Our First and Our Best

The following message was given in the Wheatland Parish on January 15, 2012.  The scripture was Genesis 4:1-17.

               We are in the second week of our sermon series called “In the Beginning”, where we’re looking at some of the stories from the first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis.  Today, we’re going to look at the story of Cain and Abel.

           

The reason I chose this story to preach on is that, even though I’ve heard this story ever since I was a little kid in Sunday school, I don’t know that I’ve ever thought about it all that much.  I know the facts, and many of you probably do, too.  Cain and Abel are brothers, they both bring an offering to God, God likes Abel’s gift but not Cain’s, Cain gets mad and kills Abel, God finds out about it, and Cain is punished.  It seems like that last part is the part we always focus on, the murder and the punishment.

           

Is that really why that story’s in the Bible?  What are we supposed to learn from that?  I guess we learn that murder is wrong, but that seems kind of obvious.  Why else is the story there?  I don’t know that I’ve ever really thought about it.  Maybe you’ve never thought about it, either.  So, today, we’re going to think about it and try to figure out what we’re supposed to learn from the story of Cain and Abel.

           

One of the things we need to look at is why God liked Abel’s gift and not Cain’s.  After all, they both gave to God from what they had.  Abel kept flocks, and gave God some of his herd.  Cain worked the soil, and gave God some of his crops.  Seems like they both gave God from what they had.

           

Listen, though, to how those gifts are described.  We’re told that Cain gave “some” of the fruits of the soil to God.  We’re not told whether those fruits were good, bad, or indifferent, nor are we told how much Cain gave.  We’re just told that he gave “some”.  When it comes to Abel, though, we’re told that he gave “the fat portions from the firstborn of his flock.”  In other words, Abel gave did not just choose something at random to give God.  Abel gave God the first and the best of what he had.  That’s why God liked Abel’s gift but not Cain’s.

           

That’s a lesson for us right there, before we even get to the rest of the story.  What do we give as an offering to God?  Do we give the first and the best of what we have?  Or do we just give “some”, just kind of whatever we feel like giving?  And when we do, what reaction do we expect God to have?  Do we expect God to like our gifts when we just give “some”, rather than giving our first and our best?  This story tells us that’s not how it works.  God deserves more than just whatever we feel like giving.  God deserves our first and our best, and God does not like it when we try to get by with less.

Now, notice that God does not say that Cain sinned by trying to get by with less than the first and the best.  God did not punish Cain for what he did, at this point.  On the other hand, God did not bless Cain for it, either.  What God did was give Cain a warning.  God said that what Cain did was not right, and warned him that he was headed in the wrong direction.  God said, “If you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” 

Think about that.  It’s not that every time we fail to do right we commit a sin for which God is going to punish us.  What happens, though, is that every time we fail to do right, we lose out on a chance for God’s blessings, and we give sin an opening.  We start heading in the wrong direction, and that give sin a chance to take us over.

That’s what God said Cain was doing when he tried to get by with giving God less than the first and the best.  That’s what God says we do, too, when we try to get by with giving God less than our first and our best.  It’s not that every time we do that, we commit a sin for which God will punish us.  It’s that every time we fail to give God our best, we lose a chance for God’s blessings, and instead we give sin a chance to take over.  In other words, if we don’t give God our first and our best, we’re hurting ourselves.

That does not just apply to material things, of course.  It applies to everything.  Every time we fail to give God our first and our best, whether it’s our money, our time, our talents, or anything else, we lose a chance to gain God’s blessings.  We give sin an opening to come into our lives.  We fail to please God, but that’s not really the point.  The point is that we hurt ourselves.

We never think about it that way, do we?  When we try to get by with giving God less than our best, we never think of it as hurting ourselves.  Usually when we do that, it’s because we want to keep our possession and our time and so forth to ourselves, or because we don’t trust God enough to give God our first and our best, or because we’re too lazy to do it, or something like that.  We think, on some level, that we’ll somehow be better off if we keep things to ourselves rather than giving them to God.

