December 2010

Dear Family of Faith,
The Season of Giving is soon upon us. Already last week I received a Christmas letter! [I just don’t get how some people can be so organized! Getting a Christmas letter before Thanksgiving is like writing your own obituary before you even get sick!] Every day between now and December 25th the clock ticks off one more chance to buy that “perfect gift” for those we love. Some of us are at such a loss as to what to give to those who ‘have everything’ that we scour the Sunday ads, hoping that something will perk our interest as a possibility. I’ve been thinking about buying everyone on my list a gift box of Burt’s Bees lip balm this year—I just saw it advertized in the CVS ad. I bet nobody else will be giving them that! I’m not really going to buy a case of lip balm, but sometimes I just don’t know what people would enjoy or need.
What do people need for Christmas? According to the Bible, Jesus is what we need. His very name expresses it. In Matthew’s Gospel (1: 21) the angel tells Joseph that Mary will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins (Jesus means “Savior”). What we need is to be rescued from our sins. How, then, does that have anything to do with us? Simply this: because we are forgiven by God, we are called to forgive others. This Christmas why not give the gift of forgiveness?
On November 9th the auditorium of the Pasco Hernando Community College auditorium was packed to hear a special speaker brought in for Peace Week. Eva Moses Kor, a Holocaust survivor, told in vivid detail about being a ‘guinea pig’ for the horrible experiments of Nazi doctor Josef Mengele at Auschwitz. Mengele was doing experiments on twins, and ten-year-old Eva and her twin sister Miriam were sent there after being taken from their home in Hungary. Daily they were humiliated and poked, measured and compared, given mysterious injections, and subjected to many other tests. Out of 1,500 sets of twins in the camp, only 200 survived. Eva and Miriam were one set that did. Summarizing her experiences, Eva told of three life lessons that she learned: (1) Never give up no matter what; (2) Respect everyone; and (3) Everyone has the power to forgive. You can use it as you wish. Eva said of the last one, “A person who has forgiven is a liberated person.” “I would like to talk to God and tell Him to add an 11th commandment: Forgive your worst enemy,” she added.
All of us need forgiveness. That’s why we need a Savior. More than that, we need the forgiveness of the people in our lives whom we have hurt. Eva Kor astonishes us with her ability to forgive those who did such horrible things to her as a child. Yet even those we love offend us and hurt us, sometimes on purpose, but mostly unintentionally. They need our forgiveness and we need to forgive them. We need consciously to take away our feelings of resentment for those who hurt us and knock down that barrier that keeps us from feeling as close to them as once we did. We need to forgive our children, our parents, our spouses and partners, our siblings and cousins, our friends and neighbors, our employers and workers, our doctors and pastors, our teachers and students, and even strangers…even our worst enemies. This Christmas, why not give the gift of forgiveness. It never goes out of style, and you don’t have to fight the crowds at the mall to get it. And in the giving of the gift, you will find yourself released, liberated, freed from the burden of resentment and anger. Yes, forgiveness is a great present. I’m putting it on my own Christmas wish list. I hope to get it, and I hope you get it, too.
With affection,
Pastor Carlan

November 2010

Dear Family of faith,

Which would you choose: a million dollars or one good friend? The events of the past few weeks made me ponder that question.

Ever since my wife, Jill, returned in mid October from spending time in New England with our new granddaughter, she has had back pain which remains, to this date, undiagnosed. A visit to our General Practitioner resulted in an anti-inflam-
matory drug. The pain kept getting worse. At first Jill could not stand; then she could neither sit nor stand without great pain. Last week she could not escape excruciating pain in any position. We called the doctor; three days later he called back. In the meanwhile Jill had been taking some pain pills from a prior prescription. By the time the GP said that he would contact an orthopedic specialist, Jill was down to one pill left, and that wasn’t giving her any relief. When finally we spoke to the specialist’s office, they told us that the first available appointment was November 2nd!

It is a horrible experience to see someone you love writhing in pain, knowing that there is nothing you can do about that pain. Not only that, but the prospect that such trauma was not going to last just one day, but for weeks was terrible. At that point in time all the money in the world would not have brought relief; the medical system was simply unresponsive and unavailable.

Then I remembered…I remembered that life is not about things but people. I recalled that I had a friend who had been living with severe back pain for years. I called him, and he was willing to share some of his stockpiled medicine to help Jill go on with living. (As a young homeless boy put it a couple days later when I engaged him in a conversation outside the Brandon Mall, “You gotta do what you gotta do!”)

