From:
Date: October 31, 2020
Subject: It's October 31; Good Morning Union Special Sabbath edition
Happy Eve of All Saints Day, also known as Hallowmas (sort of like “Christ mass” ), the day set apart by the early church to honor the spirits of all saints who have died and gone to heaven. It’s also the day Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany, thus starting the Protestant Reformation, and providing us the foundation from which we gained access to both the Bible “written in the language of the common people,” and the gift of assurance of salvation from God “alone.” This “hallowed mass” turned into Halloween and that somehow turned into children gathering candy to keep all dentists employed! Go figure! So beside a happy Sabbath, I wish you a happy remembrance of God’s word and God’s grace. Enjoy both today!
“This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24
Here’s what we have to help your rejoicing:
And that, my friends, is God’s Sabbath that I offer to you. And…
The Well- our Young Adult Sabbath School at College View Church will happen at 10:40am IN THE YOUNG ADULT ROOM. Join us for fellowship and praise Through God’s word each Sabbath morning. Lydia Svoboda will be sharing her thoughts today for our blessing.
CVC- 9:15 and noon, Come here, "Journey of Faith; Leaving" part 1 with Pastor Harold Alomia
V2- sundown vespers @ 6:00pm- V2 happens the 30 minutes that contain sundown so it keeps getting earlier as the daylight gets shorter. We’re still in Woods Auditorium and this week Natasha Gibson will be sharing her story. Join us as we close another Sabbath together.
Have a great Sabbath,
Pastor Rich
Quote for the day: "A man who is born again is careful of his own soul.
He tries not only to avoid sin - but also to avoid everything which may lead to it.
He is careful about the company he keeps.
He know that "bad company corrupts good morals" and that evil is more contagious than good, just as disease is more infectious than health.
He is careful about the use of his time; his chief desire is to spend it profitably.
He desires to live like a soldier in an enemy country - to wear his armor continually and to be prepared for temptation.
He is diligent to be watchful, humble, and prayerful."
- J. C. Ryle
PS Don’t forget to turn your clock back an hour and get an extra hour of sleep tonight! Good bye Daylight Savings Time; see you in the spring!
And now my favorite blog for the week, shared with me by a friend:
Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?”
For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.
Ecclesiastes 7:10
You’ve heard these words. You’ve probably uttered some version of them:
“It doesn’t feel like Christmas this year.”
“I don’t know… this Thanksgiving just isn’t the same.”
“I think the holidays are going downhill… sure not what they used to be.”
Was the past really that much better than the present? We seem to think so. We long for The Way We Were. I can hear Barbara singing it now.
Why is that, do you suppose? Why is it that the great marketing success of Star Wars is that the films take us back to something (like the Wild West), when they are set somewhere in our future and in a galaxy far, far away?
In such longings for the past, here is a key ingredient that we even have a technical term for:
Nostalgia.
Ah, nostalgia. Just hearing that word, you drift wistfully to days gone by, to the innocence and adventure of youth, to the scents and sounds of the perfect Thanksgiving or that Christmas gathering that can never be recreated.
That’s the way of it. Nostalgia always starts out desirable with hopes of great fulfillment, but always ends up a source of pain with the reality of unfulfilled expectations.
I think we can all relate. These feelings seem common to every conscious being that still has a memory (that’s most of us). We’d never trade this vital equipment, yet it is the vehicle that transports us to those far away, inner disappointments.
I love word origins; they take me back…
The word origin of nostalgia is itself revealing. In the 17th century, a Swiss medical student invented the term by combining the Greek nóstos (a homecoming) with álgos (an ache). What did he get? Homesickness! This malady was once a diagnosable medical condition considered a mental disorder.
Times change and word meanings adapt to changing cultures so that, today, nostalgia is widely embraced as a positive emotion and means of escape from the constrictors of time and space. That’s fine, and I’m sure we can all entertain a little mental flight to better days, but it seems that at the end of the journey we always end up a bit… well, sick. Homesick, that is.
C.S. Lewis helps us here. He considers nostalgia, “the special emotion of longing; it is always bittersweet.”
David Gibson in his Living Life Backwards elucidates Lewis: “When we feel nostalgia, we experience a feeling of something lost, and yet at the same time it is a beautiful perception of what has been lost, and so we long for it.”
In our childhood innocence we can relive a memory, feeling sure we can return to that place of happiness. But when we mature, Gibson continues, “You realize that nostalgia plays a kind of trick on you. It intensifies your emotions… you realize that if you could go back… it might be nice, it might be lovely, but it would also be ordinary in some ways, and simply going back to it would not generate that intensity of feeling” (p. 103).
Is it possible you still fixate on our birthday? Oh, I know you’re all grown up and try to pretend your birthday isn’t really a thing, but inside you know you want someone to make some kind of a thing about you. I have a theory as to why: Our families made such a big deal of us on our birthdays (balloons, cake, candles, ice cream, singing, too many presents) that we can’t help but want that kind of adoration still—forever.
Here’s the rub. What you think was so wonderful in your past was never really so wonderful as you remember it, and what you imagine it was cannot be attained anyway. The hope of reaching into the past, and maybe even finding it, only disappoints.
Vanity of vanities! All is vanity… What has been is what will be…
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 1:1,9
I need someone smarter than me to bring this home. Lewis does that so well. Addressing these fondest yet most unfulfilling of memories, Lewis explains: “God is giving you in that moment one of the most profound glimpses of the intensity of perfection and beauty that you have actually yet to see. What is in fact pulling on your heartstrings is the future: it’s heaven; it’s your sense of home and belonging that has just cracked the surface of your life, for just a moment, and then is gone.”
Of course, that’s it! “What’s past is prologue,” Antonio declares in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Nostalgia, the desire for the way we were, the notion that things were better back when, our hope placed searchingly in the past… it’s all a mere reflection of what is actually found, in eternal reality, in our future.
He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart…
Ecclesiastes 3:11
Gibson completes the thought for us this way: “God has placed eternity in our hearts. We’re built for home, for a place we cannot yet see, and so when we get a flashing moment of nostalgia, it’s like pinpricks of that eternal home breaking through into our present life” (p.103).
Ah, Nostalgia? No, not best.
Ah, Home. That’s better.
Home. That’s what we’re missing and always searching for. We are indeed a nostalgic people, homesick every one, but the cure for this illness is found not “back there somewhere.” Fulfillment lies only ahead in the Father’s magnificent house of eternal dwellings.
Jesus has gone there and is ready to welcome home all who humble themselves and receive His gracious invitation through His broken body, shed blood, and glorious resurrection.
What you and I long for is not found in the past, but in eternity. It’s called home.
Better is the end of a thing than its beginning…
Ecclesiastes 7:8
By Bill Adams, Christian Care Ministry Chaplain