New Year

The Pathway to the Barn

/ pastorpete51 / 5 Comments

Thy word is lamp unto my feet and a light to my path. Psalm 119:105

When I was a teenager I lived for a few years on a farm in Southern Missouri. Each of us had our own chores and mine was to milk the cow. It would have been far easier to run across the road to the milk barn when it was light out, but in order to be ready to leave for work on time, I needed to get out of my nice warm bed and get started by 4:45. If the moon was full, it wasn’t hard to see and I could easily pick my way up the familiar path. But on dark moonless mornings, though I knew the way by heart, I needed the beam from my flashlight to find where to place my feet for each step.

Now fifty years later, I am still getting up long before daybreak but the pathway of 2021 feels far darker than any of those walks to the barn. Our own family’s issues, the ever changing national health crisis along with my own personal struggles loom on the horizon feeling like the shadows of a massive mountain range. Fears and doubts, decisions and demands lie waiting to be confronted, decided and met full on. But there is hope because God has given us a promise that He will light the path. We may not see well enough to run ahead, but His word will show us the way to take the next step. Then, even more amazingly He adds the even greater promise that He will not only light our path but that He will walk with us on it ,step by step, all the way to the barn.

God bless you each of you and Happy New Year. May you find the next step that He has reserved for you in this year that lies ahead!

A Journey That Never Ends

/ pastorpete51 / 2 Comments

And the Lord said to him, “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, ‘I will give it to your offspring.’ I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not go over there.” Deuteronomy 34:4 ESV

If we look at the life of Moses we would see that he spent his entire life first preparing for and then finally fulfilling his calling to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt. He spent forty years as a shepherd until God appeared at the burning bush and then another forty leading the Israelites through the desert. But when it came time for Moses to get to the river and cross over, God told him that he would not be able to do so. As I come to the end of this year I think I know how Moses might have felt.  God has been at work throughout the past year; both in victories and defeats and has guided our family even when we have been unaware of His presence.  But as we approach the end of this twelve month journey I wonder what lies ahead.

God didn’t allow Moses to go with Joshua when the Israelites crossed the Jordan. Instead He called Moses to look from the top of a mountain to see the land that he had waited for eighty years to enter. It seemed like a bum deal to me.  But God never forgot His promise and one day when Jesus climbed a high mountain in Israel, the scripture says that Moses appeared to him with Elijah. It took more than a thousand years but Moses did get to enter God’s Promised Land. In the same way with us as we finish our own journey the eternity that holds our promised land will only be beginning.

Seeing 2020

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While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.      2 Corinthians 4:18 KJV

One day Jesus sat down for dinner with a wealthy Pharisee named Simon. During their meal the pleasantness of the scene was harshly interrupted by a weeping woman. She burst into the room and began kissing the feet of Jesus and wiping them clean with her hair. Simon was shocked! It was well known in his community what flagrant sins this woman had committed. How dare she enter his house, and furthermore how could Jesus (If He really were a prophet) allow himself to be touched by someone like her?

Yet Jesus saw the circumstances quite differently than Simon. Jesus didn’t look at the fine tableware or the expensive furnishings. Jesus hadn’t at all been impressed by the beautiful columns or the hand carved door at the entry of Simon’s home. Instead Jesus saw the coldness of Simon’s heart. He had noticed that Simon had not given him the customary kiss on the cheek, or offered water for his feet to be washed. Jesus saw quite clearly the depth of repentance and gratitude of this woman and treasured her acts of love and friendship.

God does not see things as we see them and as we enter this New Year my prayer is for God to give us His 2020 heavenly vision. I ask that we can see the value that Jesus sees in others and how worthless so many things are to which we so tightly cling. The challenges that we meet this year we be better met when we can see and treasure the invisible things of God’s eternal worth.

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