Faith in the Valleys
As I sit here on the back porch drinking my coffee on this crisp October morning, I find myself reveling in the changing seasons. Each with its beauty and purpose, its own perfect timing. Bringing new life and wonder to our world on a scale that can only be described as God designed. But I wonder, what if the seasons never changed? Would the birds who migrate or the animals who hibernate know? I mirror this to the things we so often pray for/about. And what if the times we waited for never came? What if the job we prayed for was never available, or the healing we so desperately needed was never fulfilled? Do we simply turn our back and give up, or is there something more as to why these things did not come to pass? I believe that many times the people of both the Old and New Testaments were called upon to walk by faith. The 400-year break between the Old and New Testaments alone can attest to the faith the Jewish people had in their God and his promise to send them the Messiah. So why, if God’s chosen people were called to walk by faith those many years ago, are we any different now? In Nursery this month we are learning to Sing in the Rain, which simply put, means that while we are going through hard “storms” in our lives, God is looking down on us continually, and so we can be confident in the hope that “His will be done” Matthew 6:10.
How many times can you look back on your life and see God’s handiwork? If you are anything like me, you can see God’s expert touch in almost every circumstance. Now let me ask, did you know the outcome to that plan beforehand or even during? Most likely not. Just as a mountain climber does not notice the heights to which he has climbed until he reaches the top and looks down, so must we also keep our eyes focused on God during the struggles we face each day.
I am proud to say that I serve a God who is faithful in all His promises! Now, does this mean that all the things we pray for will come to pass? Most assuredly not, but we can hold fast, stand firm, unbroken in the knowledge that no matter how we see the circumstances, God is at work constructing His perfect plan. Just as the trees and animals have faith that the seasons will change, so also can we have faith that God will bring us through the seasons in our lives. Seasons of growth and prosperity, and also seasons of sorrow and pain. These seasons are no surprise to our Creator and he longs for us to cling to him in these times that seem hopeless. He did not say in His word that our lives as faithful Christians would be without affliction, however, He made clear over and over again that He is with us through these times and never gives us more than we can handle when we turn to him for strength.
So just as we have faith that the seasons will bring new life and wonder, so will the plans that God has for us. I urge you this next week to listen to the song Hills and Valleys (the Hills Remix) by Tauren Wells and I pray that it speaks to you where you are and encourages you through the valleys in your own life as it has mine.
Kellie Jones joined the NUMC Staff in the summer of 2021 as our Nursery Coordinator. Her energy and cheerfulness is contagious to everyone who works and volunteers with her. She loves Jesus, her family, and the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Giving is Hard
Giving Is Hard, But So Worth It
Sometimes there are moments in life when it is easy to be a cheerful giver and bring the love of God to people that are in need or hurting. And sometimes those moments just fall right into your lap without expecting it. Those tend to be the hardest moments to give cheerfully - when your guard is down. This happened to me the other day.
Being a single parent is not for the faint of heart. Managing all the ins and outs of raising kids and running a household is difficult for two parents. I didn’t know what tired was until I had to do all of that on my own. So - needless to say - there are quite a few things that get left undone inside and outside of the house.
After a few joy rides in the Jeep over the span of a couple months, I realized it was time to wash the red clay off. A feat that is incredibly hard in some places around the Wrangler, which is why I had been putting it off. The day was incredibly alluring, however, and my soul was yearning to be outside. So, I prepped the car and got to work trying to get the clay out of all the nooks and crannies.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a PT Cruiser slowly drive by my house, stop, and then turned around. Being the incredible introvert that I am, I had a slight panic as the woman in the driver seat jumped out of the car and started walking towards me. “Sigh, what do they want to sell me,” I thought. As I mentally prepared my excuse to decline whatever it was she was trying to sell me, she offered to do something unexpected.
“Hi, we’re looking for work and wanted to know if we could trim your palm for $30,” she says.
Remember what I said about being a single parent and letting some things go undone? Well, the palm in my front yard would be one those things. When I say this palm was a sad state of affairs, I mean you could probably call it a “willow palm.” It sits in a bed right in the middle of the yard. The lower branches were browning and drooping over the stone edging… it was sad. I agreed to let her to do it.
However, being the millennial that I am, I rarely have cash on me. I don’t really know if that’s a millennial thing or not, but I’d rather place the blame on something than admit I have poor financial skills. I told her I probably don’t have cash on me, but she did have Venmo. So, we agreed on that and they went to work while I continued to wash my car.
As I’m futilely trying to find a way to clean the red clay off my tires with what cleaning products I have, I took another glance at my new yard crew. They had a little girl in the Cruiser watching them work. The car looked a little worse for wear. And then I suddenly remembered the $100 bill I’ve been keeping in my wallet since my birthday…which was in March. Did I mention I’m bad with cash? As I looked closely at their situation, something (or rather Someone) told me that I needed to give them the $100. After thinking about it for a couple of minutes, I walked inside and grabbed my wallet. Inside was a $100 bill and a $50 bill. I grabbed the $50.
