Further Along My Passage

July 2015
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A blessed event in my garden bird chalet with the entrance into our world of two baby tree swallows.  Alas the family has vacated these premises already for parts unknown, leaving a poignant note that their sojourn with me was so short and a reminder that our Lord knows their destiny and cares for them as He does for me.

“Rejoice in the Lord always.  Again I say rejoice!  Let your gentleness be known to all men.  The Lord is at hand.  Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and thanksgiving let your requests be known to God:  and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.  Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praise-worthy meditate on these things.  But my God will supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.  Paul to the Philippian church 4:4-8, 19.

 

Summer has made its grand entrance here topside of our planet and with gratitude for abundant rains, lush crops of corn, soybeans, alfalfa, and hay fields in the making are gloriously green here in the Shenandoah.  My routine passages along the byways of Rockingham County find me watching for the familiar wildflowers, birds, and wildlife.

In my very own garden, echinachea, zinnias, verbena, shasta daisies, lantana, yarrow, mammoth sunflowers, tickseed and coreopsis.  All reminders of our Creator’s superb artistry.

        This commentary from a half-century ago

rings with contemporary meaning for me.

        “Today as never before there is being laid upon the heart and conscience of the Church the burden of evangelism....Today the demand is more radical and basic.  It is spiritual resurrection: it is –under God—the creating of life.  To confront a bewildered and disheveled age with the fact of Christ, to thrust upon its confusion the creative word of the Cross and smite its disenchantment with the glory of the Resurrection –this is the urgent, overruling task.  “Son of man, can these bones live?”....There is, therefore, no place today for a Church that is not aflame with the Spirit who is the Lord and Giver of life, nor any value in a theology which is not passionately missionary.  If there throbs through the Church the vitality of a living union with Christ – and apart from this the Church has no claim to exist, no right to preach, it is merely cumbering the ground – if the Church can indeed say “It is not I who live, it is Christ who lives in me,” then the dark demonic forces of the age have met their match, and the thrust of life is stronger than the drift of death.  A Church that knows its Lord and is possessed by its Gospel cannot but propagate creatively the life that it has found.  A Christian who is taking his faith seriously cannot but evangelize.”  James S. Stewart, in his book A Faith to Proclaim.

National Geographic Camp on Mt. Everest

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