Join us sundays at 8:00 & 10:30 AM

From The Pastor

December 6, 2019 by Rev. John Hartman

From the Pastor

There are certain mysteries in life that make us stop and wonder, “Why?” Why is it that you can tell someone there are four hundred billion stars in the sky and they will believe you, but if the same person sees a “Wet Paint” sign on a park bench, and they just have to touch it? Why do banks charge you an “Insufficient Funds” fee when they already know you don’t have the money to cover the negative balance? Why are there five syllables in the word “monosyllabic?” Why do they call them apartments when they are stuck together? If the black box flight recorder is never damaged in an airplane crash, why don’t they build the whole plane out of the same material?

Here’s the biggest “Why?” of all: why do people like us have such a hard time trusting God? People will get up early on the Sundays in December, and come here to church. And yet, during this holiday season we will have so many worries and nervousness, it will seem almost as if God didn’t exist. Why? Why is the season when we celebrate the greatest blessing – the coming of God to earth – the most anxiety-ridden time of all?

The irony of our situation is that the promise we celebrate at Christmas is the coming of the One who would lift from our shoulders the burdens of the world. There is a wonderful promise in Isaiah 9:6, “and the government shall be on his shoulders.” The Messiah came to us so that we should not have to carry the weight of our problems. That is what we are going to be talking about in worship this Sunday. So, please join us at either 8:00 am or 10:30 am as we celebrate the Second Sunday in Advent with one another.

Pastor John

Quote of the Week

“...And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment. No evil can befall us; whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve the God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the world and our lives.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor, theologian, anti-Nazi dissident, and key founding member of the Confessing Church. His writings on Christianity's role in the secular world have become widely influential, and his book The Cost of Discipleship has been described as a modern classic.