That’s probably what Cain thought, don’t you think?  Cain thought he’d be better off in some way if he just gave “some” of what he’d raised to God, rather than giving God the first and the best.  Instead, it turned out to be exactly the other way around.  Abel received God’s blessing for giving God the first and the best, while Cain gave sin a chance to take over his life.

We know, of course, that that’s exactly what happened.  Cain did not listen to God’s warning.  Cain did not resolve that, from now on, he was going to give God his first and his best, the way God wanted him to do.  Instead, Cain let sin take advantage of the opening he had given it.  He felt envy and resentment at his brother Abel, and so he killed him.

Notice how God reacts to that.  God does not instantly condemn Cain.  Instead, God asks him, “Where is your brother, Abel?”

Did you ever wonder why God asked Cain that?  It’s not because God did not know the answer, of course.  In fact, just two verses later, God tells Cain that he knows the answer.  I think what God was doing was giving Cain another chance.  God had already given him one chance, when God warned him about sin crouching at his door.  Now, God gives him another chance, a chance to confess what he’d done and ask for forgiveness for it.

It was only when Cain failed to take advantage of that chance that God sent Cain out of Eden.  Notice, though, that even then God does not condemn Cain.  God makes Cain accept the consequences of his actions, but that’s all. God does not kill Cain.  In fact, God gives Cain divine protection by putting a mark on him to make sure no one will kill him.

                Think of all the chances Cain had to ask God’s forgiveness, to get on the right path, and to receive God’s blessings.  After he fails to give God the first and the best, God gives him another chance, along with a warning.  Even after Cain kills Abel, God still gives him a chance to confess what he did and ask for forgiveness.  In fact, even after God sends Cain out of Eden, we’re not told that God condemned Cain to hell or anything.  In fact, God still gives him divine protection.  I have to think that, even at that point, Cain could have asked for forgiveness from God.

For all we know, maybe he did.  We don’t know what happened to Cain after that.  We know he went to the land of Nod, east of Eden, that he had a wife, and that they had at least one child.  We’re told that, at the time his child was born, Cain was building a city.  That’s it.  We don’t hear about Cain again.  It’s entirely possible that Cain eventually did ask for and receive forgiveness from God, that he got back on the right path, and that he started giving God his first and his best.  He still had to deal with consequences of his actions, but he may have received further blessings from God at some point in his life.  In fact, just the fact that he had a wife and son may be evidence that he received some of God’s blessings.

You see, the story of Cain and Abel is not a story of crime and punishment.  It’s a story of sin and forgiveness.  It’s a story of what God asks of us, what happens when we don’t give it to God, and how, no matter what we do, we can always receive another chance.

God asks for our first and our best, not just in material possessions, but in everything.  God asks us to dedicate our lives to God, regardless of what we may do for a living.  When we don’t do that, we only hurt ourselves, not because God will punish us but because we don’t get the blessings from God that we might otherwise get.

                God is always willing to give us another chance, though.  We get warnings, and we get chances to confess.  Sometimes, we have to accept the consequences of our actions.  Even when we fail to change, and even when we have to accept those consequences, God does not condemn us.  Instead, God still protects us and is willing to give us another chance.  When we take advantage of that chance, we can still receive God’s blessings.

Every day, we get another opportunity to take advantage of that chance.  At some point, though, our days will come to an end, and none of us knows when that will be.  That’s why we need to take advantage of that chance now, today.

Let’s not deprive ourselves of God’s blessings any more.  Let’s dedicate ourselves to God in everything we do.  Let’s give God our first and our best.

Wait For the Lord

The following message was given at the Oahe Manor communion service on January 12, 2012.  The scripture was Psalm 27.

             That is such a beautiful psalm.  All I want to do this afternoon is just talk a little bit about what these words mean.

           

The psalm starts with a wonderful statement of faith.  The psalmist says the Lord is his light and his salvation, the stronghold of his life.  Because of that, he does not have to be afraid of anyone.  Evildoers, adversaries, foes; even if an army camps around him and goes to war against him, he’s not going to be afraid.  In fact, he’s going to be confident.

