Hey Church Family!
Here’s the pastor’s weekly executive summary for you busy Valley Church-ers. Let’s worship Jesus the King on Sunday with our voices, Scripture, and ultra-warm connection with our brothers and sisters. Please don’t come late and don’t rush off! (Cecil C. says we shouldn’t do that. We’re a family.) Let’s elevate Jesus by taking care of our children. Here are some of those who will be ministering to our young disciples this Sunday, Becky K., Molly N., Abigail and Sierra S., Nate and Diane L., Elizabeth L., Norma C., Danny C., Rachael, Caroline, Ethan and Becky S., Jaime A., and John and Cindy C.
We’ll be looking at John 7:25-39 in our “Believe” series. This passage will restore your spiritual electrolytes.
Remember that daylight savings ends on Sunday at 2:00 AM, so we’ll all get an extra hour of sleep.
Read on for more thoughts if you’re interested, but for some of you, you just want it short and sweet!
With love in Christ,
Darren
PASTOR’S WEEKLY AMPLIFIED
I took Rachael to the gym the other day before the October chill came. It was one of those “bring a friend” days. We had a calorie-burning, father-daughter fitness date. We jumped in the pool and walked on the treadmills. But the highlight for Rachael was the “Flowater” machines. Wow! Two translucent dispensers of “naturally brilliant water” with “7x Advanced Purification.” And let me say, it’s delicious! Here’s a picture:
As we gulped the water, I thought, “Man, people are thirsty, and not just those who have finished a good workout. There’s a pandemic of thirst around the world since our human race turned their backs on the fountain of living waters. Bone-dry people are looking for something or someone to quench their burning longings and yearnings.
Man, people are thirsty. Taylor Swift just released a new song last week called “Anti-Hero” where she mentions her emotional thirsts (depression, self-loathing, insecurities). The song ends with Taylor as dry and somber as ever. I wanted to say, “Taylor, you gotta meet my friend Nancy Cheng. She can tell you where to get water.”
Man, people are thirsty. I just read about Paolo Pellegrin, the famous Italian photographer. Here he is:
He flies all over the world with his camera. He’s drunk from the fountain of professional success (he’s won multiple World Press Awards) but thirsts still gnaw at him. Recently he was taking pictures in one of the driest places on earth, the Namib Naukluft National Park in Namibia. The interviewer asked him, “Why do you take pictures?” and here’s what he said: “I’m not really going there to take pretty pictures. I’m looking for, well—I don’t know what, exactly.’ He paused and exhaled slowly, and then the idea arrived. ‘I’m searching for the sublime.” I wanted to say, “Paolo, if you hunger for the sublime, that is, the grand, the lofty and the exalted, talk to Nancy Cheng. She found “Sublimity Incarnate.” (Actually, “Sublimity Incarnate” found her.)
Man, people are thirsty. Did you know that last month was the hundredth birthday of
T. S. Eliot’s dismal poem The Waste Land.
Literary types made much of it. If you’re middle-aged or older like I am, you read it in school. (It probably made you want to run off to 7-Eleven for a Big Gulp.) For you Generation Z brothers and sisters (“Zoomers, 10-25) you might be interested to know that The Waste Land App is available for download from the app store. Here’s a shot.
You can hear readings by Viggo Mortensen (of “Aragorn” fame in “The Lord of the Rings”). If you happen to be in New York City this Dec. 5, you can hear the actor Ralph Fiends read The Waste Land from the same stage that Eliot himself read the poem in 1950 at the Kaufmann Concert Hall.
In this poem, the speaker (I don’t know if it was Eliot) says that modern life is rainless desert with no water, no purification and no hope for resurrection. It’s about the spiritual drought, loneliness and thirst for fulfillment.
Sadly, he references the story in Ex. 17 about God providing water for his thirsty, rebellious people. However, Eliot subverts the Bible story by saying that “Here is no water but only rock/Rock and no water.” I wanted to say, “Thomas, THERE IS MOST CERTAINLY a Rock and THERE IS MOST CERTAINLY water. You have to meet Nancy. She’s not the water but she knows where you an find it.” By the way, here’s the mystery Nancy. Notice what’s in the background.
Yes, people are thirsty, but not this woman. She’s satisfied. I’ll tell you a little of her story on Sunday.
For The Quencher,
Darren