Christmas In Connecticut

 Here I sit in my sunny living room on a Sunday afternoon meditating on the generosity of God to a sinner such as I.  That is not hyperbole.  

It sounds surreal that God would allow us so much of His mercy and grace.  It is not like Christmas in Connecticut a fake story. It is reality!

I haven't grown any citrus trees, like Martha Stewart.  My praise and worship has grown and withered and grown and I am grateful for the seasoned expectation that I have of the presence of God, here in my early 60's.  

We are here in Huntersville, North Carolina and the cultural presence of God has been startlingly awestriking to me for these years of living here.  Common Grace and fear of God seen in the regular living of life.  Not an armored defensive faith but a settled expectation of God's pruning and fertilizing.  I have learned much.

putting on the whole armor of God is against our personal propensities to sin, not against our neighbors.

"Jesus ready stands to save you, full of mercy and love and power"

The beauty of the Church doing it's work in the community is beautiful.  We should expect it. In our souls and in our communities we should expect to see the growth and blessings of the church in action.

My father used to say that in an unbelieving way.  "If the church is so powerful, why are the drug dealers all up and down that neighborhood?"  I never knew how to answer him.  I never knew how to defend my church that I loved and sang so triumphantly about.

The Church's one foundation?

I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord?

What Sacred Fountain Yonder Springs?

We Never Need be Vanquished?

He stood as a constant reminder that we were inept in our duty to our community there.  Sin was rampant, but I never thought to say to him that could he imagine how bad it might be if that church weren't on every corner?

Not until He was gone could I see that.  One of the deacons gave his testimony, who was my father's age and told how he ran in the streets and sold drugs and might have been killed and a praying woman who became his wife helped deliver him from himself.  I hadn't imagined deacon So and so as being my Dad's age and having run with him.

It was latently consoling.  Too late to share with my one missionfield, but not too late to comfort my heart.  He was gone and God is sovereign I couldn't imagine any other way than the way it had gone.

Now there are many great and shining lights of churches in New York and they have done many wondrous things throughout my city and I am grateful to have seen neighborhoods and communities transformed and lives renewed, but saddened that my dad wasn't there to see his pittance of a tithe that he put in the offering plate grow to a great and beautiful cathedral.

Jesus, the powerful name is enough, but with what measure we engage ourselves to aspire and exalt ourselves on resumes and in articles about us.  We find superlative words to exalt ourselves and yet we only refer to He who built the lofty skies as YOU.  I am inept!