At the time of this writing Jill’s appointment with the orthopedic doctor is still more than a week away, and her appointment with a pain management specialist is more than a month away (again the earliest available date!) The reason that she can walk, eat, go to church again, and sleep is that I had a friend.

Dear people of God, recent social studies have revealed that the social networks in our country are shrinking fast. The percentage of Americans who say that they have no one with whom to discuss important matters rose from 10% in 1985 to almost 25% in 2004. The number of adults ages 45-49 who claim to be lonely is a whopping 43%! Even in the church we can feel alone. What should we do about it? Cultivate friendships!

No one should ever sit by himself or herself in worship. If you come to church alone, sit next to someone else! Talk to each other; eat together during the Fellowship Hour. Seek out people with whom you can relate. Way back in the Garden of Eden God said that is was not good for us to be alone. Jesus called his disciples “friends,” and he called the church to be a community of support for each other. Let me put it this way: If you miss worship one or two weeks and no one notices, you don’t have enough friends! Work on it! In the end you will discover what I did—that one good friend in a time of need is worth more than $1 million!
With affection,
Pastor Carlan

October Article

Dear Family of faith,
We are afraid! We are all afraid of life. That’s the reality I hear expressed around me these days: “I’m afraid that I’ll come home one day and find my house in a sinkhole.” “I’m afraid that I won’t be able to go on without my partner.” “I’m afraid that I’m stuck in a job that is grinding me down to nothing.” “I’m afraid that I won’t be able to keep paying for insurance.” “I’m afraid that I’m going to have to sell my home at a huge loss.” “I’m afraid that I have a tumor.” “I’m afraid that my children will be bullied on the bus.” “I’m afraid that I’m going to end up in a nursing home.” All these fears and others are a reflection of our insecurity about life. We don’t feel safe any more.
We feel helpless against the threats that lurk around us, powerless against the circumstances of life. We have a Department of Homeland Security to protect us from radical terrorists, but what most of us wish for more is a Department of Inward Security to protect us from the anxieties of our hearts. Once we thought the government would ensure our well-being and financial security. But when we look around and see the poverty and desperation of neighbors and friends and know first-hand the struggles of family members for jobs and insurance and housing, we realize how misplaced our confidence has been. There is no true security in insurance companies, for they can drop your coverage tomorrow. There is no true security in government programs, for they come and go with political whim. There is no true security in pension plans and investments, for Wall Street can go south in a week.
Are we, then, destined to wander this life in fear and inner desperation? Not as God’s people! Countless times God tells His people, “Do not fear!” Jesus taught us that trusting in the God who cares for even sparrows is the way to inner peace. You see, God has provided that “Department of Inward Security” that we long for in the Christian community called the church. We who trust a common Savior become family to one another. We look after each other’s hearts—caring, listening, empathizing, holding, praying for, and helping in countless ways. I was reminded of that myself this past week with all the expressions of sympathy and love over my father’s death. I received as many as 15 cards a day in the mail and phone calls and hugs. Why, last Sunday even St. Paul the Apostle Church, which meets in our Fellowship Hall, dedicated a mass to my dad! Such is the care of God’s people.
We open our homes to others when storms threaten. We hug each other when life hurts. We encourage each other when the future looks dark. We help each other when we are alone and lonely so that we can go on. And we teach each other by the way we live and the words we share that life is more important than the things we will someday haul off to the rummage sale or leave behind for our executors to deal with. Life is about relationships that make us whole—relationships among ourselves and our relationship with God.
If you are holding on to fear right now, why not let go of it? God will make a way where there seems to be no way. As Jesus taught, “I am with you, even to the end of the age.” And the Jesus we meet most often is in the face of those whose lives Christ inhabits. You are not alone against the world’s trials. God has given you family in the church.
Grateful for you and your care,

