What the Mocking Bird Sang

Thank you, youth of New Hope. You led us in worship very well last Sunday. God bless you. We love you and look forward to having you lead us in worship again. Thank you Rachael Potter, Sarah Potter, Caleb Hinkle, Jaren Ford-Jones, and Toren Ford-Jones. Our thanks to your leaders: Leesa Holloway and Fred Griffith.

I am grateful to all of you who gave your time and shared your talents so readily at New Hope’s first Art Walk and Bake Sale last Sunday afternoon. Elaine Hardy conceived the idea, then, she and Kathy Stryker did a fine job of recruiting participants and organizing the event. The bake sale contributed $350 toward the Building Fund. We enjoyed being able to share our talents. We learned about each other. Some of you gave us a taste of your art or provided for us by means of your baking skills. My major contribution was buying and eating the baked goods. Thanks to all of you for your hard work.

Last Sunday morning there was a mocking bird up on at the peak of the roof of the A-Frame. That bird was singing loudly at 8:15, and I still heard him two and a half hours later as we entered worship.

According to what I have read on the Internet, male mocking birds are the most vocal. The singer last Sunday may have been a lonely bachelor looking for a mate. Maybe. But I heard that bird singing his heart out for us about what God is doing in New Hope. He was singing about our willingness to lay down our lives for one another, our desire to learn and grow together. He was singing about people coming forward at New Hope and saying, “I would like to see this ministry in our church and here is what I am willing to do to make it happen.” The mocking bird was not singing about how lonely he was. He was singing about how much God is blessing us. We are growing in every way you can measure growth: new believers in Christ, new members, new spiritual insights, dreams of the future, babies and toddlers, lives being changed toward Christ-likeness. That’s what I heard anyway.

It’s considered a sin to kill a mockingbird. Why? As Harper Lee says in To Kill a Mockingbird, “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

Resurrection Celebration

Henri Nouwen wrote a meditation called “Smiles Breaking Through Tears.” Many people mourning the death of a loved one have found this to be a healing image.

“Dying is a gradual diminishing and final vanishing over the horizon of life. When we watch a sailboat leaving port and moving toward the horizon, it becomes smaller and smaller until we can no longer see it. But we must trust that someone is standing on a faraway shore seeing that same sailboat become larger and larger until it reaches its new harbor. Death is a painful loss. When we return to our homes after a burial, our hearts are in grief. But when we think about the One standing at the other shore eagerly waiting to welcome our beloved friend into a new home, a smile can break through our tears.”

On this Easter Sunday, we celebrate the resurrection of our Master and Leader, Jesus, “the One standing at the other shore.” The news that he came back from the dead and lives forever gave the first disciples both a scare and the motivation to preach the Good News of a living Savior. The life of Jesus is our hope for new life, our courage to change, and the Spirit within us that makes us want to be a healthy church for his sake. And the resurrection gives us the strength to face the painful loss of our loved ones. He has defeated death. That is why on this resurrection Sunday we smile, sometimes through our tears and we proclaim, “Christ is risen. He is risen indeed!”

New Hope Is Growing

We have come a long way. Our church is growing. I don’t want us to forget how far we have come. We have seen God’s work among us in powerful ways. To paraphrase a prayer that I’ve heard called an “old slave prayer,” We are not what we ought to be. We are not what we’re going to be. But, praise God, we are not what we used to be.

• Let’s remember that we have several young families with children who have joined us and become active in recent times.

• Let’s thank God for lives being changed.

• Let’s give God credit for bringing us out of debt and into an ability to put money in savings.

As we have been talking about, we need to add classroom space for our children, youth, and adult Bible Study classes. Now is the time for us to begin our Building Fund Campaign. We need to raise $60,000 in order to buy the classroom building we have voted to purchase. Look for informational brochures and Building Fund Offering envelopes coming soon.

Together we can and will further the growth we see taking place. We will make room for the numbers of people responding to Christ, learning to love God and people, and growing in serving God together.

