Pastor’s Paragraphs: August 26, 2016

We are excited to have a Mission Team who will serve in Haiti this fall. It will primarily focus on dental needs and we are pleased to have some outstanding dentists and assistants going as part of the team. This group also has room for a couple of additional lay members who will assist in ministering to families who may have children or others seeing the dentists. Would you consider this opportunity and contact Dan Harrison this week? If the Lord leads, I am confident you will be blessed with this mission opportunity.

Our hearts have hurt for those who have suffered through the flooding in Louisiana. Relief efforts are under way through Baptist work including supplies and teams to assist those who live and work there. On this page you can find a list of items you may purchase and bring with you Sunday which will be added to others from Montgomery and delivered to the flood area on Monday. If you would like to volunteer to go and help with cleanup please contact the office for more information.

The phrase “Last Call” usually gets our attention. Here is mine for these last days of August. It is nearing the end of time we can add anyone to our “Holy Land Journey” next February. We are blessed with an exciting group looking forward to days of great blessing in the land of our Lord. I am pleased a number from our church as well as from this area are going including several who have been before. I am issuing this “Last Call” in case there are some of you who have been putting off the decision or have someone you know who might want to join us. I can make room for a few more but only for a few more days. Please give our office a call if you are interested. Don’t miss this opportunity to “walk in the footsteps of Jesus.” You will remember it the rest of your life.

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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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