We hear a lot today about refugees, people fleeing from one troubled area, often to find themselves in as much or even more trouble.  The family leaving a war zone finding themselves in a camp where survival is still a fight.  The person leaving their home because there is no way to earn enough just to feed their family, only to find there is no opportunity to run to.   How difficult it must be to live longing for a past that won’t return and looking to a future that is still more hope than reality.   You find yourself at odds with the culture you are living in, not really understanding it and not fitting in.  You know you want something better, but you really can’t say exactly how that will look.  You feel out of place.  Well if you believe Peter that is how we are to feel.
In I Peter, Peter describes us as aliens, refugees, here.  Now on one hand we may reply, “Wait, this is my home, these are my people.”  But the values that we grew up with and people we live with may not always share the ideals and principles of Christ.  We don’t see in scripture a view that says my rights are more important than yours.  We see that we are to love others as ourselves, where compassion and grace are bigger motivators of behavior than being right.  Jesus lived a life of meekness and service more than a life of pride and selfishness.
The answer for this is also found in I Peter, to not be drawn into the ideas of society that will perish with that society.  We are to put aside our culture and to put on Christ.  We are to desire, like newborn babies desire milk, the Word, and then grow into our salvation.  We are to live to the standards of the person of Christ in our lives.  Now one problem with that, like for the refugee, is that I may not know exactly what that new culture will be like.  As Christians we need to be in the Word of God, honestly reflecting and praying about who we are to become.  Going back to Charles Sheldon’s book, “In His Steps”, we need to ask ourselves this question, “What would Jesus do?”  That may seem simplistic, and lately has become a punch line in jokes (such as what would Chuck Norris do).  But when you think about it, it is a great way to think about how we should live and act in our culture.
As we studied in the book of Revelation ultimately our choices become clearer and clearer, evil is evil and righteousness is righteousness.  We don’t have to be perfect, because we can’t be.  We live by the grace of God, but we are also called to live the grace of God to others, even as we journey through this life.
Don
 

An eclipse is an amazing event.  The ancient societies would mark it with ceremonies and wonder.  Across America for a few hours people came together not in anger or protest but to witness together an event that still amazes us today.  Any event these days that can do that is truly a miracle.  Few events can eclipse an eclipse.  An event in the first century though eclipsed all of this.  The life, death and resurrection of Christ is the greatest event of all.  Across time and societies Christians have gathered to celebrate this amazing event.  Books have been written, songs sung and countless sermons spoken to remember and praise this event.
 
Another important reaction to this event, just like with the eclipse, is that it brought people from different cultures, economic situations, and beliefs together.  The church was the common ground that people could stand together on.  They came together in love for Christ and that love for him then brought them together with each other.  A great tragedy is that too often over the centuries the name of Christ has been associated more with hate and tearing down people than with love.  We see the effects of this on the church in America.  We are splintered and our voice is no longer respected and listened to as it was.
 
So what are we to do?  How can we bring back the wonder of the cross, to find in it something that causes us to drop petty differences and stand together in awe of him?  Once again we need to allow our love for Christ to eclipse everything else.  We need to come together around the cross with a Savior who loved each one of us enough to die for us.  I may not agree with every belief another Christian has, but if I can come together with them as one who has surrendered to our Lord, we have reason to stand together and let the world know.    And maybe if that is more important to us than picking each other apart America may once again be in awe of Christ as we are of a total eclipse.
 
Don
 

Well, you may be saying it or certainly hearing it about now – we are in the “dog days of summer.”  But what is meant by that phrase?  Some think that the name comes from the fact that our poor pooches get pretty lethargic during the hottest days of summer and tend to lay around more.  I’m with the dogs on this one, planning some down time with the A/C and a cool drink sounds pretty good.  But in reality the term refers to the fact that the sun is hanging out in the same area of the sky as Sirius, the Dog Star, a part of the Canis Major Constellation.  It was even thought at one time that the closeness of Sirius to the sun increased the heat from the sun.
Now we know that Sirius doesn’t add or take away from the sun’s heat but that during the dog days of summer our angle with the sun allows for a lot more radiant heating.  And yes, more heat which leads to wanting to just lie around like a dog.  It’s not always a bad idea to slow down and relax, and during these days we can blame it on the Dog Star.  But one area we need to not slack off in is in doing good.  Paul urges us in Galatians 6:9, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”  There are always opportunities around us to share God’s love.  One that Jesus mentioned was to give a cup of cool water in his name.  That one sounds tailored made for these hot summer days.  It really doesn’t take much effort to do good, we just need to see the open doors and be willing to walk through them.
Take time this week to pray that God will show you an open door of opportunity to do some good, even in these dog days.  You may be surprised by the cooling breeze of blessings that God will send your way for stepping out in faith with him.

