O God Our Help in Ages Past

Dear Church Family

   Today is March 31 and we find ourselves in the first day of a new directive from our Governor to stay at home. The infected number is now 1660, please be in prayer for all of them and include their families and care givers and the medical team surrounding them at this time.

   I was on a coaching call this morning and we were asked how did we feel in the middle of all of this. My answer came to mind pretty quickly. I was reminded of my first few days of Kindergarten. We were in Brussels Belgium, on our way to the Congo to be missionaries. We were supposed to have a year of preparation in Brussels before heading to Africa. I was five going on six, so I went to school. But my first few days I was in the middle of French without understanding a word of it. I just remember being so out of place. I am amazed that this feeling came back to me this morning as a result of the question.

   You too may be feeling really out of place in the middle of all of this. We have never been here before and we are all making the best effort we can. We are all hoping and praying that it will go back to normal soon. That may be a good thing, or it may never happen again. We don’t know what the future holds. We only know WHO holds the future. Our God.

   These almost daily devotionals are to help us all navigate this time together, even though we are absent, one from another. May God guard us along the way. Today our hymn of comfort devotional is about “O God Our Help in Ages Past”. Written by Isaac Watts 1719

1 Our God, our help in ages past,
our hope for years to come,
our shelter from the stormy blast,
and our eternal home: 

2 Under the shadow of your throne
your saints have dwelt secure;
sufficient is your arm alone,
and our defense is sure. 

3 Before the hills in order stood,
or earth received her frame,
from everlasting you are God,
to endless years the same. 

4 A thousand ages in your sight
are like an evening gone;
short as the watch that ends the night
before the rising sun. 

7 Our God, our help in ages past,
our hope for years to come:
O be our guard while troubles last,
and our eternal home.

 UMH. #. 117

   In the midst of this difficult time, the knowledge that God is with us and our helper is a very present source of strength. Jesus promised in John 14 that the Holy Spirit would be available for just a time like this.

   May the prayers of all your friends at church be a source of strength, always. God Bless each and every one of you.

Pastor Jeff

Pastor Thoughts for March 28

Hello Church Family

   I’ve been sharing hymns that can be very comforting and I hope to continue to do that while we are absent one from another. That is a paraphrase of an ancient covenant benediction called the Mizpah. Maybe you remember using it at the end MYF sessions. It’s from Jacob & Laban in Genesis 31: 49 “May the Lord keep watch between you and me when we are away from each other.”  I think it’s very appropriate to ask God to be with us when we cannot be together in person.

   We celebrated the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Fanny Crosby this week. She wrote over 8,000 hymns in her life-time. She died in 1915 at 95 years young. She was converted in a Methodist church in New York and began to write poems and hymns from then on. She was also blind from the age of 6 weeks old. Her writing about everyday events and trying to offer God’s perspective reminds me of the hymn writing of Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, who is a Presbyterian pastor, now serving in upstate New York. She has a writing talent like Fanny Crosby. Here is the one she wrote for this week about our pandemic with the coronavirus.

When We Face an Unknown Future

When we face an unknown future that we can’t imagine yet,
when the closeness we have treasured turns from blessing into threat—
As we miss our friends and loved ones, as we crave community,
may we look, God, in this season, for a whole new way to be.

Jesus faced the lonely desert as a time to look within.
There he met such trial and conflict; there he knew you were with him.
In this time of separation when we miss the life we’ve known,
may we hear your voice proclaiming: “I am here! You’re not alone.”

May we cherish those around us as we never have before.
May we think much less of profit; may we learn what matters more.
May we hear our neighbors’ suffering; may we see our neighbors’ pain.
May we learn new ways of offering life and health and hope again.

God, when illness comes to threaten, and when so much here goes wrong,
may we know this thing for certain— that your love is sure and strong.
You’re beside us in our suffering, and when times are surely tough,
we may face an unknown future, but it’s filled, Lord, with your love.

   I hope and pray you know we are looking forward to the day when we can be back together.