           

That’s a pretty amazing faith, is it not?  Some of you have loved ones who’ve been to war or who are there now.  I’ll bet those words have extra meaning for you.  I’ve never known what it’s like to have an army actually camped around you and ready to go to war against you, and I hope I never do, but I’m sure it has to be a pretty scary feeling.  It takes a lot to be confident in that situation.

           

But you know, we have a lot of reasons to fear other than actually being at war.  We fear losing our health.  We fear our loved ones losing their health.  We fear not feeling needed.  We fear not being able to help the people who are closest to us.  Those and lots of other fears can prey on our minds.  When they do, it can feel like our adversaries and foes have surrounded us.  In fact, in some ways, it can feel worse, because there’s no tangible enemy we can fight.  There’s nobody we can hit and nobody we can get mad at.  It can be a really frustrating situation.

           

How do we get rid of that fear and frustration?  By putting our trust in God.  That’s what the psalmist did.  He said that the only thing he wants is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of his life.  All he wants is to see the beauty of the Lord and be able to find out more about God.

           

The psalmist knows what we need to know:  that God will take care of us.  When we have troubles, even serious troubles, God will not leave us to face those things by ourselves.  God will protect us. 

What makes that hard to do is that nothing God does ever comes on our time schedule.  When we’re in trouble, we want help now, not later.  When we’re afraid, we want God to come to our rescue today, not tomorrow or next week or next month.  When we ask for God’s protection, we want to see something happen right away.

           

The psalmist wants that, too.  He pleads with God to not hide God’s face from him.  He begs God not to cast him off or forsake him.  The psalmist understands our impatience, because he feels it, too.

           

Look, though, at what the psalmist ultimately says.  He’s willing to do whatever it takes to get God to help.  He’s going to “seek God’s face.”  In other words, he’s going to look for God.  He’s going to try to find God.  He’s going to do whatever he has to do, and go wherever he has to go, to find God so he can get God’s protection and help.

           

Then look at what the psalmist asks God for.  He asks God to “teach me your way, O Lord.”

           

Let’s talk about that, because it seems to me it’s another incredible statement of faith.  To be in a state of fear, to feel surrounded by enemies, and yet be able to go to God and simply say, “God, teach me your way.”

           

What that says is that when we’re in trouble, when we feel fear, we should not run away.  Instead, we should run to God.  Instead of asking God to bail us out, though, we should simply submit ourselves to God’s will.  “Teach me your way, O Lord.”  God, show me where you want me to go.  Show me what you want me to do.  Then, God, give me the ability to do it.

           

Then, God, please do something else.  Two things, actually.  One, give me the courage to do what you want me to do, and two, give me the patience and the trust to know that if I do what I’m supposed to do, you’ll do what you’re supposed to do.  “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord.”

           

Life can be hard sometimes.  It can give us lots of reasons to be afraid.  That’s true when we’re eight, when we’re forty-eight, and when we’re eighty-eight.  The things we’re afraid of change, but we never run out of them.  We always have adversaries and foes of one kind or another.

God does not promise to keep us from trouble.  God does, however, promise to be with us through those troubles.  If we run to God, if we submit ourselves to God’s will, if we trust both in God’s power and in God’s timing, we can be confident, just like the psalmist was.  We can be strong.  We can take courage.  And we can wait for the Lord.

Taking Care of Ourselves

                As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’m fifty-three years old.  That’s not old, exactly, but it’s certainly not young, either.  It’s an age at which a lot of people start to slow down a little bit. 

I’m find that’s not the case with me.  If anything, I seem to speeding up.  I find myself working harder, being more active, and doing more stuff now than I did ten or twenty years ago.

Part of that, of course, is that I started with a pretty low bar.  As my parents could tell you, when I was a kid I was not terribly active.  There were few things I loved more than having nothing to do and having all day to do it in.  Mom and Dad were constantly after me to go mow the yard, or chop musk thistles, or practice the piano, or just to get out and do something.  Playing Strat-O-Matic baseball for hours obviously did not qualify as “something”.

