Moving Forward

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE DOCTRINE OF MUTUALITY ClipArtBest.com The world is made up of all different kinds of people. Short people, tall people. Female people, male people. This skin tone, that skin tone. Old, young. Optimists, pessimists. Activists, pacifists. Communists, capitalists. Saints and sinners. This world contains people of every extreme, and all points in between. How do we get along with one another? History teaches we don't do it very well. At least, we don't do it very well for very long. Peter Seeger captured history's wayward cycle in his 1952 song, Turn, Turn, Turn, based on Solomon's ruminations in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. The song's lyrics are: TURN, TURN, TURN To everything (turn, turn, turn) There is a season (turn, turn, turn) And a time to every purpose, under heaven A time to be born, a time to die A time to plant, a time to reap A time to kill, a time to heal A time to laugh, a time to weep To everything (turn, turn,...

Have you ever experienced the physical sensation inside your own body of God's love for the church? Every now and then the Holy Spirit ignites a glow inside me that is hard to contain, a feeling of joy that comes when I think about the church. Joy that seeks expression in worship when I think about the bond of Christ's love that binds Christians together across denominational lines, across gender lines, across personality lines. I experienced that joy last night and the glow of it continues inside me this morning. I went to a prayer meeting in Pastor Danny's church last night. Pastor Danny is the prayer committee chairman for the Franklin Graham event we will be having here in Saipan on February 21st. I have been to almost all of the citywide prayer meetings since we began to pray for the event in June 2019, and was excited to go last night because the meeting was in Pastor Danny's church. He and his people pray. Really pray. Two weeks ago at a prayer meeting in Pas...

In Saipan, you buy water. You buy non-potable tap water from one business, and you buy drinking water in big blue jugs from another. There are no springs here or standing pools or rivers of freshwater to glean from if you should run out of blue bottle water and have no money to buy more. Tap water is salty. Rainwater also, or so I've been told. I have not caught enough on my tongue to know for sure. Drinking water is a necessity here. Run out and you die. This week, on two separate occasions, I was asked for drinking water. To the first one, I gave 1/3 of my supply, one bottle. The second I could not help because I was down to only one full bottle myself. My third bottle was almost empty and the month had only begun. I felt I should keep my only remaining full bottle. What would our denominational forerunner, John Wesley, have done? Would he have given the full bottle and gone thirsty himself? It's hard to say. Wesley was known for his compassionate ministry in his day. ...