Life in a hard place


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Speak, Lord. Your servant is listening

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Mike Willock writes: At Second Church earlier this month the preaching text came from 1 Samuel 3, the call of Samuel. It’s a good story: The boy Samuel is serving in the house of the Lord under the old priest Eli at a time when the word of the Lord is rare in the land of Israel. When the lamp of God had not yet gone out, the Lord calls Samuel by name. Samuel runs to Eli, who says, “I did not call you. Go lie down.” When the call comes a third time, Eli realizes God is calling Samuel and tells Samuel to respond, “Speak, Lord . Your servant is listening.” “Speak, Lord . Your servant is listening”. Just six words, but they 1) confirm the relationship between God and Samuel, 2) affirm with conviction that God is still speaking, and 3) that Samuel is ready and willing and waiting to receive and do the word of God. As reformed Presbyterians we know that God still speaks to those who have ears to hear by the power of Holy Spirit, and that God calls us to live out God’s word in love among...
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Meditations on Mortality

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Mike Willock writes: I love poetry – I always have. In this poetry month at Second, three poems come to mind – all of them old, like me. As aches and pains come and go each day and my mobility decreases, I recall “The One Hoss Shay” (1858) by Oliver Wendell Holmes. The poem is much too long to print here, but the gist is that the Deacon built the shay for the Parson in 1755 so it wouldn’t break down. It had no weak spot – each part was just as strong as the rest. He found the strongest oak and lancewood and ash and whitewood and elm and steel and leather to build it. In 1800 it was good as new and so it stayed until November 1, 1855 when it began to show traces of age. While the Parson was on the way to the meeting house that Sunday morning working on the fifth point of his sermon text he found himself sitting on the ground behind the horse with the shay in bits and pieces all around him.  …It went to pieces all at once, All at once, and nothing first, Just as bubbles d...
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"A God-bathed world"

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 A shout out to Kendal Ackerman who each week in Lent has been placing one or two framed posters of paintings by Van Gogh in the sanctuary, accompanied by devotional writing to tease out the connections between Van Gogh’s artistic vision of the world and the season of Lent. This Sunday – Easter Sunday – the culminating image was “The Raising of Lazarus.” Others images on display include “The Starry Night,” “Worn Out/At Eternity’s Gate” and “Still Life with Bible.” This quote on the leaflet to do with “The Starry Night” particularly caught my eye: “[Van Gogh’s] paintings reveal a more biblical vision of reality – one in which heaven and earth intersect to form what Dallas Willard called a ‘God-bathed world.’ We occupy a cosmos filled with God’s presence the way liquid fills a sponge.” (Quote from author and podcaster Skye Jethani) All of the write ups coordinated by Kendal can be found here .
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