Announcements
Trunk
or Treat--
Saturday, October 26 from 2-4! Join us for this celebration! Bring
your car and decorate your trunk to give away candy. If you'd like
to donate candy to be given away, please speak with Lynne Brock or
Judy Smith. Also, they're looking for donations of Little Debbie
items for a cake walk.
Potluck!--
This Sunday!
New
Hope Worship--
We're blessed
to have Rev. Don Kaller leading us in worship this Sunday! Please be
in prayer for Don as he prepares to lead worship.
Community
Kitchen Spot
There
are a lot of hungry and homeless children of God and the community
needs some help feeding them. If you would like to help out, please
bring the following items to church this Sunday & put them on the
bookshelf.
#10
Cans of Sweet Potato / Yams
#10
Cans of Italian Style Green Beans
No-Bake
Pumpkin / Apple Pies
No-Heat
Dinner Rolls
Plastic
Forks, Knives, Spoons
Dinner
Napkins
Heavy
Duty Sectional Dinner Plates
Dessert
Plates
3
Oz. Souffle Cups
New
Hope News
Sunday
School—This Sunday, we'll continue our study the 6th
chapter of Matthew, which is the beginning of the Sermon on the
Mount.
Wednesday
Bible Study--
We start our Bible study at 6:30 and will be exploring the kings of
Israel.
Pray
For:
Folks
in your city that just don't have enough. Not enough time, not
enough money, not enough support, not enough hope. It's easy to sit
and judge them and offer advice about how they could gain more. It's
much harder to love them and pray for them and help them.
Links
Keith's
Random Thoughts
(This
got wordy. I'm not apologizing--just preparing you. If you're
looking for some concise & wise thoughts... well, then “Keith's
Random Thoughts” probably isn't the place for you!)
It's really tempting to
run and hide.
Just this morning,
someone got shot in bank robbery here in Chattanooga. A teacher has
been found murdered in Massachusetts. I'm sure the headline violence
in Syria, Afghanistan, & Iraq continues. Thousands of other
events, small but meaningful brutalities, continue around the globe.
Many won't even make the evening news, but they persist, trees
falling in the forest of noise that ought to shock us, shake us, but
instead leave us numb. We turn off the news, fade from the
headlines, and the crazy world spins on.
It's so tempting to run
and hide.
I'm off for Haiti
tomorrow, a place that doesn't seem to know what life without chaos
is like. I could list the reasons for suffering, but I doubt they
can be counted. They are probably best measured by the sadness in
the eyes of those who have witnessed corruption, disaster, disease
and strife.
I'll be honest and admit
that a large part of me doesn't want to go. I want to stay home with
my wife and children, to hear the cackling laughter of my son and
watch my daughter's widening eyes. I want to lock the door and leave
the chaos at bay and pretend that all is well in the world. It's
tempting.
I believe that God is
renewing the world, and that there will be final redemption, when all
the sin and sorrow will be washed clean from the earth. All residue
of its existence will vanish, just as we forget about our rubbish the
moment the garbage truck disappears down the street. It will simply
be gone.
But I also believe that
evil will fight on until the very last, thrashing about like the
dying beast that it is, whipping its threatened tail and entwining
countless lives in its wake. Those going about the business of life
will suddenly find the chaos of evil descending unexpectedly upon
them, and then there will be darkness.
I believe that God still
speaks into the darkness, into the chaos, into the violence: Let
there be light.
Our ultimate hope is in
Christ, the light of the world. His light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness cannot overwhelm it. For those caught up in
darkness, Christ's light will continue to shine. Because of the
resurrection, we can peel back the shroud of death and see that light
shines even there. Where violence attempts to speak with finality,
it finds its false truth repudiated by a greater Truth. What evil
tries to crush, Christ resurrects.
We must remember this.
If we forget this, we will surely despair in the face of all the evil
in the world. If our fingers slip from our grip on the solid
foundation of Christ's Easter hope, how can we face a world in
desperate need of hope that is greater than its problems? No victor
humanity can raise up is stronger than the forces of evil that
bombard our every facet of life.
We must also live into
this. We cannot retreat and withdraw into our fortresses, boarding
up the doors and windows and hoping that evil will stay far from us.
I will not pretend that I am striding boldly into the world to engage
with all that is being thrown at us. We are all so very tempted to
run and hide. But we must find ways to live into our hope. We must
stand tall and proclaim that the chaos will not consume us, that the
maelstrom will not win. We all need hope, and those of us who
believe that our hope will win need to be a beacon for those who are
searching for hope in the midst of the chaos.
I don't even know where
to begin. I don't think we need to figure out how to fix it all at
once, because that problem is more daunting than my feeble
imagination can handle. Perhaps our next step is with the next
person we meet, the next troubled student we come across or the next
anxious soul that crosses our path. Maybe these tiny acts of
selflessness that seek to shatter what isolates us will begin to
spiderweb across our neighborhoods and towns and states and country,
and maybe as we begin to build meaningful relationships that address
the deepest hurts within our lives we'll begin to recognize the ways
the light of hope is shining for us today. While I believe there is
much that God is doing in Haiti and I'm anxious to see it, I don't
think we all need to pick up and go to Haiti. God is at work here
and now, and somehow we need the Holy Spirit strength to fight back
against that temptation to run and hide. I'm no expert at this. I
love pretending that I am safe. I like the thought of being safe.
We all do. To a certain extent, we need this.
But we also need to
recognize that in our baptisms, we have already died in Christ, and
since he has been raised we, too, have been raised.
Our resurrection has already taken place—death has been defeated.
In Christ, the future is secure.
If we believe that is
true, then the chaos and violence ought not to make us afraid. If we
believe that we are alive forever, and if we believe that nothing
(not even death!) can separate us from the love of God, then we are
free from fear, right? Because whatever happens to us, we know the
answer of God in Christ is 'Yes'.
In my head I know this
to be true. I pray for the courage to let my heart believe it, to
fall into the promises of God, and to be transformed by such a fact.
I don't know what the future holds, and I'm often scared by the
thought of what might happen. I pray for God's wisdom to change my
mind and my heart, that I might trust in what has already happened,
and know that the certainty of resurrection in the future might allay
my fears and allow me to use my time faithfully, that I might be
changed by the living hope in Jesus Christ.
Text
for this Sunday
John
4:43-54
(ESV)
43
After the two days he departed for Galilee. 44 (For Jesus himself had
testified that a prophet has no honor in his own hometown.) 45 So
when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all
that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast. For they too had gone to
the feast.
46
So he came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water
wine. And at Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill. 47
When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he
went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was
at the point of death. 48 So Jesus said to him, “Unless you see
signs and wonders you will not believe.” 49 The official said to
him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” 50 Jesus said to him,
“Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus
spoke to him and went on his way.
51 As he was going down, his
servants met him and told him that his son was recovering. 52 So he
asked them the hour when he began to get better, and they said to
him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.” 53 The
father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son
will live.” And he himself believed, and all his household. 54 This
was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to
Galilee.
New
Hope on iTunes
Keith's
Blog
& Devotionals
for your Kindle
No comments:
Post a Comment