Serve the Lord with Gladness

Serve Day, this past Saturday, was a huge success. We had people building, cooking, folding, cutting, weaving, picking up trash, cleaning out the neighborhood street drains and putting together lunch bags for homeless people. I am so glad to be part of a church that sees the needs of people and does whatever is needed to get the job done. A special thanks to Dan Harrison, Chad Royal and the Serve Team for putting together a great event.

Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!

This is one of my favorite passages of scripture. The story has to do with Jesus, donkeys, kids shouting, palm trees and rocks. All of my favorite things! When Jesus came into Jerusalem the people laid their cloaks on the ground, waved palm branches and shouted “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” The leaders told Jesus to tell the people to be quiet. Jesus told them that if the people remained silent, that even the very rocks of the street would sing praise.

When I was a boy, we had two giant coconut trees in our yard. Their fronds were so large, my guess up to 15 feet long, so of course after we heard about the children waving palm branches and shouting “Hosanna,” we had to do the same. I climbed up to the top of the coconut tree and cut palm fronds for each of my friends. We learned a few lessons pretty quick. The palm fronds that they waved were not from a 40 foot coconut tree. Try as we might, we were not going to get those heavy things up off the ground and in the air. The other lesson was, their parents probably didn’t care about their palm trees as much as my parents cared about ours. 

Just think how much God must love to hear us sing praise to Him if He was willing to have the very rocks of the streets cry out to Him! The people sang out and praised Jesus as their Savior. They thought Jesus was going to be a military savior, saving them from the bondage of Roman rule, but God’s plan was bigger and eternal. He was going to save them from the bondage of sin. 

This Resurrection season, let’s remember the great sacrifice that Jesus paid for our Salvation. This Sunday is Palm Sunday.  Why not have your kids go into the backyard and shout, “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”

Make sure you look at all the upcoming activities for Holy Week. You will want to make sure you are part of every bit of it.

Greg

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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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