From the Pastor:  MONDAY MORNING, February 1, 2010 

A FEW WORDS

Our response to the Haiti and Malawi earthquakes has been very good during January with gifts totaling more than $4,000 for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance ($3,528 for Haiti and $305 for Malawi).  Thank you for your generosity!  A special word of appreciation goes to Lucille Rinehart (Chair of the Missions & Denominational Relations Committee) for coordinating our response and securing the Session’s approval to receive these special offerings.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

Last Sunday (January 24, 2010) I ended my sermon with these words, and I share them with you for your thought and reflection:

I don’t know why it is, but I get so caught up in myself, in my world, in my life, and in my problems that it takes something like Haiti or Malawi or a challenging time in the life of the church to wake me up and prompt me to remember what Christianity is all about.  And it makes me feel guilty that it takes the hardship and tragedy and disaster of other people to break through the walls we erect all around us in order to show us what life “with” God “in” Christ is all about.

Haiti!  Can any of us possibly imagine what those people are going through?  And yet 8 years ago in February 2002 I went to Haiti on a Mission Trip and I saw the poverty and the Voodoo and the challenges those people face every day.  Yet I saw it from the security of a warm and modern guest house on a Missionary Compound with all the conveniences we Americans have come to enjoy and to expect.

But I have never forgotten, and I never will forget, the words shared by Presbyterian missionary Rodney Babe about why he was there.  And as far as I know he is still there today!  Quoting from the autobiography of Chet Bitterman, a Wycliffe Bible translator who was martyred in Bogota, Colombia in 1981, Babe mentioned a quotation from Jim Elliot (himself martyred at age 29 in Ecuador in 1956) which had served as Bitterman’s inspiration for becoming a missionary.  Wrote Elliot:  “He is no fool who gives away what he cannot keep for that which he will never lose.”

Something To Think About!

God’s Grace and Peace to you!

Samuel P. Warner, Pastor

First Presbyterian Church