front porch is a mute proclaimer of God’s glory. Even those folks who do not know our Savior are inadvertently proclaiming his goodness in sending Jesus to show us the way to the Father.

I think of the shepherds in the field who were overwhelmed with light and music on the night of Jesus’s birth. After they visited the baby, they could not keep the news to themselves! We should be the same way.

Psalm 34:3 says, “O, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together.” Psalm 107:2 admonishes, “Let the redeemed of the LORD tell their story,” and Jesus himself directed us to “let [our] light shine before men” so that they will “glorify [our] Father” (Matthew 5:16). As we have opportunity this season, let’s say a word of God’s greatness and give testimony to his power in our own lives.

Now let’s hear that song one more time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDYk2ZhJ-30

--Sherry Poff