An Image of Life Beyond Death by Henri Nouwen

Here is a compelling image of hope that many people have loved and held onto as they mourn a much loved person who has died.

"Dying is a gradual diminishing and final vanishing over the horizon of life. When we watch a sailboat leaving port and moving toward the horizon, it becomes smaller and smaller until we can no longer see it. But we must trust that someone is standing on a faraway shore seeing that same sailboat become larger and larger until it reaches its new harbor. Death is a painful loss. When we return to our homes after a burial, our hearts are in grief. But when we think about the One standing at the other shore eagerly waiting to welcome our beloved friend into a new home, a smile can break through our tears."

New Hope Mortgage Burning Ceremony

Who is like you, LORD God Almighty?

You, LORD, are mighty in your love and power, and your faithfulness surrounds you.

Surely the LORD has brought us to this place in our church’s history. God has prospered us.

We have built on a foundation that others have laid. God has shown us the way.

“Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.”

Lord, we give you all the praise for the building we have done.

Our Church is your house. We are the work of your hands. We are your people, the sheep of your pasture.

We are in Christ, the living Cornerstone of God’s dwelling place.

We are the living stones being built into God’s dwelling place.

We give our future to you, God.

We place our church into your hands.

Use us to build a great church for the sake of the Good News of Jesus Christ, which you give us to tell and to live.

Without God’s help we could not have come this far. Without God’s intervention, we would not be where we are today.

We are debt free and ready to serve God with all of our might.

An Inventory of Things I Enjoy

I am grateful to God for things I enjoy in life. Here are a few.

Every morning I enjoy getting up when Fleda does. Since she works as a reading coach to teachers at two schools in Deltona she gets up at 5:15. I make her a cup of tea (after I make my first cup of coffee), a boiled egg to take for lunch and a bowl of oatmeal. I enjoy being at home with Fleda in the evening and watching our favorite TV show, Jeopardy.

I enjoy reading some books that don’t have directly to do with preparing sermons. Right now I am reading The Biography of Steve Jobs and The Biography of Benjamin Franklin, both by Walter Isaacson. I also read four periodicals: “Baptists Today,” “The Christian Century,” “Time Magazine,” and “Christian Ethics Today.”

As a pastor, I have always liked to make hospital visits. Counseling and pastoral conversations are also important to me. For a couple of years now I have been what the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship calls a convenor of a Peer Learning Group. A group of 13 mostly pastors (Dennis Bucher, Shane Gaster, and Ben Collins are in our group) meets every month except in the summer. We have lunch together and discuss books we have read, materials and ideas that have helped us to be better in serving our churches, and things that have helped us to grow spiritually.

The list runs on. I thank God for the many ways I enjoy living.

The Ten Commandments as Evidence of God's Love

The Ten Commandments are God’s new agreement with his people after he led them out of slavery in Egypt. They are God’s way of helping them to stay on the road to freedom. God gave the commandments for their good and for ours.

As much as they were for the Jewish people coming out of slavery and heading to the Promised Land, the Ten Commandments are for us, because God does not want us hurt. God wants to give us freedom from slavery and life in abundance. And freedom does not come from obeying a set of rules. Freedom comes when we have God’s guidance written on our hearts, as we know that God is with us and for us.

In many of the stories in the Hebrew Bible, we see that God appears as a God who defends us against our enemies, protects us against dangers, and guides us to freedom. God is God-for-us.

Henri Nouwen wrote, “ When Jesus comes, a new dimension of the covenant is revealed. In Jesus, God is born, grows to maturity, lives, suffers, and dies as we do. God is God-with-us. Finally, when Jesus leaves he promises the Holy Spirit. In the Holy Spirit, God reveals the full depth of the covenant. God wants to be as close to us as our breath. God wants to breathe in us, so that all we say, think and do is completely inspired by God. God is God-within-us. Thus God's covenant reveals to us to how much God loves us.”