11/28/12

Dear Family of faith, Have you bought your ticket for the Powerball Lottery drawing tonight? It’s worth more than half a BILLION dollars! I’m hoping someone from the congregation comes up with the winning ticket and drops a few measly thousand in Sunday’s offering plate to pay off our $171,000 mortgage! Seriously, though, what would you do with so much money? Life as you know it would certainly end...on the other hand, wouldn’t it be nice to help out thousands of people? Just give me a call if you come up with right numbers I have a few projects..... It hardly seems possible but it’s been less than a week since we had our church Thanksgiving Dinner. It was a big success—everything from the turkey and stuffing to the bourbon sweet potatoes and home-made pies. A big thanks to Jill, who organized the whole thing, and her right hand man, Dave Boylan, a chef who just joined the church a month ago. (If you ever want to know how to use a 5-gallon paint stirrer and a drill to mash a potful of potatoes, talk to Dave! He also fixed our broken oven while he was at it!) Many others spent many hours preparing food and cleaning up, and I am grateful for all of them. I found out that Jack Hogan can fold some pretty cool napkin shapes, too! We prayed together, ate together, played together, and sang together. We were a church family together. The donations covered the expenses and more. We gave more than $200 of excess money to the Community Outreach Fund. The madness of Black Friday crept into Thanksgiving Day in a big way this year. It’s such a little thing with big consequences—the only truly non-commercial holiday is being subtly stolen from us; and we will pay a price in the end—the loss of family bonding. I got to pondering what really makes people happy, especially in light of all the nice things available to buy. I was amused to remember that most kids would prefer playing with empty boxes than the newest $100-toy that Walmart advertises. What we really need is to practice being grateful for the basic blessings of life. I thought about that one night as I lay in bed, delighting in a firm mattress, a soft pillow, and a warm comforter. As one who had been out already this season to Tampa, handing out blankets to the homeless; I considered it a special blessing to have a warm bed. I felt like the kid in the cardboard box—satisfied with and grateful for simple things, and it made me see so many of my life’s other blessings. When you read this letter, pledge to think about such things when you have a moment, if only before you fall asleep tonight! This morning I brought my wasp spray to church and ‘took down’ five huge and industrious stinger-tailed insects from just outside our Augustine Road entrance. I was successful in immobilizing them and stopping them from creating a threatening nest, which they had decided yesterday should be built on our property. As I pushed them carefully off the sidewalk into the garden, I felt a tinge of sadness. I would really have liked to talk them into moving on their own, since they had done nothing to me to deserve their ugly fate; but I just couldn’t see where saying, “Now waspies, you’ve got to move this project somewhere else!” was going to have much effect—other than maybe a couple of stings! Even so, I felt somehow that I had violated God’s order of things. In the perfect world everyone gets along—even the animals. That’s a vision we have for a future time—where even people and wasps can live side by side. It’s what the Scriptures call “the new heaven and the new earth.” It’s something to look forward to, isn’t it? In the meanwhile, it’s okay to feel bad about hurting even the smallest of God’s creatures. I hope your week goes wonderfully and that I see you in worship on Sunday. With affection, Pastor Carlan