Grow in Grace
We had a wonderful Vacation Bible School this past week. We had over thirty children participate. That included almost all of our congregation’s children who were in town, plus a number of friends and other kids from the community. We also had a large number of middle and high school youth volunteer to help and of course a strong group of volunteers. We must thank co-leaders Amy Gammons and Meghan McLaughlin who led it all wonderfully.
On Thursday, our theme was “God is Love”, and we talked about how God’s greatest demonstration of love is Jesus dying on the cross to save us from our sins, and was raised from the dead for our salvation. That is what theologians refer to as, “The Big Enchilada.” It is the core of the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ. We teach it again and again with the hope and expectation that it will sink into the very foundations of who these kids are. God loves you. God saved you. God will never let you go. If the kids remember nothing else from this week, we hope and pray they will never forget that.
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The Good Infection
Back at the start of the pandemic, one of the big medical schools (I’m not sure which) produced a graphic cartoon to show how highly infectious diseases like respiratory viruses spread. It showed a large box with dozens of blue dots bouncing off each other. Then one red dot entered the box. When it touched a blue dot, that dot turned red, as did any dot it touched. Every red dot turned any blue dot it touched red. Soon, most of the dots turned red.
That’s how cold and flu bugs spread across the world, although not ever at 100%. Its principle applies to ideas as well. Ideas stick to people and spread quickly, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. They can sweep across cultures. Ready examples are in popular music. The Beatles got so popular that their live performances were drowned out by the audience’s screams. Or K-Pop – which is a Korean dance music craze that began about 10-15 years ago and remains wildly popular.
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Your Call
Often, when faithful people encounter hardship and tragedy, we reflexively say something like, “God has a plan” or “Everything happens for a reason.” We trust God, even when we cannot see any good in the situation. There’s a gap between those two a mile wide and we cannot see any connection, but we remain faithful. This morning’s scriptures bring us to consider how our faith intersects with our lives. Our most difficult trials, our deepest losses and hardest decisions can and should reinforce our faith in how God fills that huge gap.
When we say, “God has a plan,” that doesn’t mean he is actively laying out your life as a particular maze for you to find clues and grope your way through, and heaven is your reward at the end. When we say, “Everything happens for a reason,” it’s not as if God has designed your life as an obstacle course with tragedies and disasters tailored just for you. As Lamentations 3:33 says, “for he does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone.”
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