VBS for this year:
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SUNDAY MORNING from the pastor October 6, 2002 The new day is still blanketed in darkness, a few moments after 6 a.m. But soon the earth will revolve itself so that it will be OUR turn to be enlightened. And we anticipate beholding another day of autumn splendor. Meanwhile, my thoughts are distracted toward the indoors. It is 60 degrees in the house this morning, and I reluctantly turned on the furnace for the first time this fall. Those times between the air conditioner and the furnace are pleasing to me. But it was a span of time that was measured this year in hours rather than days. Tomorrow morning I’ll be heading out to Arizona for a week’s vacation. I don’t believe I’ve ever taken vacation time in October before. But once the kids leave home and go to college, life takes on a different rhythm. In fact, it often feels like it goes into an arrhythmia, this empty nest phenomenon. It seems as though the rhythm’s the thing--whether one goes to living WITH someone, or whether one goes to living alone--the rhythm of life changes dramatically. The new cadence is both welcomed and insufferable. But if we can learn to sleep through the night, not fall into an eating disorder, and not confuse the people around us TOO much, those transitions offer gifts we need--whether welcomed by us at first or not. Eric Hayes will be preaching next Sunday. Eric and Melissa have been active in our church for a year now. He is a student at UI and plans to head to Garrett Evangelical Seminary next year. It is time for Eric to preach to us. I was talking to him last night and asked him if he had his sermon ready yet. He laughed and reported his first ‘preacher’ nightmare the night before. That nightmare comes in various forms. In his case, he dreamed he stood up in front of the congregation and had forgotten his sermon and had no alternative but to run out of the room. I assured him that he would have some form of that nightmare the rest of his life. The dream usually involves some lack of preparation--either with the sermon or with getting properly dressed. When people sympathize with me and say that a pastor is on call 24 hours a day, they haven’t quite gotten it right. There aren’t all that many ‘middle of the night’ phone calls for a pastor. Just the nightmares, Eric. The sermons I will be preaching this month are on money. I promise that I won’t spend the month begging for money for the church. What I want to do instead is examine the role that money played in the life of three biblical characters: Abraham, Solomon, and Jesus. And each week I want to relate that biblical character to our own relationship with money. Money is vitally important in all our lives. It is often one of our biggest problems: debt, greed, worry, obsession--all these surround our relationship with money. This month, I want to examine how our faith can help redeem us from the morass that often accompanies our relationship with money. I’ll welcome dialogue with you as we move through these topics. --Mike |
