Be Alert!

Alert! A state of watchfulness, of wakefulness. A state of being aware of one’s surroundings. A state of paying attention.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. The theme for this week of advent is Be Alert! We think about the coming of Christ, not just in the manger, but returning for us.

Are we ready for it? Were the shepherds ready? The magi? Mary and Joseph? Is anyone every REALLY ready for the Divine to walk into their life? How does one get ready for Jesus? Do we pray more? Become more regular in our church attendance? Read through the Bible in a year? Everything I can think of seems so inadequate. It’s sort of like preparing your little studio apartment for the President’s state dinner.

But, you know? It doesn’t say that we should be prepared, does it? It says we are to be alert, to be in a constant state of trying to GET prepared. You don’t always have to know the destination to pack your suitcase.

Think how many people missed the birth of Christ entirely! The innkeeper. The census takers. The other people in the inn who only knew that a poor woman had to have her child in a stable because everyone in the inn was too rude to give up their room for even one night to someone in such need. Think what they missed.

Think what people will miss if they fail to be alert the next time around! The people who heard about the birth of Jesus had other opportunities to welcome Him into their hearts. They heard him from the mount, they heard Him from the boat of Peter, and they saw His actions in the temple.

We hear the Gospel of Christ each Sunday. How do we respond? Do we go forth rejoicing and praising God as the shepherds did? Or do we respond as the philosophers did to Paul. “We wish to talk to you again about this matter.” In other words, when do we quit talking and start doing? We love to hear the Christmas story, but are we ready for it to be happen in our own lives? It’s one thing to think how nice and cute it is to have God born in the manger. It is something entirely different to have the Savior of the universe born again in our own hearts. Be Alert! Christ is coming!

Pastor Craig

Christ the King!

The Pastor’s Page

Today is the last day of the year, the liturgical year that is. It is Christ the King Sunday. We start anew next week as we begin the anxious wait for the coming of Jesus Christ. We relive the wait of the people of Israel, and we meditate on our own wait for Christ to come again.

However, it is on this Sunday we are reminded, once again, that Jesus Christ is Lord of all; that all things have been put under His feet, that everything, even death itself, is subject to His will.

You see, Christ isn’t King of all only when he sits on His heavenly throne, banishing all injustice, hatred, sickness, and heartache. No, Christ is King when the prayers for healing don’t result in healing. Christ is King even when the poor are still poor. Christ is King when the oppressed are still oppressed. Christ is King when the bill collector calls again, or when the power company sends the disconnect notice. Christ is King of the hospital and the nursing home.

Christ is King in the face of the Ft. Hood tragedy, and Christ was King on Friday, November 13^th, when one child of the King, L Cpl Shawn Hefner (USMC), stepped on an IED in Afghanistan just two weeks before he was scheduled to come home for the holidays. In fact, Christ is King for L Cpl Hefner in a more real way now than ever before.

It is SO easy to shout ALLELUIA when all is going well, when the unexpected financial gift helps us beat back poverty for another day, when a friend comes alongside us and banishes loneliness, or when we benefit in any unexpected way.

The challenge for most of us is to continue to give God the glory when we would really like to give Him anything but glory. We can get very angry with God. We, at least sometimes, think we deserve better than what Christ seems to dish out to us. Yet, a follower doesn’t just follow only when the road is straight and level, when the temperature is just right, when the wind is at our back. Disciples seek to follow Christ with every step of every journey. It has never been easy, and it won’t be for those families who sit down with an empty chair at the table this Thanksgiving. Hopefully, they can take comfort that their loved one sits at the Thanksgiving table of our Lord for a feast like has never been offered before.

L Cpl Hefner ended his journey home on Friday, November 20, 2009, when he was laid to rest in Hico, Texas.

Pastor Craig

Touch

The Pastor’s Page

Touch. It is something so simple and so necessary. This past week I had someone call the church office and suggest that the session visit our sick and ailing to perform the laying on of hands for each of them.

We believe in a God who has the power to call all that is out of nothing. Jesus spoke against the fig tree and it withered. Jesus commanded the lame man to get up and walk and he got up and walked. Jesus told the demons to leave the demon-possessed and enter the pigs and they did. The Canaanite woman begged for Jesus to heal her daughter and he replied, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.”

However, Jesus chose the primary method of healing to be touch. There is something about touch that transmits tremendous curative powers, powers of physical and emotional healing, powers that remind us that we are part of a family, that we have a bond with one another that is stronger than mere words.

Touching eases pain, lessens anxiety, softens the blows of life, generates hope and has the power to heal, according to most experts. In fact, modern psychology and medicine are confirming what mothers across the centuries have intuitively known--namely, the healing power of touch.[1]

Now, I don’t mean to minimize the divine touch of Jesus Christ in any way. If anything, I mean to personalize it, saying, Jesus could have spoken the word and healed anyone he wished, but much of the time he chose to incorporate touch because that was a part of the way the Triune God had created us. Jesus knew the power of touch.

Touching reminds us of relationship. It confirms that we are brothers and sisters in Christ. It claims the other person as one of the family and conveys that message to them. “You are one of us. We love you.”

With all of this in mind, we are in the process of forming a team of elders to go to our sick, our shut-ins, our spiritually weary, to anyone who will have us and. . . .touch them, reminding them that they are indeed a part of the body of Christ. We claim them. We love them. And, just maybe, through our touch, God will heal them

Pastor Craig

---

[1] http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0675/is_n6_v9/ai_11489808/

Tranquility

Tranquility

It really was a beautiful day. The sun was out. The temperatures were great. The rain that seemed to have lasted all through October was finally gone. It was the kind of day to go fishing or sit on your porch in your rocking chair. Get a glass of tea and listen to the birds for a few more times before they disappear for the winter to wherever it is they go from north Texas. It was Thursday, November 5, 2009.

However, shortly after lunch the beautiful day stopped. It had turned ugly. It seemed as though the birds had stopped singing and the sun had gone away for a great long time. Something worse than rain had come. Evil had entered the day. Evil in the form of one very confused and lost person at Ft. Hood Army base in Texas. Tranquility was snatched away from so many in an instant.

What do you do to get that back? Is it possible? Are there words you can say to a spouse, to the children? How will you tell the parents who were so proud and yet so fearful for their child’s safety in a war zone that their child had been killed before they ever got there?

In our hectic society, tranquil days are so hard to come by anyway. How do you go about getting one back when it is yanked away so violently? We are indeed reminded that each breath is a gift from the Creator, each kiss from our loved one a priceless blessing beyond measure. Life is truly fleeting, but you already knew that, didn’t you?

We just want to claw our way back to the moment we had right before we knew, once again, that the world has evil in it.

Jesus told us he would indeed send a Comforter. Lord, we need that Comforter right now. Jesus promised us peace, but denied us the kind of peace that we so often look for in our world. He offers a strength through, but not a way around. We are called to walk through the pain. We are reminded that there is no bridge over the Valley of the Shadow of Death. No, we are called, so many times, to walk straight into it. Why would we ever enter such a place? We must continue the search for a way over, or around, or . . .

We go through the Valley of the Shadow because that is where Christ will meet us. “For thou art with me, thy rod and staff (the symbols of protection and guidance) comfort me.” Surely, if God is with me here, I will enjoy His presence all the days of my life and enter his house forever, one day.

Pastor Craig