Farewell Celebration for Father Ed & Julie Morgan

February 17, 2012, 6:00 pm

Clear Springs Restaurant

http://www.clearspringscafe.com/sanantonio.html

Join with us to honor the Morgans’ ministry, bid them a fond farewell, and wish them God’s blessings in their new ministry.

RSVP to the church office (344-1920 or admin@allsaintsanglican.net)  by Friday, February 10^th.

For more information, contact the church office (344-1920 or admin@allsaintsanglican.net) or Barry Kowald (events@allsaintsanglican.net).

Bonus Reading: Hebrews 11:8-12

Devotional writer Henri Nouwen urged people to know God personally through our Lord Jesus—a function Scripture teaches us comes from a personal Holy Ghost. Once, at a conference on art and the spiritual life, Nouwen was seated with a woman who shared she had quit going to her church because she disagreed with its policies—a move that had little to do with Jesus, but was centered on her personal feelings and desires—not the prompting of the Holy Ghost. She was walking in her own sight and not seeing the Invisible.

Henri leaned over and said to her, “All that is distraction. I don’t mean to denigrate or even dispute your complaints, but those are beside the point. The only thing that really matters is your relationship with Jesus.” What a rifle shot of counsel for us all!

He knew the importance of a personal relationship with Jesus as both Lord and Savior. Although invisible to our natural eyes and untouchable by our natural hands, He’s still with us, every day—what Scripture calls Emmanuel. Like electricity, He is invisible, but a pervasive, easily accessible power source through a personal Pentecost. We maintain contact with Him through worship, fellowship, prayer, diligent study of His Word, and listening, empowered by our indwelling, baptizing Holy Spirit. If we do, He’s central and powerful in every aspect of our lives. We seek Him and His Way, instead of murmuring and complaining among the people, because we didn’t get what suited our feelings.

Numbers 16 contrasts God’s view of murmuring/complaining with standing before Him in relationship and worship. Moses was doing all he could to lead Israel out of bondage, following God’s prompting to the Promised Land. However, a coalition of complainers, led by Dathan, criticized Moses’ every move, because it was not what they wanted. When Moses called the entire company to stand before the Lord with him, Dathan refused, citing the imagined wrongs Moses had done. Dathan’s rebellion–which the Bible equates with the sin of witchcraft–and self will cost him, and those standing with him, their lives, as the earth beneath his tents opened, swallowing them forever. Simply surrendering his will and standing before the Lord could have saved Dathan. Instead, complaining killed him—and those that stood with him in it. So it is with us—we can choose complaints and self will, or surrender and relationship—death or life.

Nouwen gives us a Christian way of standing before the Lord. “Just take 5 minutes a day every day for 2 weeks to sit quietly and ask to be with Jesus, and ask for His presence. And then come and tell me what’s important.” What advice–consistency! Even though it feels like we’re sometimes just plodding along, our progress is steady, and that’s the point. God will bless our consistency, if we are in Him in every step, not ourselves. A simple discipline—get ourselves out of the equation, and focus on the Lord in consistency. Then we’ll have the perspective of God’s approved solution that Henri spoke of to the disgruntled woman.

In the Bible, the life of faith is often described as a walk (Genesis 17:1; Psalm 84:11; Micah 6:8; Romans 8:1; Galatians 5:25), a word in Greek that means “making progress”—one that is most closely mirrored in our term “parapet,” a term for the walkway along the top of a fortification wall. For most of us, our Christian pilgrimage  involves plodding, a pace that sometimes feels unspiritual and unproductive. The dictionary defines plodding as “making one’s way slowly and perseveringly.” Taking that together with the word “parapet,” plodding can be seen as progress made from a position of safety and strength. No wonder Scripture refers to God as our “strong tower!” And we walk where He places us

Two of God’s earliest plodders, Abraham and Sarah, trusted His promises, even though they had to wait many years for them to be fulfilled (Hebrews 11:8-12). How hard is it for us to wait even for a stop light to change?

Consider also the productive plodding of William Carey. A cobbler by trade, Carey could have sunk into a life of complaining, but, instead, became a scholar, linguist, and father of modern missions. His motto: “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.” In old age, he clarified: “If, after my removal, anyone should think it worth his while to write my life, I will give you a criterion by which you may judge of its correctness. If he gives me credit for being a plodder, he will describe me justly. Anything beyond this will be too much. I can plod. . . . To this I owe everything.” What wisdom.

Real Christian life, then, is a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ—not “religion,” a term derived from the Latin, meaning “rules.” Once we have personal relationship with Jesus, through the Holy Ghost, we see the details of our lives as He does. And here’s a New Year’s resolution: will we take 5, 10 or even 30 minutes a day to seek His presence? Will we commit to weekly worship and mutually-encouraging fellowship? Will we plod to stand before God—or risk separation from God in complaints instead?

