Wednesday, October 9, 2019

A mid-week message from Rev. John Wilson: 

Leroy Brownlow tells this story: “The truly great person never feels any worthy task is too low for him or her. When James Madison completed his eight years as President, he retired to his Virginia plantation and filled the office of justice of the peace. No wonder he had climbed up, for he knew how to climb down. He didn’t have to appear to be great, for he was; and no office could make him less. His meekness was not weakness. His humility was not humiliation. The size of the job is not half as honorable as the size of the person who fills it.”

Have a blessed week,

Pastor John

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

A mid-week message from Rev. John Wilson: 

This comes from the devotional book Today is Mine: Pass it by! The slur, the slight, the catty remark, we suffer from others. A refusal to forget it would keep us in war always. Our circle of friends would diminish; our blood pressure would go up; and our efficiency would go down. After all, most of us need just as much tolerance from others as we need to extend to them.

Have a blessed week,

Pastor John

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

A mid-week message from Rev. John Wilson: 

Leroy Brownlow writes: “World improvement is everybody’s business. A person’s very presence in the world reflects his/her being a responsible part of it; and that part, good or bad, must of necessity make the world a little better or a little worse. So- just as you can improve the whole by improving the parts- world improvement must begin with me; and as I succeed in bettering self, I restore the world; for each evil conquered by me is that much of it put down in the world. A few broken habits will make the world more habitable.”

Have a blessed week,

Pastor John

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

A mid-week message from Rev. John Wilson: 

One devotional book says this: “…the only true measurement of age is attitude- not birthdays. That is why some people become old at thirty, while others remain young at eighty. You (are young if) you:

                -Love life

                -Enjoy living

                -Are hopeful

                -Seek new thoughts for stimulation

                -Find new ways to do old things

                -Raise new ladders to climb, and

                -Enter new fields to gather

Have a blessed week,

Pastor John

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

In her book Almost Everything, Anne Lamott writes, “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”

Have a blessed week,
Pastor John

Wednesday, September 4, 2019

Here is a prayer from the devotional book Today is Mine: “O Lord, help me to keep my hands clean May I have hands that never steal; hands that never take a bribe; hands that know no greed; hands that move when there is work to be done; hands that mind their own business; hands unsoiled with broken trusts; hands that never knife a friend in disloyalty; hands that never hold back anyone; hands that never cheer when others fall; hands that are never raised in angry blows; hands unstained with the blood of the innocent; hands that are fit for the other person to shake.”

Have a blessed week,

Pastor John

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

A mid-week message from Rev. John Wilson: 

Henry Brownlow writes this: “Each generation has the right to use the world, but not abuse it. The who-cares philosophy, which gets what you can, anyway you can, as long as you can, leaves a wasted world in its wake. If our hands are thieves which snatch the wealth of ages; if our feet are blockbusters which trample nature’s provisions; if we are a people whose sensitivity is seared to polluted streams, poisoned air, huge debts, and dog-eat-dog morals, we are more than exploiters- we are culprits whose prodigality shall affect the unborn. So let us ask: When we vacate this old world and the new tenants move in, what will they find?”

Have a blessed week,

Pastor John

Wednesday, August 14, 2019

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote this: “The fact that Jesus Christ died is more important than the fact that I shall die, and the fact that Jesus Christ rose from the dead is the sole ground of my hope that I, too, shall be raised on the Last Day.”

Have a blessed week,

Pastor John

Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Reuben P. Job writes this: “Hope has always been a dominant quality in the life of the Christian community. From the time of the resurrection of Jesus until today, individual Christians and the Christian community have been full of hope…The source of this resurrection hope was never found in the surroundings or how things were going for the Church. Rather, hope was found in God and the assurance that God was at work in the Church and in the world. The disciples felt a calm confidence that God’s work and will would ultimately be completed and fulfilled.”

Have a blessed week,

Pastor John

Wednesday, July 31, 2019

A mid-week message from Rev. John Wilson: 

Daniel Wolpert writes the following: “Like our other forms of prayer, praying with our material lives can and will cause upheaval. Just as our minds can revolt against us in silent prayer, so too will our social circles rebel when we begin to question how we are living, or what are our material priorities.”

Have a blessed week,

Pastor John

Wednesday, July 10, 2019

A mid-week message from Rev. John Wilson 

John Indermark writes this: “To fears and sin that hold us back and weigh us down, we say, ‘No more. You are not the future. The future is God- and God has promised the gift of forgiveness.’ We are emboldened to face what we have done with the grace of what God has done and promises to do. Those confessions provide rehearsals for more public confessions of those truths by individuals and communities of faith. God would also embolden us to speak such truth with courage to those who would play on our fears and rely on our silenced timidity and say- ‘No more. You are not the future. This will not stand. We trust in God’s holy presence and gracious favor.’  And having said that, we then live that truth.”

Have a blessed week,

Pastor John

Wednesday, July 3, 2019

Elaine M. Prevallet writes the following: “Surely, in the end, after all our righteous judgments on what is wrong with ourselves, each other, and with the world; after we experience injustice intractably resistant to our most devoted efforts, leaving us with our thirst unquenched, our mouths dry and our throats sore from protest; surely in the end the gospel calls us to view the whole of creation, and each other, with the eyes of mercy, and to love it all anyway, with a mercying heart.”

Have a blessed week,

Pastor John

Wednesday, June 26, 2019

A mid-week message from Rev. John Wilson 

Jan Johnson writes this: “To weep with the suffering does not mean, however, that we have a good cry and get on with other things. It is more that we have a good cry and we are never the same.”

Have a blessed week,

Pastor John

Wednesday, June 19, 2019

A mid-week message from Rev. John Wilson 

James McGinnis writes this: “In caring, Jesus is our model and leader. Each day Jesus retreated from the demands of serving others to be prayerfully with his God. Then he was better able to come down from his mountain retreat to minister more fully to those needing and pleading for his love. He turned away no one, but he also didn’t try to do it all by himself. He enlisted others to extend God’s caring to all, especially to ‘the least’ of God’s people.”

Have a blessed week,

Pastor John

Wednesday, June 12, 2019

A mid-week message from Rev. John Wilson 

James McGinnis writes this: “’Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,’ Jesus told his disciples. The Hebrew word translated here as perfect actually translates better as compassionate or merciful. Jesus wasn’t urging us to get a 4.0 grade-point average or never to make a mistake. He was urging us to love as completely as God loves- concretely, wholeheartedly, and universally. God’s perfection is love, for God is love.”

Have a blessed week,

Pastor John

Wednesday, May 22, 2019

A mid-week message from Rev. John Wilson 

Francis of Assisi wrote this: “A servant of God cannot know the extent of his patience and humility as long as all goes well with him. But when a time comes that those who should treat him well do the opposite, then he shows the true extent of his patience and humility and no more.”

Have a blessed week,

Pastor John

Wednesday, May 8, 2019

William Law writes this: “Humility does not consist in having a worse opinion of ourselves than we deserve or in abasing ourselves lower than we really are. But as all virtue is founded in truth, so humility is founded in a true and just sense of our weakness, misery, and sin. Those who rightly feel and live in this sense of their condition live in humility.”

Have a blessed week,

Pastor John