The main thing to which I attribute my current level of activity is that I have now found a vocation in which I enjoy almost everything I do (filling out conference reports excepted).  When you enjoy the things you do, they don’t seem like work.  They still involve effort, of course, and they take time.  That’s one of my biggest problems these days:  I never seem to have the time to do all the things I want to do, especially with three churches in three communities.

The temptation, then, is to constantly try to do more and more and more.  That’s good up to a point, but only up to a point.  One of the things I’m learning is that constant activity is really no better than constant inactivity.  While I’d love to be able to do more and more and more, I have to make sure I take care of myself, too.  If I’m not healthy in mind, body, and spirit, I’m not going to be able to help others.  That’s advice I’ve given to quite a few people over the years, but sometimes I forget to take it myself.

What that means is that, no matter how busy we get, we’ve got to take the time to do things that will keep us healthy.  We need to take time to get some exercise.  We need to take time to eat properly.  We need to take time to get enough rest.  If we don’t do those things, our bodies are going to rebel against us.  We don’t want that to happen.

                It also means that we need to take the time to let our minds wander a little bit.  I’m not saying we need to take two weeks to go meditate somewhere.  We do need to find a few minutes in our day to just let our minds go wherever they want to go, rather than just being focused on the here and now. 

When we’re constantly running here, running there, doing this, doing that, we don’t have the time to really think.  We don’t have the time to make plans that go beyond this week.  We don’t have time to think about anything but the things we have to do.  We start to get edgy and easily annoyed.  Also, we don’t have time to be creative.  We know that God is creative, and since we’re created in God’s image, that means God wants us to be creative, too.  We can’t do that if we’re engaged in constant activity with no time to think.

I hope you all enjoy what you do as much as I enjoy what I do.  No matter how much you enjoy it, though, make sure you take the time to take care of yourself.  When we do that, we are much better able to serve God and be the people God wants us to be.

Risk and Beauty

            Sunday morning, at about 7:30, as I was driving to Onida for our worship service, I saw something amazing.  I looked to the west, and there was a big, full, orange moon near the horizon, just about to set.  Then, I looked to the east, and there was the beautiful glow of the sun shortly before sunrise. 

It was an incredibly beautiful sight.  It reminded me again of how much beauty there is in God’s world.  Whenever I think about that, it occurs to me how much God must enjoy the act of creating. 

When you enjoy creating something, when you have fun doing it, that’s when you really let your creative juices flow.  You don’t try to just create something that’s functional, you try to create something that will be beautiful.  You don’t just create something that will get the job done, you create something that people will really like and enjoy.

            To create something like that, though, you have to take some chances.  If you want to create something beautiful, you can’t just take the easy way out.  You can’t just settle for things that will work.  Instead, you have to think, “What if I did this?  What would happen if I did that?  Would it work to do it this way instead of that way?”  To create something beautiful you can’t just play it safe.  You have to take some risks.

            I wonder if that could be part of the reason God created humans with intelligence and with free will.  That wasn’t the easy way out, after all.  God could’ve created us in a much more functional way.  God could’ve created us to just act on instinct, the way animals do.  God could’ve created us in such a way that we would always love each other and do what’s right.  Instead, God created us in such a way that we have the ability to make choices for ourselves.  That, of course, includes the ability to make wrong choices, which we all do far more times than we realize or would like to admit.

            God knew that was the risky way to do it.  God knew that was not playing it safe.  God knew there were times we’d make wrong choices.  God knew there were times we’d mess things up.  Still, God did it that way anyway.

            I think maybe part of the reason God did it that way is that God did not want to just create us in a way that would be functional.  God wanted to create us in a way that would be beautiful.  That meant that God had to take some risks.  If we were just creatures of instinct, if we had no choice but to do what’s right, humans and human society might be much more functional than it is now.  But it would not be as beautiful.