God wants plodders—making progress steadily from His position of strength and safety, and sends the Holy Ghost with walking shoes for each of us. Our job is put them on and start to move. Oh, and walk by our Faith, not our feelings.

Pray about it: “How will I walk in 2012–by feelings or Faith? Will I carve out time for His Spirit to speak and lead…and confirm in the Word?”

Our next Food Pantry Donation Sunday will be on Sunday, February 5, 2012. Our All Saints Food Pantry is asking for donations of cereal, rice, and beans. Donations can be placed in the donation bin in Ballard Hall.

For more information, contact Carter Dreesman, outreach@allsaintsanglican.net.

Adapted from A Writer’s Words, An Editor’s Eye

No, I’m not talking about moral RELATIVISM, but the relationship that those of us who believe in absolutes of right and wrong see between slavery and abortion.

Some time ago, I edited a book written by a man who is a descendant of a slave and a slave owner. He is writing the book as fiction because, of course, he doesn’t know the details of what transpired several generations ago. In his research, he determined who his ancestors were and some things about them, but he can only imagine emotions and thoughts.

His writing is powerful, and I identify strongly with his great-grandmother, the slave. I cry with the mother and daughter when the young girl is torn apart from her mother and sent to another plantation far away. I feel with her when her master shows up at her door.

Slavery is abhorrent in many ways; one human being “owning” another is incomprehensible to me. But of all the evils of slavery, what I find the most difficult to understand is slave owners fathering children that they then considered less than human. The children were slaves—forced to work in the fields or the house, subject to being sold on the whim of the master, and in some cases physically abused, even killed.

How can one human being do that to another? How can one human being do that to his own child—flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood?

Then I realized that thousands of mothers are killing their babies every day. More than 53 million abortions have occurred in the US since the Supreme Court legalized the murder of unborn babies on January 22, 1973.

Abortion is justified by saying the aborted fetus is not a human being, just a blob of tissue. Slavery was justified was saying that the slave was not a human being, but something less than human.

We all recognize that the people who were enslaved in the United States and Europe a couple of hundred years ago were human beings. We recognize that the people in modern day slavery, especially sex slavery, are human beings.

Why do so many women not recognize that the life conceived and trusted to their body for nurturing until birth is a human being?

Only a few years after the infamous Roe v Wade decision, someone close to me (I’ll call her June to protect her privacy) became pregnant. She and her husband, an enlisted man in the Army, had three children already, and the youngest child was profoundly handicapped. Doctors tried to convince June to have an abortion. They couldn’t explain why her two-year daughter was born with multiple birth defects, and they suggested another child might have similar handicaps.

The doctors pressured June to have an abortion. After all, it was legal now, and she had her hands full with a small child in a wheelchair who required constant care plus two older, active youngsters. June, naturally, was worried about her family’s ability to care for another handicapped child, but as a Christian, she believed in the sanctity of human life at every stage—from conception to natural death. Although she went through extreme emotional distress in making the decision, she refused the abortion.

Thanks be to the God, her son was a completely normal baby, and today he is a completely normal adult. He’s not rich. He’s not famous. He’s not a political leader or a brilliant scientist. He’s not necessarily considered successful by the world’s standards. But he is a man with a family and friends who love him, a man who works and pays taxes and lives an ordinary life, like most of the rest of us. And he deserves to live his ordinary life as you and I deserve to live our lives.

The Bible says:

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be. ~ Psalm 139:13-16

This is what the LORD says—he who made you, who formed you in the womb, and who will help you. ~ Isaiah 44:2, NIV

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. ~ Genesis 1:27

Before I was born the Lord called me; from my birth he has made mention of my name. ~ Isaiah 49:1b

You shall not murder. ~ Exodus 20:13

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart. ~ Jeremiah 1:5a

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. ~ Jeremiah 29:11

I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. ~ Deuteronomy 30:19b-20

May the Lord bless and keep each and every one of His people — born and unborn, healthy and sick, rich and poor, free and slave. And may we pray and work for the day when all slaves are free and all babies are allowed to live.

We are in need of drivers to pick up food from Daily Bread downtown and deliver it to the food pantry at Elisha House. Drivers must have a truck, van, or large SUV. Pickups are Thursday and Saturday mornings.

This is our main need at the present time, but other volunteer opportunities are food prep Thursday and Saturday mornings at 9:30 am and food distribution from EH food pantry from 2:00 to 4:00 pm Saturdays.

For more information or to volunteer, contact Carter Dreesman, outreach@allsaintsanglican.net.

Join us for a potluck lunch after the 11:15 AM service. Bring your favorite dish to share and enjoy the great food from other fabulous All Saints cooks.

Then take part in the Annual Parish Meeting. Get updated on what happened last year, elect new vestry members, and learn the plans for 2012.