Pastor Carlan

September 2010

Dear Family of faith,

Having just returned from a wonderful tour of Central Europe and the chance to see the world-famous Passion Play in Oberammergau, Germany; the sights of the Alpine villages are still fresh in my mind. Overall, it was the Austrians who most impressed me with their faith and love of life. It didn’t matter how small the village was, there was always a beautiful church in the middle of it. Even those burgs that had but a few hundred people hosted a magnificent edifice, usually overflowing with stucco, gold, and marble inside. The majority religion in Austria is, by far, Roman Catholic. Our Austrian guide could not, on one occasion, even think of a Protestant Church to visit. But as beautiful as the cathedrals and abbeys were, the common buildings most impressed upon me the fervor of the faithful. Shops and businesses, even homes and schools, had murals of religious scenes or statues and crucifixes affixed to their facades. In most hamlets you could turn your head in any direction from the public square and see the creative marking of a Christian presence in paint, stucco, or metal. Many off-the-beaten-path homes of a humble nature had a Virgin Mary shrine or crucifixion scene. Yes, you couldn’t go anywhere in the country without knowing that the Christian faith was important to those people.

We live in an increasingly secularized society in which many are hesitant to display symbols of their faith. Indeed, court rulings have rightly upheld the Constitution’s neutrality on religion in public life. Unfortunately what has happened, however, is that this neutrality has often been interpreted as a ban on religious symbols and affiliation. There is no law against a business owner or a homeowner displaying their faith on personal property. Would anyone walking up to your home know that you are a Christian? Would anyone entering your home know that you follow Jesus? Do the places you do business make it known that they follow an ethic higher than civil law?

Certainly many of us have become “gun shy” about such overt displays of faith because those who do so often come from conservative, often legalistic, groups. Perhaps we have forfeited too much. Yet exterior symbols of the faith can also be symbols of hypocrisy. That was so in Jesus’ day as evidenced in his criticism of the Pharisees, whom he called “whitewashed tombs” because they looked nice on the outside but were dead on the inside.

Even so, Christians are called to witness publicly to their faith. In the Book of Revelation God stamps the faithful with a seal on their foreheads. This is symbolic language to indicate that a Christian’s faith should be visible to all—just as if it were painted on our foreheads. Crosses around our necks, shrines in the front yard, murals on the walls—these are all fine and good; but what God really wants of us is a faith that is know by the way we live and act. People are supposed to know about the God we love by the way we treat creation and other people made in the image of God. Others should recognize us as people of faith by the words we speak and the attitudes we have, by how we spend our money and time.

I encourage each of you to think about this question: Outside of the church, do others know anything about my faith? If not, why not? May the hospitality you show, the encouragement you give, the sacrifices you make for others, and the respect you have for God’s world be your “symbols” of faith, so that the world may know that you belong to Jesus.
With affection,

Pastor Carlan

Summer: July/August 2010

Dear Family of faith,

We human creatures can be so foolish! I was reminded of that earlier in the year when I was getting ready to mow the lawn for the first time after the winter frosts. I was on a weed hunt, plucking out all the unwanted invaders that had taken advantage of the weakened grass. As I looked around, my eyes fell on a tall stem shooting out from underneath the mulch in a flower bed. Atop the stalk was a beautiful, pastel-colored pinkish blossom. Without a moment’s hesitation I plucked out the bloom, then spent a bit of time examining it more closely. As I held the soon-to-be-withered flower in my hand, marveling at its simple elegance, I thought to myself, “You fool! There wasn’t a single blossom in all my flower bed except this unplanted interloper, and you have just destroyed the only thing of beauty in the garden!”

I wonder how many beautiful things we have uprooted in our lives because we thought they were out of place. How many serendipitous blessings has God sent our way that we failed to see because we had other plans and missed the splendor of the moment? More than that, how many people have we ‘written off’ because they didn’t fit our concept of a friend or good church member? In our haste to get on with our schedule, we have pushed aside divine encounters with angels sent to teach us about God and ourselves.

Now that summer has come my garden has a lot of blossoms; yet the memory of that one early gift still lingers. Like far too much of my life, I rue past days when I ran roughshod over opportunities for beauty, wisdom, joy, and peace because “I had other plans.” Just how old does one need to get to learn that God has plans of which we know nothing? As the ancient proverb teaches (Proverbs 14:12): “There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death.”

This summer I encourage you to live with humility—the humility of recognizing that God has a better plan than you to bring beauty and blessing to our world. I encourage you to live aware of your surroundings, to live open to what is happening in the present moment, to live with the expectation that the people you meet may have been sent from heaven itself. Don’t end up plucking up what is meant to bring goodness! Some word you hear, some song you listen to, some smiling face that catches your eye, or some glimpse of beauty that you see today may be just what you need to bring you the peace and joy you are seeking. And for heaven’s sake, don’t destroy the only beautiful thing in your life because you weren’t expecting it.

