Category: Newsletter

We only told a handful of people about this when we were going through it. It was my wife’s call, and she didn’t want to tell everybody unless there was something to tell. So we told our kids, and a handful of others, and asked them to pray with us about it. And let me say up front that the news was good. But after the fact, I’d like to tell you about the best Christmas gift I ever received. And it was on December 17th, eight days before Christmas.

We didn’t get to celebrate Easter at church the way we wanted, because of the coronavirus pandemic. We probably won’t get to celebrate Christmas at church the way we would like to, either. But we still celebrated Easter, and we’ll celebrate Christmas, too. Those two holidays mark the “bookends” of the Christian faith. Christmas celebrates the Incarnation, when God became a man in the form of Jesus of Nazareth. And Easter celebrates Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, after He paid for our sins by dying on the cross (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). Christmas is the beginning of the Easter story, and Easter completes the story begun at Christmas.

The word Christmas means literally “the Christ mass”.  It is the service at Christmastime in which liturgical churches celebrate The Eucharist, or what we call The Lord’s Supper. The word mass comes from the Latin word missa, which means “dismissal”. At the end of the service the priest would say “Ite, missa est” (or, “Go; it is the dismissal”). In time, that word came to mean the entire church service.

There is a reason we have Deacons and other boards and committees. Proverbs 24:6 says “…for by wise guidance you can wage your war, and in abundance of counselors there is victory.” A good idea can be made better by the input and perspective of others.  And what seems to be a good idea at first can be revealed to have some serious flaws when it is discussed and prayed over with others.

Back on June 28^th of this year I said something in my Sunday morning message that seemed like a good idea at the time. Actually, it seemed like a great idea. It also was a good illustration for the passage I was preaching on, Luke 8:20-26, where Jesus said, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. And blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.” We looked at the reality that being poor or hungry isn’t necessarily a guarantee of sainthood. Poor people can be mean old sinners, too, and the hunger Jesus was talking about was a spiritual hunger for righteousness. Nevertheless, people are poor, and hunger is an ongoing problem, even here in America. It’s hard to talk to people about Jesus when their stomachs are empty.

I’ve always had trouble going to sleep. It seems like it takes me forever.  I couldn’t begin to count the times I’ve looked at the clock at 2:00, 3:00, or even 4:00 in the morning. Even as a small child I can remember lying awake at night while all the rest of my family was asleep, crying because I couldn’t sleep.

I think I come by it honestly. My grandfather could sit or lie down and go to sleep whenever he wanted. But my grandmother had difficulty going to sleep and staying asleep. As a teenager, I’d stay all night at their house and stay up to watch the late show. Grandma would get up about every hour or hour and a half, for one reason or another. She called it “prowling”. She had various explanations: “I can’t sleep.” “I’ve got to go to the bathroom.” Or my favorite: “My stomach’s upset. I need to drink some buttermilk.” (I never understood that one. Frankly, drinking buttermilk doesn’t settle my stomach.)

On a recent Tuesday morning I drove to the church and walked in, ready to begin the week’s tasks. Ordinarily, after checking in with the secretary to see if anything needs my attention, I go right to my desk, unload my briefcase and open my Bible.

On this particular day, though, I stopped to talk with our cashiers. Then I talked with some ladies who had come in to finish painting one of our hallways. Then one of my colleagues in the ministry stopped by, and we talked for a while. After that conversation, I had a message to call someone; when I returned the call, I had a happy talk with the folks on the other end. In fact, all of these conversations were happy ones that left me feeling charged up and encouraged. (You can’t say that about every conversation.)

As I prepared to leave for lunch, I told our secretary, “It’s been a good morning, but it hasn’t gone anything like what I’d expected. I’m gonna go eat lunch, then come back and take another crack at it.” (She was glad to hear me say that, because I was supposed to have been writing an article for her to put in the next newsletter…this article, in fact. Never antagonize a church secretary who needs an article.)

I love Halley’s Bible Handbook. Not the new, updated one. The one you want is the old blue version of Halley’s Bible Handbook. Some of the archeological information in it is a little out of date, but the rest of it is great. The new version in the white cover has more up-to-date archeological articles, but it has edited out nearly all of the charm of Henry Hampton Halley’s original. Halley started self-publishing his Handbook in 1924 as a 17-page pamphlet, and he kept adding to it up until he died in 1965. Zondervan Publishing House acquired the rights in 1960. By then it had sold over five million copies.

I’d seen the little blue Bible handbook on bookstore shelves for years before I ever bought one. It just seemed so humble and unassuming, sitting there next to weightier tomes of Biblical knowledge.

There doesn’t seem to be much to celebrate in America right now, does there? Our country is a mess. My grandfather once told me politics was a dirty business. I thought he was just being cynical. But I don’t think so anymore.

I know I’m supposed to write these articles to help you understand spiritual things better. Instead, this time I’m going to tell you some things I just don’t understand.

I don’t understand why some politicians will say the most outrageous things just to score points with potential voters. I don’t understand how politicians can reverse themselves and say something with a straight face that is diametrically opposite of something they’d said before.

There’s an old curse which says “May you live in interesting times.” It sounds fairly innocuous, but on reflection you can see the meaning: uninteresting times are times of peace and tranquility; interesting times are times of upheaval and unrest. We are certainly living in interesting times! Historic, in fact.

I wanted to take a few moments to elaborate on something I spoke about from the pulpit last Sunday. I’d like you to know the process the Deacons and I went through in deciding about reopening the church for services on Sunday mornings. It was not a snap decision.