            God did not just create a functional world.  God created a beautiful world.  God did not just create functional people.  God created beautiful people.  Even when we make mistakes, even when we make bad choices, we’re still beautiful people living in a beautiful world.  God created it that way, and God enjoyed creating it that way.  After all, it was God who said creation is good.  If that what God says, who are we to argue?

God Did It, and It's Good

The following message was given in the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, January 8, 2012.  The scripture was Genesis 1:1-2:4.

Even though last Sunday was New Year’s Day, in some ways this really feels like the first Sunday of the new year.  After all, New Year’s Day is still part of “the holidays”:  the Christmas decorations were still up, we still lit the advent candles, we still were talking about the baby in the manger.  Today, though, the Christmas decorations are put away, all the company has gone home, everybody went back to work or to school.  Now we know that we really are into a new year.

           

A new year is a chance for a new start, a new beginning.  So, our first sermon series of the new year is called “In the Beginning”.  In this sermon series, we’re going to look at some of the stories from the book of Genesis.

           

It’s not going to be all the stories from the book of Genesis.  If we did that, we’d still be doing this sermon series in June.  If your favorite story from Genesis gets left out, well, maybe I’ll do a similar sermon series next year.  There’s certainly enough material there.  We’re going to start, though, with the very first chapter of the Bible, the story of creation.

           

Now, as soon as we start talking about creation, we jump into an old controversy.  Are we supposed to take the story of creation literally?  Are Christians required to believe that God created the world in exactly six days, no more and no less, and that God created everything just as it exists today?  Or, can we believe in what current scientific theories tell us?  Can we be Christians and still believe in things like evolution and the big bang theory?

           

Those of you who were here last week may remember that, when we were talking about the wise men, we talked about how they used the science of their time to figure out when and where the savior had been born.  We also talked about how God can stand up to scientific scrutiny, because good science is a search for the truth and God has no reason to fear a search for the truth.  After all, God is truth.

           

We also talked last week about how we will never come up with conclusive, one hundred percent, undeniable proof that God exists, that Jesus is the Savior, that the Holy Spirit acts in our lives, or anything else.  We can always come up with a way to doubt and to explain things away if that’s our goal. 

Well, the same thing could be said of scientific inquiry, too.  Science can never prove things with one hundred percent certainty, either.  It can come close, sometimes.  Certainly, there are things that science has proven with enough certainty that we rely on them every day of our lives, whether we realize it or not.  Still, good scientists know that nothing is ever one hundred percent certain.  Everything we learn simply raises more questions, and sometimes we think we know the truth only to find out that we don’t.  That’s why we say that science is a search for the truth:  because searching for truth is a never-ending job.

I think, though, that when we in the church get bogged down in questions about creationism and evolution and intelligent design and all that, we miss the point of why the story of creation is in the Bible in the first place.  The Bible was not written to be a science textbook.  The book of Genesis was written thousands of years ago, and it was originally written for people who had no conception of other planets or galaxies or universes or anything else.

Could God have created the world and everything in it six days?  Of course.  God is all powerful.  God can do anything God chooses to do.  God could’ve created the world and everything in it in six seconds if God had chosen to do so.

The thing is, though, that whether God created the world in six seconds or six days or six million years is not the point.  The creation story is not in the Bible to tell us specifically that God created the world in six days.  The creation story is in the Bible to tell us that God created the world.

From a religious standpoint, that’s really all we need to know.  After all, that’s a pretty awesome achievement, is it not?  Creating the sun and the moon and the stars and the planets and everything else out of nothing?  Creating plants and animals and fish and insects and humans out of nothing?  That’s a pretty big deal.  How God did that or how long it took or anything else is not the point.  The point is that God did it.  The point is that nothing would exist without God.

If God created the world and everything in it exactly as it exists now in six days, that’d be pretty awesome.  If God created the world and everything in it over thousands or millions of years using a big bang and evolution and stuff, well, that’d be pretty awesome, too.  In fact, in some ways, that’d be even more awesome.  Think of all the things God would’ve had to work out in advance to do it that way.  Just creating it as it is would’ve been easier, really.  Working out a system where things evolved and changed and grew over millions of years and eventually developed intelligence, well, that’s beyond comprehension.  That’s incredible.