“One hundred is way too much for trimming a bush,” I think.
The moment I walked back outside, however, I felt a burden or calling once more. “Give them the $100,” I kept hearing that over and over again in my head.
By now, I’ve agreed that keeping $100 for that long in my wallet and never finding a use for it tells me that I obviously don’t need that money. I went back inside and switched the bills. By this time, they were done trimming the pine. To picture just how bad the condition this pine was in, I discovered that there were 4 other plants surrounding it that I had never seen before.
They asked if I liked it and if I wanted them to do anything else. I told them it was much better than what I would’ve done and that I’m grateful they stopped by. I reached in my pocket and handed the man (his name was Ashley) the $100.
“I usually don’t carry cash on me,” I said. “But God has blessed me a lot recently so I can bless others, so I want you to have this.”
Very graciously, he accepted the cash and told me that on the way over to this area from Pensacola one of their brakes went out and they would need to get it fixed before they headed back home.
Wow.
I don’t know if they needed the money to help them fix their brakes, but I’m sure it would help regardless. However, this isn’t a story about how great of a thing I did, or how I heard God’s voice in my head to do something and I faithfully did it.
What I will take away the most from this encounter is just how genuinely happy this couple was despite their circumstances. They’re limping along in a broken PT Cruiser, trying to find work, working and sweating in the dirt… but they genuinely appear to be happy people. Here I am in front of my four-bedroom home washing my Jeep Wrangler and they appear to have so much more joy than I’ve had in a long time. They were literally laughing about the brake going out as if it was just a minor inconvenience.
Sometimes a God moment like this is just as powerful (if not more so) for the giver as it is to the one who receives the gift. For me it was a reminder of just how precious and important the little things are in life. Sometimes the giver is blessed more than the one who receives. And while we sometimes try to fill our emptiness with earthly things, we forget that those things do not necessarily feed our souls.
Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians 9:6-8 that those who sow generously will also reap generously. May this story encourage you and serve as a testimony to the truth of this scripture.
Blessings,
Matt
I Can Hear You Now
One of the many paradoxes of our current times is that everyone is sick of talking about COVID (not sure if that pun is intended or not), they want to talk about anything else, but everything somehow comes back to COVID. I hate to carry on that vicious cycle, but I can’t talk about some of the exciting things in our church right now without talking about the catalyst for all of this and how we got here.
Last March, I was preparing for a mission trip to Texas with our youth group. We had a dozen or so students who were excited about spending their spring break in another state helping out a pastor friend of mine who does a phenomenal job of reaching those that a lot of us would consider unworthy. (You can look at his posts on Facebook to see how God is using him). week before we left, he called me and said that because of his serious health concerns and the virus starting to go around, he was going to have to cancel our mission trip. There were a lot of disappointed people, but it was just a few days later when the entire nation went on lockdown. A few of the church leaders and staff gathered in the main part of Hildreth Hall, chairs more than six apart, and talked about what our church was going to do. None of us had any ideas that 20 months later we’d still be trying to figure out how to navigate a pandemic, or that the decisions made in that meeting would forever change our church.
The very first virtual Sunday we had was rough. The announcements were blurry (it’s what happens when the camera man is on the wrong side of the camera), the sound was awful, and the whole thing was only 20 minutes. We shot most of it on just one camera, except for the music part which was shot on a phone, and there wasn’t much in the way of post production. We really had no idea what to expect, but we reached over 1,200 people with that video. It was weird, but even when we couldn’t physically be together, we somehow developed a sense of community with our online groups. We had zoom coffee fellowships, complete with all the “You’re muted” and “Can you hear me now?” stereotypes that we’ve all come to know and hate. But at the time we were just excited to be able to worship together at all and the novelty hadn’t yet worn off.
The weeks went on and it became apparent that church would be virtual more than just the 30 days of lock down. We started bringing in one or two extra people to sing with Mike (with lots of hand sanitizer and distance) and we brought in another camera. The worst great idea of the whole lockdown was our Easter video. It was the first time we had ever attempted a virtual band, and 40 hours of video and audio editing later it still wasn’t perfect but at the time we were just thankful to be able to pull anything off.
We eventually brought back a full band. To keep the number of people in the building down, I was the audio guy trying to mix the room for what a couple of microphones placed at the back of the room would pick up (which sounds nothing like what it should) and would (literally) run back and forth between my two cameras and the booth. We were still prerecording everything which meant that there would still be hours of post production before we could premiere the video for church.
