New Growth

It is hard to believe that March is here. 2019 is moving forward at a rapid pace. The trees budding and flowers blooming tell us that Spring is here. I love this time of the year because it is a time to plant our gardens. It is exciting to look around and see things growing and turning green again. 

It is also exciting seeing our church grow. Numbers are up and there is excitement in the air as we worship and as we continue to see new folks visiting our church and getting involved in our ministries. Let’s continue to make our church a place where our guest feel welcome. As you see new faces around our church, let me encourage you to get to know them and make them feel at home. Eastern Hills is a place where you can invite your friends and know that they will be welcome.

Our Wild Game Dinner is this Saturday. This is an opportunity for us to invite our friends to an event that will be fun and inspirational. It is an opportunity to bring someone that otherwise might not come to a worship service. It will be a fun night with good food and a lot of fun. I hope you are planning to be a part of this event. Thank you Larry Kennedy and our men’s ministry for making this event happen.

In just a little more than a month we will have our next Serve Day. This is an opportunity where we can serve our community with many service opportunities. Our Serve Team is busy putting together the opportunities for that day on April 6. I hope you will put that date on your calendar. You will be glad you did. Thank you Serve Team for all your hard work in making the plans for us to serve our community.

I hope that you are planning to be present this Sunday as we worship our Lord together. Invite someone to come with you.

Dan Harrison

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FOCUSED

One of the casualties of aging to which I find myself a victim is the dimming of the eyes.  Ecclesiastes 12 counsels the young person to remember God, their Creator, in their youth before the aging process takes over and various faculties, as listed in verses 1-7, are diminished.

Clear eyesight when we are young may be something we take for granted. However, as we age the realization that our vision is not as sharp as it once was takes hold. “Readers” become standard fare for all intricate tasks. Our once keen laser sharp focus is now blurry and in need of help to restore its youthfulness. That restoration is found through glasses or some sort of rejuvenating surgery. Especially in the early stages of this degenerative eye problem we may be able to fake it and get by, but eventually we must relent and do something to correct the problem.

There is a parallel between physical and spiritual vision. “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” was written in the early 20th century. The hymn writer, Helen Lemmel, was strongly influenced by the artist and later little-known missionary, Lilias Trotter. Miss Trotter started off as an aspiring artist but early on felt a call from God to reach the lost. She began her ministry by rescuing prostitutes from the streets of London. Later she went to Africa, without missionary funding, and served for over forty years. While there she penned a poem that would greatly influence the writing of the hymn “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.”  The poem was entitled “Focused: A Story and Song.” 

The poem centers around focusing one’s attentions fully and completely upon God. She writes that Satan knows that if a person uses all their powers of concentration on being led by God’s Spirit, they will have a great intensity and impact upon those to whom they are called to minister. Lilias Trotter, writing in a more formal use of the English language than we are accustomed, shares some timeless insights which could very easily have been written today but with a different accent. She writes: “Never has it been so easy to live in half a dozen good harmless worlds at once—art, music, social science, games, motoring, the following of some profession, and so on. And between them we run the risk of drifting about, the ‘good’ hiding the ‘best’ even more effectually than it could be hidden downright frivolity with its smothered heartache at its own emptiness.”

The “good” hiding the “best” leads us to emptiness.  Could this be true of us today especially as American Christians? Have we sought the “good” while missing the “best”? The chorus of the hymn, which we will be singing in worship this Sunday, says it best.

                Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face,                                                                                                                                        And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.

Keith Pate

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