With affection, Pastor Carlan

June Blog

Dear Friends in Faith,
Are you lonely? …I’m only asking the question because my encounters with people in the past few weeks have convinced me that there is a pandemic of loneliness in our society today.
I was talking with a single friend who shared that he didn’t have any relatives younger than he and was wondering aloud who would take care of him in his old age. Another acquaintance emailed me and wrote about the lack of affection from his partner and how he had become addicted to drugs to “hide his pain.” A woman tracked down our church from our website and gave me a call. In subsequent emails and calls she spoke about moving down to our area; in every single communication she talked wistfully about her hope of finding “a lifelong partner.” Another guy I met shared the frustration he had with his partner’s abuse and how he feared that the relationship was at an end. So, too, a wife spoke to me about her worst fear—that her husband would leave her. Yet another woman told me about her inability to share her thoughts with her husband. “He just doesn’t understand,” she said. Still another friend became somber and sad while talking about living alone with no one to come home to. My own mother has become discouraged because she has to make so many decisions on her own now that my father has had a stroke; and my father, for his part, is feeling the abandonment of being in a nursing home for rehab—a very scary experience for him. People have shared their weariness from the burden of caring for ailing spouses, the loneliness of being widowed, and the inner pain they suffer from dealing with demons from the past that keep haunting them. I’ve heard all of this and more in just the past few weeks! Mother Teresa was right when she said that the greatest disease of humankind is not cancer or TB or AIDS or polio, but loneliness.
If so many people are lonely; if single people, spouses, partners, and widows are all lonely; if those in the church and outside the church, those we know well and those we just met are all walking solo through life and discouraged, what are we supposed to do? Just this: Be family to them!
We can’t solve everyone’s problems. We aren’t God! We don’t have enough money, enough contacts, enough wisdom or time to rescue everyone from their desperation…but we do have the ability to listen, to care, to help people understand that, even though they may feel alone, they really aren’t alone. I couldn’t change the circumstances for any of the people that shared their lonely feelings with me, but I did listen and encourage them; I responded to their emails and helped them hope. It may not seem like much, but it means the world to those who feel abandoned and disheartened.
If you aren’t lonely, then help someone who is. But if you do find yourself feeling lonely, then look for someone to share with. Ask God to send an angel to walk with you and help you through the valley in your life; just make sure that you keep your eyes open for that special person you’re praying for. God promises never to abandon us; and one of the ways God shows us that truth is to send someone to be family to us. When we are all part of the family God intends, none of us will feel alone.
With affection for you, Pastor Carlan

May 2010 - Pastor Carlan's Blog

Dear Friends in Faith,

This past week I opened my copy of the local newspaper Hernando Today to read about the Hernando County Fair and all the events scheduled for April 16, 17, and 18th—the bands and shows and tractor pull. I went on to read in the paper about our Kids’ Karnival held last Sunday. I even perused the Bealls ad for their 2-day sale on Friday and Saturday, April 16th and 17th. The problem? I didn’t get a copy of the paper until Monday, April 19th! All those events described in the newspaper had already passed by the time I knew about them. I found out what was happening too late. The episode got me to thinking about all the things in our lives that we realize too late—as the saying goes,“Too soon old, too late schmart!”

What have you realized too late? What are you in danger of learning too late to be of any use?

As a pastor I have often been asked what my understanding of hell is—mostly by people who were concerned that they might end up there! The New Testament gives us a lot of images of the place of punishment. Perhaps the most prominent among them is the idea that hell is a place of unending flames of torment. That image comes from the word itself, because the Greek word is derived from the phrase “Hinnom Valley” where ancient pagan peoples used to offer human sacrifices and where the Jews, subsequently, had their garbage dump for the city of Jerusalem (hence the burning fires to destroy the trash). For me, however, hell is not some place that God sends us as much as a state we end up choosing for ourselves. It is a ‘place’ of weeping and gnashing of teeth because those who reject God find out too late what they have done and have no one but themselves to blame for missing God’s peace and joy. The punishment of hell is not God-inflicted, but self-inflicted, coming from the regret of a wasted life and a blindness to spiritual truth that was so evident. It’s the ultimate, continuous experience of “kicking yourself” for not acting on what you should have done. It comes from realizing what is happening too late.