Think of how long scientists have been trying to create intelligent life, and we’re not even close yet.  Here’s the other thing, if humans ever do create intelligent life, it still won’t be anywhere near as awesome as what God did, because if we ever did it, we’d be doing it by starting with the materials God gave us.  God started from scratch.  God did it with nothing.  It’s sort of like the old joke.  A scientist is talking to God and bets God that the scientist can create life without God’s help.  God asks, “How are you going to do that?”  The scientist says, “Well, I start with this dirt here…” and God says, “Hey, wait a minute.  That’s cheating.  Go create your own dirt.”

God created the dirt.  God created the chemicals.  God created the intelligence that we have that even allows us to try to understand the world.  God created it all.  It all comes from God.

                Here’s one more thing that the creation story teaches us.  This is another reason getting bogged down in debates about evolution and a big bang and stuff misses the point for us as Christians.  When we look at the creation story that way, we forget about a very important verse.  It says, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”

That’s a verse that its easy for us, as Christians, to miss.  There are a lot of times when we look at the world and it does not seem very good to us.  We see wars, we see hunger, we see abuse, we see immorality, we see all sorts of things that don’t seem very good at all. 

God sees all that, too, of course.  Yet, God still says the world is very good.  I think the reason God says that is that God sees the potential for good in everyone and everything.  God knows that each one of us sins.  God sees all the times that each one of falls short of what God created us to be.  Yet, God also sees all the times when we get it right.  God sees all the times when we actually do show love to each other.  God sees all the times when we really do put others ahead of ourselves.  God sees what we are, but God also sees what we can be.

God sees something else, too.  God sees how it’s all going to end.  You know, there’s been a lot of talk about the ancient Mayans supposedly predicting that the world is going to end in 2012.  I suppose it’s possible that’s true.  After all, Jesus told us that only God knows when the end is going to come.  I guess there’s no reason we know of that it could not come in 2012, just as there was no reason we know of that it could not have come in 2011 or 2010.

When we think of the end of the world, we tend to think of it as a tragic, cataclysmic thing.  There are ways in which it probably will be.  If you’ve ever read the book of Revelation, you know there’s a lot of stuff that’s supposed to happen before the world ends. 

Here’s the thing, though.  Whenever the end of the world comes, God will create it.  Just as God created the beginning of the world, God will create the end of the world, too.  Just as God’s creation was very good in the beginning, God’s creation in the end will be very good, too.  Any time God is involved in something, it has to be very good.  No matter how much we humans may get in the way, no matter how hard we humans try to mess it up, we cannot take away from God’s goodness.  God’s creation was very good in the beginning, it is very good now, and it will be very good at the end.  God’s creation is very good because God is very good.  Anything created by a very good God has to be very good.  That includes each one of you.  It includes me, too.

People have been arguing about when and how the world was created since before I can remember.  We’ll probably still be arguing about it long after I’m gone.  From a religious standpoint, though, the first thing we need to know about creation is that whenever and however it happened, God did it.  The second thing we need to know about creation is that, because God created it, it’s good.  The third thing we need to know about creation is that, no matter how badly we humans mess up, God’s creation will always be good.  The last thing we need to know about creation is that, whenever and however it ends, that will be good, too, because everything God does is good.

                There’s nothing wrong with trying to find out more, but those are the things we need to know.  If we know those things, our faith can handle whatever science may reveal to us.

New Year's Every Day

The following appeared in the January issue of the Wheatland Parish newsletter.

            Did you ever wonder why we celebrate the new year?

            It’s not like there’s anything that special about January 1^st, really.  We don’t mark anything in particular with it.  It’s not the anniversary of anything.  There’s no person or group of people that we honor with it.  There’s no reason to start the new year on January 1^st.  We could as easily start the new year in April or September.  I’m sure there’s some historical reason why January was chosen for the new year, but I also suspect that it was largely an arbitrary decision.