Don
 

    Ever have that feeling, you are doing as much as you can and no matter what, it seems that you are losing steam in the steam engine race of life.  I find that I think I have months ( or at least weeks) to get ready for something and in reality it is only days away.  That’s why this time of year is so special.  I always think in December, “Well at least things will slow down after Christmas.”  I’ve learned that usually means sometime in late July, right before school kicks off again.  This year we moved VBS up a month, and the last few weeks have been a whirlwind from getting ready for VBS, putting it on, and pulling off the Brisket Fundraiser.  Again a big thanks to so many who helped with both (some of you were practically living at the church).  But now that it is over there’s a big sigh and actually some down time.

    For some of you that down time will be vacation, maybe catching up with family.  May God bless your time together.  For others it may be getting ready to send a kid off to college, or knock out a few projects around the house and yard.  For several of our folks it is time to heal and recover.  A prayer-shout- out for Bob Browning, Scotty and Becca Baker, Richard Almond, Jill Cocklin and oh yes the preacher.  July 11th I’m to have a new left hip.  Truly not a scary procedure, but one that will require some down time (so pray for Jacqueline, I’m not the best patient).
   God knows better than we do, and some of us are slow learners.  For Father’s Day my children gave me a ukulele, something for dad to do while sitting around, pretty thoughtful of them actually.  I hope do to some reading and probably planning for the fall.  Really there’s never enough time for everything which brings me back to the original point, you can never really get it all done.  So determine what is really important and focus on that.  You may find a lot unimportant things were cluttering up your calendar and that once you focus on the really importance stuff, you have the time to take care of it.

Don
 

On June 18th we will celebrate Father’s Day.  If you read over the history of Father’s Day it is a history of starts and stops and false starts.  There is a long history from the Catholic church of Father’s Day in March.  Here in America it took a while for the day to catch on across the nation.  There were several local observances, mostly inspired by Anna Jarvis’ establishment of Mother’s Day.   For us dads this probably comes as no surprise.   A star running back whom dad has played with, driven to practices, even signed up to help coach the team, scores a touchdown looks to the camera and says ,“Thanks mom.”
 
Yet for dads that doesn’t slow us down.  We get up every day to go to work to provide for that child.  We hope and dream for that child.  And in the end we hope to raise sons who will become better fathers then we thought we were, or raise daughters who will marry men who will become great dads for our grandchildren.  You have to have a certain amount of perseverance to be a dad (a mom too for that matter).  Our heavenly Father has that kind of perseverance for us.  Though God’s will is unstoppable his will in each of our lives is often a stop and start affair.  We get excited for our Father and we feel so close, then something happens and our adoration grows cold and we back pedal from Him.  Where is God in all this, right where he has always been, working for us.
 
Celebrating Father’s Day is a celebration of steadfastness, of strength to make it through whatever life has to offer.  There is a reason that we refer to God as Father, He is the ultimate believer in us with steadfast love.
 
Don
 

 
                                                       April showers bring May flowers, 
                                                                  That is what they say. 
                                              But if all the showers turned to flowers, 
                                                        We’d have quite a colorful day!
 
We all grew up hearing that saying, and literally it is true.  The showers come along in spring and then from those rainy days come the beautiful flowers.  We see the same principles in Christianity.   James tells us to count it all joy when we face various rainy days (trials) because they bring May flowers or flowers of maturity.  The writer of Hebrews tells us that as we face discipline we should see that as God treating us as loved children, in other words, it’s a good thing that God cares enough to discipline us.  Most of the great characters of the Bible had their moments of showers.  Moses fled after killing an Egyptian, Abraham passed his wife off as his sister to Pharaoh and David was caught red handed (and red faced) in his sin with Bathsheba.  The disciples were crushed by Christ’s crucifixion.
 
Yet through these times of difficulty faith was perfected, endurance created and a testimony was born to the glory of God.  What kind of flowers is God preparing the soil of your life for?  What will the April showers bring to bloom in the May of your life?
 

    We celebrate holidays for many reasons, and often the initial reason is one that has been lost to time and memory.  More and more these days are about celebrating, eating, buying and getting stuff.  Easter has a long history of mixing the sacred with the secular.  When we look into the history of Easter we have to admit that the story of Christ’s resurrection has been forced to share space with many cultic practices of the rites of spring.  Often this mingling was a well-intended attempt to make Christian theology more palatable to non-Christian cultures, THE GOSPEL HOLIDAY giving them a bridge from one faith to another.

    These days it seems to many of us “old-timers” that the flow is headed in the other direction.  We are taking a Christian holiday and making it more palatable to non-Christians in a way that they get to celebrate without understanding any of the theology.  Yet this holiday may truly be called the “Gospel Holiday” for in understanding what it is we celebrate we have the gospel message to share.  Christian Easter is not based on simply celebrating the return of nature to life again after a long winter’s nap.  The return we believe in is from a much deeper slumber.  We are called to wake from our sin, from the death that comes as a consequence of our actions.  The only way to bring spring, new life, into our hearts is through faith in the message of Easter.
   