In many places in the Bible we are encouraged to “seize the moment.” This life is fleeting; we don’t have forever to show love and kindness, generosity and compassion. The people we are with today may not be with us tomorrow. The opportunities to rise above the world’s self-serving ways and shine like lights in the darkness will disappear with the passing of time. It’s like the Sunday offering: when the plates pass by, you only have one chance to put something in; then it’s too late. Life passes by as quickly. The chance to make amends, the chance to seek forgiveness, the chance to hug and kiss, the chance to dance, the chance to learn and grow, the chance to make a difference, the chance to go where you’ve never gone and see what you’ve never seen may only come once. Don’t wait too long. Take a good look at your life and live out all the opportunities of today. Don’t end your days looking back at life like reading an outdated newspaper, wishing you had known about all the things you could have done. Look around and live without regret now.
With affection,
Pastor Carlan

April 2010

Dear Friends in Faith,

Is resurrection real? That’s the Easter question. That’s the question millions of Christians have when they flock to the churches around the world on Easter Sunday. Death has touched all our lives, and the longing for the ultimate hope is highest on Christianity’s most popular holy day. In this age when we can track the changes in distant galaxies, peer into the very secrets of the human brain, and track the evolution of life and the universe; is resurrection real…or is it just some myth created to make us feel better about the inescapable reality of death?

There are some who would chastise a Christian pastor for raising the question, but I have never been one to avoid being honest. I have officiated at too many funerals not to question the truth. The Apostle Paul himself told the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 15:13-14, 19), “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain…If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” In other words, if resurrection is some ancient hoax, then we Christians are fools. We all ought to just close up the church and go home!

Obviously the New Testament message proclaims the resurrection of Jesus and of all those whose trust is in God, but is there any other “evidence?” In my 30 years as a pastor I have learned that all true faith is experiential. We only really believe at the core of our being that which we know from personal experience, that which has touched and changed our lives. In the end it doesn’t matter what the Bible says or what preachers and teachers of the faith say. They can lead us to the gates of faith, but they can’t make us go through to genuine assurance. My firm conviction of the hope of life eternal is informed by the teaching of the New Testament, but it is anchored in the experience of God’s presence in my life.

This is my question for you: “Have you known the presence of God in your life?” If your answer is “yes,” then you can have the confidence of resurrection. How? Because God isn’t interested in dead-end relationships! The matchless Sovereign of creation’s glory is not about to spend His time creating a relationship that has no future. The relationship God begins with us in this life does not end when we cross into the next. This is affirmed by the resurrection narratives about Jesus in John’s Gospel. After Jesus’ death Mary Magdalene comes looking for his body in the tomb. Not finding it, she is distraught, so distraught in fact that she believes the resurrected Jesus to be a gardener. It is not until Jesus calls out her name that she realizes to whom she is speaking. Then the relationship is reestablished for her. She knows that Jesus knows her, and she knows him. The same is true when Jesus appears to Thomas a week later. Earlier Thomas had missed Jesus’ coming to the disciples and had doubted their story of seeing the risen Lord. But when Jesus came again to the disciples and met Thomas face to face, the doubting disciple needed no further confirmation. He did not need to “touch the nail prints in his hand and the wound in his side,” as he as proclaimed earlier. Thomas knew Jesus, and Jesus knew Thomas. It was about relationship. Mary and John’s relationship with Jesus did not end at Jesus’ death because Jesus was not dead. If God has the power to sustain life beyond this world, why would God terminate the relationships He has already begun?

For me, to know God’s presence is to know that someday I will know the presence of others who are in God’s realm of eternity. Death may be the great spoiler of life, but death is not the last word for a still-speaking God. We ought never to put a period where God puts a comma. As the German playwright Goethe once wrote, “Those who live in the Lord never see each other for the last time.” Let us rejoice in that assurance in this season of Easter! Resurrection is real.
Pastor Carlan