            From a practical standpoint, all a new year does is provide us with a more practical way of keeping track of things.  We have to start over again with counting months at some point, or we’d be in month number 24,133.  There’s no reason to have a big party just because we now write a “one” for the month and add one to the number of the year.  Yet, we do, and we have for a lot longer than I can remember.  Why?

            I think a lot of it is that the new year symbolizes something for us.  A new year symbolizes a chance to start over again.  It’s a chance to do things differently from the way we’ve done them in the past.  That’s why we make New Year’s Resolutions, after all.  The new year symbolizes a chance to stop doing the things we know we should not do, and to start doing the things we know we should do.  We look at the new year as a chance to be the people we really want to be, rather than the people we actually are.

            That’s okay.  In fact, there are ways in which it’s a good thing.  Sometimes we need some incentive to make changes in our lives.  If a new year provides us with that incentive, there’s nothing wrong with that.

            What we need to remember, though, is that the chance to change ourselves is available to us all year round.  That’s one of the most incredible things about the sacrifice Jesus made for us.  The forgiveness that faith in Jesus offers us is not something that only happens once a year.  That forgiveness is available to us every day.  All we need to do is believe in Jesus as our Savior and sincerely ask for forgiveness.  If we come to Jesus with honest hearts and with a real desire to change, Jesus will give us forgiveness and will help us change.

            That does not mean that we’ll suddenly become perfect people.  There has not been a perfect person on earth since Jesus was here, and there will not be a perfect person on earth until Jesus comes back.  What it means, though, is that our attitude will change.  Our state of mind will change.  We will change.  Even though we will still make mistakes, we’ll be different people.  We’ll be better people.  We’ll be God’s people.

            It’s wonderful to celebrate the new year.  Remember, though, that we can have a new year any time.  All we need to do is believe in Jesus as our Savior and sincerely ask for forgiveness.  Any day that we do that can be New Year’s Day.

Quotes From My Favorite Author (Part 2)

            This is my first blog post of the new year.  I probably should write something very bold and forward-looking.  The thing is, though, that even though it’s January 2, it’s still kind of a holiday.  I mean, there’s no mail today, the banks are closed, the Rose Parade and the bowl games are all today.  This just doesn’t feel like a day for a bold, forward-looking blog.

            So, instead, I’m going to finish my look back at things I’ve said in 2011.  One of the things I try to do on facebook is come up with some clever ways to invite people to church.  So, here are some of my top church advertisements on facebook for 2011:

--Lots of schools are having homecoming—why not come home to church?  The United Methodist Churches of the Wheatland Parish would love to welcome you.

--He once read the entire Bible—including the Apocrypha—in ten minutes.  He once performed a baptism and a funeral—at the same time.  He is…the Most Interesting Pastor in the World.  “I don’t always preach sermons, but when I do, I preach in the United Methodist Churches of the Wheatland Parish.  Stay faithful, my friends.”

--GODCO.  A fifteen minute sermon could save fifteen percent or more of your soul.

--Occupy the United Methodist Church!  Rallies Sunday in Onida at 8:30, Agar at 9:30, and Gettysburg at 11:00.

--The Wheatland Parish invites you to experience worship in 4G:  Grace, Guidance, Gratitude, and Glory.

            --Get to a better state:   a state of grace.

--Wheatland Parish Doorbusters’ Special!  Free grace for our first two hundred customers!  Doors open Sunday in Onida at 8:30, Agar at 9:30, and Gettysburg at 11:00.  Don’t miss it!

--Have a December to Remember with the United Methodist Churches of the Wheatland Parish.  Lexus not included.

--The holidays are a time to get re-acquainted with old friends, so why not come to Jesus’ house?  He’d love to see you again.

            I hope you all have a wonderful and blessed new year.  And it is true:  the United Methodist Churches of the Wheatland Parish would love to welcome you.  Why not make a New Year’s Resolution to get closer to God in 2012?