Once we finally set a reopening date we had another key meeting that, at the time, seemed insignificant but completely changed the course of our church. We could either keep prerecording our services and post them a week later, or we could live stream our services. Everyone knew that live streaming was a better option, but it also came with a couple of drawbacks. The first one was money. We had looked into what it would take to live stream or multicast back in 2017 and had a rough idea that it would cost somewhere around $30,000 to get everything we needed. The second drawback was the need for additional volunteers at a time when we were already low on volunteers. I researched, bargain hunted, and did my best to come to the Trustee committee with a live streaming set up that only cost $10,000. In my mind, that was still going to be too much money and we were going to have to make cuts to the already bare bones set up.
While I was presenting this package to the committee, I could see a couple of people shaking their heads and making notes on the plans I had handed them. I knew there was going to be an uphill battle. The very first question after the presentation was why I was spending $1,000 on an iMac to run sound. I started trying to justify it by saying it’s a used one, it’s cheaper than a lot of other options we have, we might be able to get away with a different computer but reliability might become an issue and so on. Finally the trustee stopped me and said, “No, why are you buying a used computer? Wouldn’t a new one do better and last longer?” Of course it would, but with such a limited budget we had to make a lot of compromises. And then something I never would have believed happened. A trustee who works at a university spoke up and said their department just developed a live stream studio and it was well over $30,000. They then asked what I would change if I had an extra $5,000.
In the course of one meeting, I went from presenting a $10,000 proposal and expecting to get only half of that, to them increasing the budget by $5,000 to make sure we had what we really needed. That extra $5,000 took us from a basic, passable, setup to a much more professional and adaptive setup that we can expand. The second big surprise was when I held the first media volunteer training. I was expecting maybe one or two people to show up, and we had almost a dozen show up with others who couldn’t make it but still wanted to serve. We now have volunteers who are retired all the way down to 6th graders running cameras, mixing the audio, and directing from the switcher, volunteers with no experience or knowledge to those who have done semi professional work before.
I can’t express how much these volunteers mean to me and all the ways that they make a legitimate difference for the kingdom, but here’s a start. We’ve continued to live stream every Sunday, even when we worshiped in Hildreth, and people from all over the world have watched our services. We have regular watchers in Germany, Ireland, Alabama, and Georgia that wouldn’t be connected with us except for what we are able to put online now. We have our ups and downs, but over the last 30 days we’ve reached over 8,500 people and had over 1,400 engagements, all of those organic.
As people are getting out more and returning to in-person worship, we have seen a bit of a decrease in our live viewer numbers. However, these videos of our service aren’t just for our members. When someone is checking out our church online before their first visit, they will check out our website and Facebook page and come across our services. That means that a guest’s first impression of us happens long before they step foot on our campus. Because of our amazing volunteers, some who serve nearly every week, we are still connecting with people who aren’t able to be at in-person worship, we have a great first impression, and we have even been able to help other churches get off the ground with their own live streaming services.
None of this would be possible without those volunteers, but it also wouldn’t be possible without some other leaders in our church who realized our mission was to make disciples by telling people about Jesus. Even if the method we had to use to carry out that mission changed, we still had to tell people about Jesus. It also wouldn’t have been possible without the financial gifts of other people in our congregation. All along the way, you can see how God has had his hand in what was going on. Even though you don’t see the hundreds of people who see part of service from home, they are there and they are hearing about Jesus, perhaps for the first time. If you want to become part of this amazing team of volunteers, I’d love to talk with you. Feel free to email me at NathanP@navarreumc.org or catch me on a Sunday.
A Time For Everything
I was reading in Ecclesiastes today from Chapter 3 where there is a time for everything. I began thinking about my sister and my Dad cleaning out the house in which we grew up. In the house were many items my Mom treasured. Growing up on a farm in Southeast Missouri, she would tell us stories of how her dad would take her out of school so they could pick cotton. She told us she never wanted to see another cotton field after that.
One of those items my mom treasured from the house were dolls. Mom loved dolls and she had over 500 Barbies still in the box on a wall for display. She never wanted to touch them or take them out of the box she just wanted to admire them.
Now, she did have about 10 dolls that were about 3-4’ tall, and to be honest those creeped me out. I used to pull pranks on my sister, putting the doll by her bed with a knife in its hand or if she spent the night in the downstairs bedroom and turned on the light to go upstairs, I would put the doll at the top looking down on her. Now keep in mind she got me back many times.
We look back on those times with a smile on our faces. Each year we would get Mom a new Barbie or Barbie ornament. That would bring her such joy. Now each Christmas, in her honor, we put up her Barbie tree full of Hallmark Barbie ornaments, each ornament packed in the original box.
Many things in the house which were mine I would never need anymore, like my 10th-grade typing homework, my satin country and western shirt, or my old McCloud coat. The scripture says in verse 6 “There is a time to keep and a time to throw away.”
