West Main

In our busy world, vacations these days often seem few and far between. They are hard to plan amidst our busy schedules, and are expensive and tough to make happen. Several years ago I was blessed to take a few days off work and visit my family way on the other side of the US in sunny and hot Florida. It was a good week.

As with any family vacation it was full of all kinds of work, was fun, and stressful ALL at the same time. Vacations are a living and breathing paradox! They are restful and tiring. They are calm and chaotic. They are peaceful and full of strife. They seem to always be pulling on both sides of any emotion.

I think that life in Christ is the same way. There are wonderful highs in Jesus and there are terrible lows. Ministry and faith involve the full range of the spectrum of emotion. Some days we are sure that life could not get any better and that God is right there blessing us. Some days we wish it would all go away and we cannot seem to find God anywhere. Some days life is full of peace and happiness. Other days joy can’t be found. Jesus told us that it would be this way. In John 16 he bluntly warned us that in our lives in this world WE WILL HAVE TROUBLES, but we also know he encouraged us to take heart and hold on, because victory and reward are coming!

When you get a bunch of family together, throw a bunch of kids in the mix, factor in heat and sunburns, time changes, a dash of sleep deprivation and a cup of cross country travel, the recipe will surely render some trouble, some minor arguments and some stresses. But, despite this we shouldn’t trade these times for anything!! The good memories that are made FAR outweigh the bad. Seeing your kids smile in wonder as Shamu splashes by, riding a roller coaster with your wife, holding all the kids in your lap as you pray for them . . . aren’t these memories worth a little trouble? Yes, indeed!

So too are the wonderful blessings that come from service to the Lord. Seeing a lost soul reunited with Christ, a suffering addict celebrate sobriety, a hungry person fed . . . aren’t THESE memories worth the trouble that Jesus spoke of? Yes, indeed! I wouldn’t trade ministry in the kingdom of God for anything. I pray that you will all join me!

– Pannell

CREATIVITY

Creators bring things or thoughts into existence that have never been seen or imagined before. Our Creator God and Father is therefore the great prototype of all creators. Unlike us, he needs no raw materials for his visible works. And we could never have imagined his sacrificial and loving way of dealing with us. His word requires us to think in ways that are unnatural to us, and causes us to confess that his words and deeds are divine in origin.

Yet marvel of marvels, he made us in his image and endowed us too with the ability to create. The inventiveness of man is astonishing and reflects the Creator of all creators. We are also able to conceive of things not thought of or done before.

Compared with the power of the mind man has been given, his physical body is weak. We were therefore allowed to think of and build many kinds of engines to do work we are otherwise incapable of. We power them with fuels that we have been given access to in the bowels of the Earth. We no longer use horses for power, but have conceived and built engines that produce hundreds of horsepower.

The Earth was bathed in radio noise before man was able to harness it to transmit information. Some of this radiation comes from noisy radio stars, like our Sun. On Earth, lightning strokes produce electromagnetic waves that encircle the globe. Although our first information was sent over electrical wires, creative minds soon realized that radiating waves could be harnessed to send messages and music.

We began with long antennas and radio waves that were miles long. These would travel through space and carry imprinted (modulating) information. Bright minds developed what we know as radio and television and progressed to the much more efficient digital coding of pictures, music and messages. With the realization that light was simply a very short wavelength part of the electromagnetic spectrum, we are now in the midst of using it as the ultimate base for information transfer. Wavelengths there are measured in nanometers. Today, smart phones are in the hands of youngsters who have no idea of the marvels that are under the hood. In such technology, man is mirroring the creativity of God.

In our curious probing into the Earth, materials have been discovered in accessible layers and lodes that have made man a master builder of intricate devices. A marriage of chemistry and biology is now producing medicines that are counter-attacking age old diseases that shorten our lives on earth.

The story of the creativity of man is endless. But we live in a fallen world where man’s brilliance is also at work in creating devices that destroy and kill. Our creativity has extended to all kinds of sins against our own bodies. Our only hope of rescue from our depravity is that of looking to the greatest of all creations, the message of Christ that lifts us up from the mire of our waywardness.

– James Gibbs (From the Files)