    The movie, The Passion of Christ, tells well the first part of the story, the suffering of Christ on our behalf.  But it is in the second part of the story that we have our good news, our gospel.  The climax of the story is on Easter morning when Christ rose from the grave, giving evidence to the message of new life.  The gospel message is that though we are sinners we find forgiveness in the death of Christ for us, but we find new life in the resurrection of Christ from death.  Easter is the time we can share with those around us why we celebrate this holiday.  We don’t celebrate a chance for families to gather and hunt Easter eggs.  We don’t pay honor to Easter bunnies announcing spring has sprung again.  The purpose of Easter is to proclaim, “He is risen, he is risen indeed!”
Don
 

     What does it mean to age with grace?  For some it is to accept what comes with getting older, as the preschooler accepts they now have to attend school five days a week as they get older, or for the senior that moving isn’t pain free anymore.  Some find that with age comes some perks, senior coffee at McDonald’s or learning important life lessons.  As Christians aging with grace is to learn more and more that we aren’t living this life on our own.  We must rely on God every step of the way.  In adolescence we need to learn that our identity comes not from our attributes, but  as we find our identity in Christ.  In young adulthood as we establish relationships and careers we must rely on God to give us our worth not the world around us.  As we age it seems once we solve one set of problems another set comes right behind each with its own challenges.  But in Christ we have the grace to face each challenge, each new set of problems.

   There is never a time in life when we are either too young for God’s grace or too old for God’s grace.  When Paul prayed for relief from his thorn in the flesh God’s answer was “my grace is sufficient for you.”  Paul felt this was a game changer, how much more he could do for God, if God would just take this thorn away.  But God wanted Paul to understand that it wasn’t Paul’s thorn that held him back or the absence of it that would make him do great things.  It was God and his grace, but Paul needed to learn to trust God and his grace.   That’s a lesson that often takes aging to understand.  I think Bro. Dodson is someone who can convey that message and help us to grow and understand; after all he’s in the same boat with us.  So plan now to join us March 26 -28 for Aging With Grace.
Don
 

We’ve all seen the phrase “In God We Trust” on our currency, but what do we really mean by it?  It is ironic that while our money says we trust in God, many people actually put their trust in money.  When in need, when confused, when hurting where do we turn?  It is easy to say we trust in God, especially when everything is going well.  The real evidence of where our trust and faith is, is in where we turn when life goes south on us.
If you were faced with a bill to pay what would be the first impulse you would have?  Most of us would run to our checkbook to see how much money we had there.  But what happens when you realize your balance won’t stretch that far?  Do you call your parents, your banker, or do you take a moment to say a prayer?  When faced with a relationship problem do we look for a self-help book, talk to our best friend, or do we find ourselves looking at scriptures for answers?  That tells us where our faith truly is.
So to say we are trusting in God means that we choose first to acknowledge that God is in control and we are trusting in our relationship with him before anything else.  That doesn’t mean we don’t check the bank balance or have a good heart to heart with a close friend, but we have a foundation to stand on.  Yes it’s still scary and yes I need to make plans, but know that there will be an answer.  Knowing and trusting that is our testimony.  Better than putting “In God We Trust” on our money is to put it in our hearts.
Don
 

 Well, 2017 is officially here.  I’m officially 60 years old now and last time I checked the world was still spinning.  I remember thinking that the sci-fi movie “2001, A Space Odyssey” painted a fantastic picture of the future and of course we weren’t anywhere near that when the actual year came along.  This past year we hit the date in October made famous by the “Back to the Future” films.  We actually had made some progress on a few of those items, but still no real hover boards.  I’m not sure if back in the seventies I could have guessed any better than the writers of that time what 2017 would be like, but probably not.  We mark arbitrary dates on the calendar, we offer up hopes and dreams of what life will be like, only to have a very different reality.

We may mark dates on our calendars, we may make elaborate plans for next March, but we didn’t make the calendar, or the time that is marked on our calendars.  God is the creator and part of his creation is time.  We can talk about having time on our hands, but God holds time in his hands.  So while we guess about what tomorrow will bring God has it in control.  You notice no one ever puts on their calendar I’ll be diagnosed with cancer July 8th or my family will be involved in a car wreck May 20th.  We don’t plan for those things or even imagine them.  But I’m certain that 2017 will hold many good things but there will also be some difficult times as well.  I am also certain that God is not guessing about tomorrow and knows full well what I will need.  I just need to trust him.

So go ahead and fill out your calendar and make your plans, but remember who really is in charge and trust His plans.

Don