March 2010

Dear Friends in faith,
The Olympics have always been my favorite sporting event. Not only is it the pomp and pageantry of the opening and closing programs that captures my excitement. Even more captivating are the daily competitions among the best athletes from around the globe. I’ve always considered the quadrennial winter games as a wonderful showcase of the fastest, brightest, strongest, and most artistic young men and women in the world and an example of peace and harmony among nations. That’s why I was disheartened recently when American Evan Lysacek’s gold medal in figure skating was challenged by the second-place Russian Yevgeny Plushenko. Not only did the Russian figure skater complain about the multinational judges’ award given to Lysacek, his wife also called for a “thorough investigation,” and even Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin weighed in with a derogatory remark.
Without a doubt, losing any contest is painful; yet this most public display of self-pity by a sore loser highlights how self-centered and presumptuous the world has become. Whether it’s a world-class figure skater griping about a lost medal or a parent threatening a teacher for a child’s poor grade, somewhere society has lost the ability to live with defeat or even with less than expected. Is this the product of a spoiled life, of a ‘no-failure’ policy in education that refuses honestly to evaluate poor performance, or of the overzealous movement to affirm mediocrity? Whatever the cause, the outcome has disastrous consequences in society when so many youth and adults believe that they have a “right” to succeed regardless of performance and fly into angry rages when they don’t get their way. Whether it’s a disgruntled employee returning to work with a gun to go on a shooting rampage or an angry tax payer who flies a suicide mission by crashing his plane into a Texas IRS building, such actions a blatant portrayal of our inability to accept less than we wanted.
In this season of Lent when we are encouraged to reflect on our spiritual lives, each of us needs to consider how we ourselves react to the disappointments of life. Do we get angry? Do we blame others unfairly? Do we seek revenge? Do we gripe and complain? Do we demand our own way? Do we become bitter and hateful? Dear Friends, did not Jesus teach us to rejoice with those who rejoice? Did he not show us how to count others better than ourselves? Did not the Lord give his life to save us from selfishness and hatred? Does not the Gospel teach us that God’s love is sufficient to give us contentment and security in life whatever comes so that we suffer no loss of esteem when someone stronger, smarter, more experienced, or just plain luckier does better than we?
In this season as we ponder the cross, let us surrender our disappointments to God so that we may be free from bitterness and blaming others; let us rise up instead with a new desire to do the best we can and be satisfied with that. James wrote that this world’s wars begin with the fiery anger within us. Let us keep calm within so that the world will learn how to live in peace. As that much-sung chorus encourages: “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.”
With affection, Pastor Carlan

February 2010

Dear People of faith,
For most of us the news uppermost in our consciousness in the past few weeks has been the reports of devastation and suffering in Haiti following the earthquakes in that region. The flattened buildings, the homeless and hungry people, the orphaned children, and bodies lying in the streets—all these images have left a lasting impression in our memories. We feel compassion for the poorest of this hemisphere’s people. We feel sorry for them. Governments and aid agencies are rushing relief to the region, and millions of dollars of donations have already been given, some from our own congregation through our special offering for Haiti relief.
In the midst of the reports of destruction and despair I had an experience that gave me a different perspective on those ‘poor’ Haitian people. I was in Orlando for the day with a friend who needed to use the Internet briefly to report to his office. We went to the public library, to which I had a card from previous days and where they had multiple computers that were open to the patrons. I went to the service desk and explained that I had forgotten my card but would like to use the Internet for a moment. They took my driver’s license and found that I did, indeed, have a library card, but that it had expired. They wanted proof that I was still a property owner in the area—a tax or utility bill, which I did not have with me. They politely, but firmly, told me that I could not log on to the Internet until I had brought in the proper paperwork to update my information with them.
Since communicating with his work was imperative, my friend and I set out to find an Internet Café or somewhere else to find a computer. Just as we drove around the corner, we saw a sign that read “Computers and Internet.” I pulled into a parking space and we walked toward the doorway, which was right next to a Caribbean market with some of the colorful locals hanging around outside—people that were different enough from our usual Spring Hill crowd that I’m sure many would have thought twice about leaving the safety of their car! But my experience with third world people from Egypt to Jamaica has made me either fearless or foolish, and we marched right in. Entering the premises we found the place a wreck, computers and miscellaneous computer parts stacked in disarray from the floor to the ceiling on every conceivable shelf. The store itself was no bigger than a broad hallway and put me in the mind of many I had encountered in poorer nations. There, in the midst of the mess, sat a lone man in front of a laptop. His dark skin made his white teeth seem all the brighter as he smiled at us. “Is there a computer in here hooked up to the Internet that we could use for a couple of minutes?” I asked boldly. By this time another similar-looking man had followed us into the store from outside and had perched himself amid the chaos across from us.
“If you give me a moment, I think I can help you out,” said the man at the computer in a distinctive Caribbean accent. In no time he got up from his seat and said, “You can sit here. It’s ready now.”
As my friend logged onto his website, I heard the two men speaking Creole to one another. My French background enabled me to understand a word here and there. “Are you from Haiti?” I asked. When they answered affirmatively, I asked whether they had family members in trouble back home. They said that they had not yet heard from some of them, but were waiting for a word. By that time my friend had logged off, his taks finished. “What do we owe you?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing,” replied the owner. “I’m glad to help.” I left the store amazed as I compared my two most recent experiences with people—the one in the library and the other in the little shop. The library, funded by the government and taxes, wanted paperwork before they would even let me near a computer—and they had more information on me than they needed: name, address, phone numbers, driver’s license number, card number, probably even Social Security number! Still it was not enough. The Haitian shop owner, on the other hand, knew nothing about us, except that we needed to use a computer for a minute. And he moved away from the one Internet connection in the little store to let us use his own laptop! And that for no charge at all! And although he probably could have used some money to help out, if not for himself, for family in his homeland; we could not bring ourselves to lessen his gifts of hospitality and kindness by offering him any.
The whole experience made me wonder again who the “poor” in the world really are. It is not the poverty-stricken and destitute who are this world’s poor; it is those who, in spite of their material wealth and financial security, are so trapped in routines, so stuck in rules, so blind to basic human kindness that they can’t even dare to risk helping others. We have much to learn from those we consider “charity cases” in this world. As you give with generous hearts to help alleviate the suffering of the Haitians in this season of their need, never give with a condescending spirit; for when the last trumpet has sounded and we all stand before the Judgment Seat, it is more like we, than they, who will stand most in need of God’s grace.
With affection for all of you, Pastor Carlan