I hope you can join us tomorrow morning at 10 am for zoom.

Join Zoom Meeting.  https://zoom.us/j/7309971650    Meeting ID: 730 997 1650

Blessing to you all. Think of inviting a friend to join you, just send them this invitation.

Pastor Jeff

Immortal, Invisible God Only Wise

Dear Church Family

   Here we are on March 24 and continue to hear from our State leadership that we need to practice social distancing and more stores and places of gathering are being closed to help keep us safe and well. I pray you are doing those things so that others will not make you sick, or you make others sick, by passing this along without even knowing it. It is hard to quarantine ourselves, but in this time of the pandemic we need to do so.

   I thought I would share some hymns that offer comfort at a time like this with a meditation on one a day. I hope this will give you some encouragement as we await the day of freedom to move about as we wish. I also ask for your prayers of patience for me. I’m trying to research and learn about as many ways to connect with you using modern technology as I can. It’s a tough learning curve, but I want to be able to encourage you and connect with you anyway I can. I still can’t be two places at once, but with Zoom and Facebook I might be able to reach out to many of you to encourage and bless you. Thank you for your support.

  Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
in light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise.

2 Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might;
thy justice like mountains high soaring above
thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love.

3 Great Father of glory, pure Father of light,
thine angels adore thee, all veiling their sight;
all praise we would render; O help us to see
'tis only the splendor of light hideth thee!      UMH # 103

Smith, Walter Chalmer, D.D., was born at Aberdeen Dec. 5, 1824, and educated at the Grammar School and University of that City. He pursued his Theological studies at Edinburgh, and was ordained Pastor of the Scottish Church in Chad well Street, Islington, London, Dec. 25, 1850. After holding several pastorates he became, in 1876, Minister of the Free High Church, Edinburgh.

   May you know that God provides the clouds, which become fountains of goodness and love. In these cloudy days, May God’s Holy Spirit, and the support of the prayers of your church family help you to remember “He rulest in might”

   God’s peace be with you all.  

Pastor Jeff

Wisdom for other places

Dear Church Family

Seth Godin’s blog for today is very relevant. For those who don’t know him, he is a business guru with many published books, many with crazy titles. The Dip, Purple Cow, Poke the Box, We Are All Weird, Leap First: Creating Work That Matters. One of the most sought after Business thinkers out there.

Here is Today’s Blog:  Day Trading Emotions

“When the stock market is on an upward tear, day trading becomes popular. You sit in your basement, surrounded by terminals and tickers, searching for the latest bits of information, hoping to make a profit buying and selling based on what’s happening in this very instant.
It’s pretty tempting to day trade your emotions.
We’ve piped the voices of a billion people directly into our brains. The loudest, angriest, most frightened people are the ones that are amplified the most.
Everyone sharing what’s breaking. The visceral angst of this very moment, over and over.
Just as it’s almost impossible to make a profit as a day trader, it’s difficult to be happy when you day trade emotions. But there’s an alternative:
Buy and hold.
Stand for something.
Stick with it.
Long-term contributions matter. Today ends tonight and tomorrow starts again, but we only get one long-term life.
Add up the sum of our days and that’s who we are. We get what we repeat.”
So I’m encouraging you to do what he says. We will survive if we remember we are God’s Creation, all God’s children. We will find stability in prayer. We will find strength in remembering our blessings. We will remember that God says to us just before each challenge, “Fear Not” or “Do Not Be Afraid.”  The idea is that God is with us, God knows exactly what we are going through and offers us the help we need through this pandemic. It’s often out of Chaos, that creativity comes. Read Genesis 1 again. Out of trauma, comes new appreciation for what we do have.
It’s my prayer that we see this is what is needed for today and each day we wrestle with social distancing. We will zoom the worship tomorrow. Check your flash email. Check the Facebook pages and there are a couple of them for NBUMC or North Bethesda UMC. Read my blog, WWPJB.blogspot.com for a new word for the day.   Pastor Jeff