But there are some things I found which brought back floods of emotion. I found a picture of my mom when she was 19. I think of my life when I was 19, and of course, I knew it all. Ha Ha. Just what were her thoughts for her future and what was going through her mind? So many pictures and memories to go through, and honestly, the rest is just stuff. There are sentimental items we have taken so we can pass them on to our kids, but the main thing I think of is the love she gave us in those 4 walls. She told me and my sister a few years before she passed, she apologized because she could not give us all the things other families were giving their kids. My sister and I looked at each other at the same time and we told her “We never felt poor because we had all we needed.” There was never a day where we came home and felt unloved, unprotected, or hungry.” My mom told me when I was one before we moved, we used to live in a concrete block house and in the winter, it would get so cold ice would be on the inside of the blocks. She said she would wrap me up in blankets and hold me close to keep me warm. That is the love I always felt. On the anniversary of my mom’s passing my sister wrote “God didn’t have to bless us with an awesome mom…. But he did!”
Ecclesiastes’ 3: 1-8
A Time for Everything
3 There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
There are items we have that bring us joy and there is nothing wrong with that. Just as the scripture says, “A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them.” Wherever you are in this time in your life, there is time for everything. The only question is are you too busy or too stubborn to stop and know what season you are in? There will be a day where you will start cleaning out your stuff and realize it is just stuff and the people, family, and friends in your life that you have touched and have touched you will be what you treasure the most.
Blessings,
Mike
Sounds from Mars
It was only a few days ago that NASA shared the first audio recording from Mars. In the 18 second clip, you hear a lot of the noise the rover makes itself, and then a gust of wind. It might seem like an overreaction to get excited about a little bit of wind, but it’s the first time we have heard what it sounds like on another planet. Anytime there’s a bit of news from outer space, the discussion inevitably goes to alien life. When that happens, Christians often find themselves in a theological dilemma. If self-conscious extraterrestrials exist, how do we make sense of that theologically? Do they know God? Did Jesus die to save their sins too? In a way, it’s the extreme “man on an island” scenario.
As much as I wish I had some definite answers for you, I think anyone offering definitives in this case are full of it. However, I think more important than the actual answer is the process of how we think about these issues when they arise. It’s very similar to the way education is designed to work. It’s not necessarily about knowing all the right answers by memory, but being able to critically think about the answer and to be able to work it out.
So let’s start with the science part to see what we have to deal with. There’s a famous equation created by Frank Drake that is used to estimate the number of potential alien civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. It takes into account the rate that stars are created, how many stars have planets, the number of planets that might be able to support life, the number of those that might actually develop intelligent life, and so on. Of course, several of the factors are big unknowns because even though there are billions of stars and planets, so far the actual known number of planets outside of Earth with any life is zero.
Furthermore, even intelligent life on Earth is extremely rare. No, this isn’t a commentary on the state of certain people, but rather a realization that out of the 8 million or so species on earth, only one (humans) is classified as intelligent. This leads us into just a philosophical dilemma. No one wants to say that we are indeed the first or the smartest. When there’s a possibility of 15 million other alien civilizations, statistically it’s a 1 in 15 million chance that we are the smartest.
By now you might be wondering where theology comes in. Let’s start with some a simple assertion. God is creator of all that is, seen and unseen (taken from the Nicene Creed). So if there is indeed life beyond Earth, it falls perfectly within Christian theology that God created it. In other words, the existence of alien life doesn’t change anything about who God is. Actually, the only thing that would ever change with new knowledge is just our understanding of who God is.
The trickier question is did Jesus die for their sins too. My gut reaction is to explore if they have sin to begin with. But since we are using our imaginations here, there’s no real answer to this question. If they don’t have sin (meaning that sin is truly just a human issue) than that speaks into our understanding of our own need for a savior and how messed up we truly are. If they do have sin, what does that mean for Jesus’ death and resurrection? To be honest, we have enough problems trying to figure our what Jesus’ death and resurrection mean without throwing aliens into the mix. What we’re talking about is atonement theory, and there are several compelling ideas about what Jesus’ death and resurrection actually did, but there isn’t total agreement in the Christian community. However, I think that studying these atonement theories through the lens of other life is vitally important for the church.
After nearly 400 years the church still hasn’t lived down it’s handling of Galileo. The battle between science and theology is an unfortunate one. One that I fully believe shouldn’t be a battle at all. The Bible was written by, and primarily for, people living thousands of years ago. Their understanding of the universe was vastly different from ours. The authors, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, didn’t write the Bible as a science book or as a way to explain the workings of the universe. They wrote it as an account of their experience with God. So while it doesn’t ever specifically address things like extraterrestrials, there is a full enough understanding of who God is for us to be able to say that if they do exist, God is still Lord over all.
Side note: There is so much to this topic that can’t be crammed into a snack-size blog. If you want to continue the conversation, I’d be happy to grab a cup of coffee with you while we dive deep into the great unknown.