January

Dear People of faith,
Have you ever wondered why we begin our new calendar year in January? Originally January (named after the Roman god, Janus) was the eleventh month of the year. March was the first month of early Roman calendars; hence September was the 7th month, October the 8th; November the 9th; and December the 10th (corresponding to prefixes we know: septa, octa, nova, and deca); that’s also why we add the extra day every leap year at the end of February (which was originally the end of the year). In 153 B.C. the Roman Senate declared January 1st to be the first day of the calendar year (Not a lot has changed in 2,000 years—the government is still changing our lives!). Janus was a two-faced god, with one face looking in one direction, and the other in the opposite direction. He was a fitting god for the change of years—looking back at the previous one to evaluate the past and looking forward to the next year to plan for the future. For us at Spring Hill UCC 2009 was a wonderful year, blessed by God in many ways: new members, new enthusiasm, new missions, and new visions. The coming year promises to be even more exciting. All our Council Team Leaders have pledged to continue to lead us and we have new financial officers ready to be elected at the Annual Meeting. We have stable finances and many new and creative people helping us to grow. Every Sunday we have new people visiting our worship services for the first time. With so many blessings brought to us by God, we need to pray for the wisdom to use them.
There is something else to be noted about beginning a new year. For us in the church New Year’s Day falls in the midst of the Christmas season (the 12 days from December 25th to January 5th). We Christians start our new year with thoughts of Jesus’ birth on our minds and melodies of Christmas carols in our heads. Christ’s birth sets before us two important truths as we start afresh: (1) the love God made known in the Incarnation (God becoming flesh); and (2) our own sinfulness, which is the reason for Jesus’ birth in the first place—he came as Savior. While others look back over their lives and resolve by sheer willpower to do better in the new year (a promise which often doesn’t work out too well!), we who know Jesus really only have one “resolution” to make—that of yielding our lives to God anew. When we humble ourselves—our thoughts and plans, our attitudes and emotions, our desires and our relationships —even our pain and worry; then we will be able to live fuller and more peaceful lives. Instead of setting yourselves up for failure by making resolutions that you have never been able to keep in the past, why not rely on God’s guidance and the power of the Holy Spirit to help you be what you need to be and do what you need to do? Then you won’t end up feeling guilty and depressed in February because you’ve broken your promises to yourselves made in January!
This New Years may we all pledge to let God’s love woo us to a more beautiful 2010. As Paul wrote in Philippians 1:6: We can be confident that “the One who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” To that end I pray for you and ask your prayers for me.
With affection,
Pastor Carlan