First Lutheran - Pleasant Valley - Lake City
From the Pastor . . .
The season of Lent will begin on Ash Wednesday, Feb.
22. Lent, as you have been told a
thousand times, is the 40 days prior to Easter when we are asked to take some
time and consider what Jesus suffered and died for, our sins. As part of this
practice we have mid-week Lenten services to help us grow in our faith and in
understanding it.
Elsewhere in the Newsletter there is
information about our mid-week Lenten series "Now What?" Please take a look and plan to attend. We
will be having soup suppers prior to the services at First and coffee following
the services at Pleasant
Valley.
I also want to ask for some
volunteers to help out with the services. We'll need five people to lead the
services at Pleasant
Valley and five to lead the services
at First. We will also need four or five adults to serve as mentors for the
confirmation students following each Lenten service. There will be sign up
sheets at the church very soon.
We also have another opportunity
to grow in understanding our faith. On Sat., March 3, the Marshall County
Ministerium will be sponsoring an event called Walk Through the Bible that will
take people on a survey of the Old Testament in one day. There will be lots of
information available on this event at church very soon. The event will have two
groups, one for children 5th grade and under and one for everyone 6th grade and
up.
I want to encourage you to take
a day to get a better grip on the Bible and the foundations of your faith. Learn
how the tower of
Babel fits in with the beginnings of
the church at Pentecost. Learn what John the Baptist's parents had in common
with Abraham and Sarah and Issac and Rebbecca. Learn who in the Old Testament
the gospel song Swing Low, Sweet Chariot refers to. This will be a great
opportunity for all of us.
High School youth and
confirmation students: The First Lutheran. Endowment fund will give a
scholarship for you to attend this event.
God's
Blessings,
Pastor Terrill
From the Pastor
January 2012,
The other evening I came
across the movie Cast Away on television. In the movie Tom Hanks plays a systems
manager for FedEx and in the process of training new employees and trying to
impress on them the importance of making every second count he says, "We cannot
commit the sin of turning our back on time." The irony of the movie is that soon
after that his plane goes down in the south Pacific and he is marooned on a tiny
island with nothing but time.
One of the most common struggles among us is our struggle
with time. We are a busy people: work, community commitments, family
responsibilities, school activities, volunteering, the needs of our church,
friendships and family relationships that need our time, and then we are told we
need to make time for self-care, exercise and just time to reflect as well as
time to pray. Sometimes it feels like we live always with the clock ticking in
our ears, like there just isnt enough time.
I am not a time management expert and I dont have much
advice to give you as to how to free yourself from the tyranny of time, but I do
know that you and I have been given time. It is January and we are just opening
the gift of a whole new year that our Lord has given us. God is very fair in the
distribution of this gift. All of us, every single one of us, will get 12
months, 366 days (An extra one this year.), 8784 hours, 527,040 minutes.
The difference in how we experience our time this year
will be in how we spend it. We can spend it in anxiousness, worrying about how
fast its going. We can spend it in regret, or anger, or fear, or frantically
trying to make something of ourselves. If we do, the clock will bear down hard
and the ticking will set us on edge.
On the other hand we can spend the same time in the
knowledge that the giver of this new year will be with us as we go through it.
We can trust him to give us the energy and strength needed for each days needs.
We can begin each day praying for his arm to bear us up. We can use the time he
has cleared away each Sunday to hear is Word and his forgiveness and so have
reason to hope. We can remind ourselves that this year is only the beginning of
the time God is going to give us, that he Jesus has opened to us the way to his
kingdom whose days and hours are without number.
If we do these things the clock will not be a tyrant, the
ticking will not strike fear in us as the minutes slip through our fingers like
sand. If we look to and listen to and trust the one who gives us this new year,
then each tick of the clock, each chime marking a new hour will be a reminder of
the good gift of time and of how it is opening up Gods future. A blessed new
year to you all, enjoy the time.
Pastor Terrill