not always easy
December 13, 2010 (Monday)
I attended worship services at First Baptist Church, Rockport, on each of two recent Sundays, and was blessed by both the beautiful and meaningful music and the very moving and insightful sermons from our pastor, Scott Jones. He preached about Mary, the mother of Jesus one Sunday and Joseph, the adoptive father of Jesus on the other Sunday. They showed what happens when mere mortals attempt to obey God.
I’ve never heard a clearer analysis of the thoughts and feelings of these two pivotal people in the Christmas story. I confess I had never really thought deeply about all the external circumstances surrounding the birth of Jesus and the family into which he was born. Not only were the sermons intensely interesting in their factual content, but extremely inspirational and motivational in their impact upon the hearers.
They made me think deeply about my own commitment to God and his will for me. The pastor showed the human side of people struggling with divine guidance and supernatural events. I wish you all could have heard these messages. (Next Sunday it’s Simeon and Anna).
The insights revealed to me in these two sermons have encouraged me to think again about the true teachings of Holy Scripture. There always seems to be truth I had not seen, hiding between the lines written in the Biblical records. I probably could have read these verses for the rest of my life and never seen for myself what the pastor saw and then shared with the congregation. Reminds me of poetic verse I like very much, from the pen of John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892):
“We search the world for truth;
We cull the good, the pure, the beautiful,
From all old flower fields of the soul;
And weary seekers of the best,
We come back laden from our quest,
To find that all the sages said,
Is in the Book our mothers read”