Thoughts and Musings from My Faith Journey
There are certain things in Christianity that can be understood from the outside, before you have become a Christian. But there are a great many things that cannot be understood until after you have gone a certain distance along the Christian road. — C. S. Lewis
This has certainly been my experience. The deeper I grow into the faith, the farther I walk along the trail blazed by Jesus, the more sense Christianity makes.
C. S. Lewis, “Faith,” in Mere Christianity (1952).
This coming Sunday (April 29, 2018), I’ll be preaching on Acts 8:26-40 and talking about what an Ethiopian Eunuch can teach us about living as Christians in 2018—as it turns out quite a lot. Hope to see you there.
This April contains five Sundays, and so we will have an all-church potluck on Sunday, April 29, 2017, after the 10:30 worship service. You’re invited and encouraged to bring a main dish, side, or dessert that you would like to share.
May is the month First UMC traditionally provides food and funds for the operation of the Food Pantry which helps supply food and utility funds for those less fortunate. The following is a list of the immediate needs of the food pantry:
Grocery bags (complete with a list of needs attached) will be available on Sunday mornings beginning next Sunday (April 29, 2018) and then throughout the month of May to take home with you and fill, and then return the following Sunday or to the church office during the week. This year we’ll be splitting the contributions between the community-wide Food Pantry downtown and the Little Free Pantry here at the church.
Two more things: 1. If you can bring back unused hotel toiletries, we’ll disperse those through the little free pantry. 2 If you have extra points on your West’s Country Mart cards that you would be willing to convert to a gift card and give to the church for distribution through the church office that would be very much appreciated.
Our Little Free Pantry is up and running and has already been visited. Thanks to everyone on the Mission and Outreach Team who worked on this project.
The next meeting of “The Breakfast Club” will be Saturday, May 19, 2018, at 8:30 a.m. in room 200. We’ll be discussing The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis. Here’s a description from the back of one edition of the book:
In The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis again employs his formidable talent for fable and allegory. The writer finds himself in Hell boarding a bus bound for Heaven. The amazing opportunity is that anyone who wants to stay in Heaven, can. This is the starting point for an extraordinary meditation upon good and evil, grace and judgment. Lewis’s revolutionary idea is the discovery that the gates of Hell are locked from the inside. In Lewis’s own words, “If we insist on keeping Hell (or even earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell.”
You can download an electronic version at amazon.com or an audio version at audible.com. We’ll also have copies available in the narthex next week. Hope to see you on May 19.
An important theological point and a fun historical fact:
Dionysus the Insignificant constructed a dating schema for the whole world based on the (supposed) birth date of Jesus. The fact that this scheme is still in use more or less worldwide despite abortive attempts such as that of the French Revolutionaries to supplant it came briefly to notice a few years ago at the time of the millennium but is largely ignored.3 Like a great church bell ringing out over a sleepy town, every time someone puts a date on something it speaks of the lordship of Jesus, whether people listen or not. — N. T. Wright
The point Wright is making is an important one. Nonetheless, it is the fact that the name of the person who created our current method of dating events is named “Dionysus the Insignificant” tickled me so much that I had to share it.
Please note that Wright does not doubt whether or not Jesus was ever born, but is instead referencing the fact that our schema may be about 4 to 6 years off. Dionysus seems to have miscounted, Jesus was probably born about 4 or 6 B.C. (Given that he lived from 470 – c. 544 AD. I’m willing to cut Dionysus quite a lot of slack. Furthermore his name was probably a reference to his humility—at least according to Wikipedia.com)
N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 260-261.
“Dionysius Exiguus,” Wikipedia, April 14, 2018, accessed April 19, 2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysius_Exiguus.
A Public Service Announcement: the Cardinal Singers from Red Bird Christian School, a United Methodist Institution in Beverly Kentucky, will be presenting a free concert of contemporary and traditional Christian music at Emanuel United Methodist Church tomorrow (Thursday, April 19, 2018) at 7:00 p.m.
Tomorrow (Sunday, April 15, 2018), we’ll be consecrating the Little Free Pantry at both the 8:15 and the 10:30 worship services. This ministry is a joint project with the Newbern Wideawake 4-H Club.
2018 Scholarship Applications are now available at abilenefirstumc.org/downloads. The due date is May 18, 2018, the Friday after the Abilene High School Graduation Ceremony.
I’ don’t think we can pull off the hymn, “The Strife is O’er, the Battle Done” in worship, but the lyrics are too good not to share somewhere:
The strife is o’er, the battle done;
the victory of life of life is won;
the song of triumph has begun:
Alleluia!The powers of death have done their worst,
but Christ their legions hath dispersed:
let shouts of holy joy outburst:
Alleluia!The three sad days are quickly sped;
he rises glorious from the dead;
all glory to our risen Head!
Alleluia!Lord, by the stripes which wounded thee,
from death’s dread sting thy servants free,
that we may live, and sing to thee:
Alleluia!
You can find it as number 306 in the hymnal. According to said hymnal, the words were written (in Latin) in 1695, but the author is unknown. If you disagree and think we could pull this off let me know.
“The Strife Is O’er, the Battle Done” in United Methodist Church, The United Methodist Hymnal (Nashville, TN: United Methodist Publishing House, 1989), 306.
The function of faith is not to reduce mystery to rational clarity, but to integrate the unknown and the known together in a living whole. — Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton, “From Faith to Wisdom,” in New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Book, 2007).