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A Reason to Smile

Good morning church family,

It doesn’t take much for a class of seventh-grade students to turn into a jumble of sleepwalking moon bats. It takes even less when those same students are just one ring-of-the-bell away from embarking on their Christmas break. On this particular final school-day of December, the transmogrification was brought about by the presence of risers in the school gym. The students had filed into the large gymnasium following their lunch of pizza, crinkle-cut fries, apple slices, and candy canes when they saw the three-tiered semi-circle risers placed just in front of the basketball goal at the far end of the hardwood court. For the last couple of months, all the Crosby Middle School students had spent their chorus period learning a number of Christmas carols and classics ahead of the annual holiday concert held on the Friday before break. Those chorus periods had been held in Mrs. Swicker’s music room. To say that the vast majority of Crosby kids – especially Crosby boys – were unenthused during these chorus periods would be a very kind understatement. But despite the fact that most of her pupils behaved like uncooperative hostages, Mrs. Swicker had still managed to prepare a fair program with a serviceable choir to perform it. But now, as the students assembled for the dress rehearsal before the concert later that evening, the moon bats, with bellies full of pizza and peppermint, were disorganizing themselves on, around, and underneath the risers.

Mrs. Swicker, the school’s chorus teacher, would have attempted to bring the chaos into order but she needed to manage her own chaos first. A slight, middle-aged woman wearing a smart skirt, tight-fitting silk blouse, and high-heeled shoes, Amanda Swicker was simultaneously trying to set up a conductor’s stand, arrange her music, turn the sound system on, and ward off a cadre of high-strung overachievers who were shadowing her every move.

“Okay! Okay everyone,” Mrs. Swicker boomed; speaking into a hot mic. “Please. Would everyone please find a place on the risers? Let’s have the eighth-graders on the top two platforms and the seventh-graders on the bottom two. Don’t worry about it all making sense right away – I’ll move everyone around once I can see how everything looks.”

Mrs. Swicker needn’t have worried that any of her students were concerned with things making sense. They weren’t. But with the help of a couple of classroom aids and multiple threats of holiday homework, the group finally took their places and stood at reasonable attention. Mrs. Swicker wasted no time in firing up the accompaniment tracks that would carry the choir through the program as a cruise ship might carry landlubbers across the Atlantic.

For a public school located in a very progressive part of Tacoma, Washington, the song selections for the holiday program were remarkably sacred. Of course, the majority of the songs were radio favorites; things like Jingle Bells and Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree. But just about every other song throughout the program seemed to have something to do with Jesus. The kids had spent months singing Go Tell it on the Mountain, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Joy to the World, and O Little Town of Bethlehem. No one seemed to be offended at the mention of Jesus but no one seemed very moved by it either.

“Well, okay everybody,” Mrs. Swicker said after the choir had run through the entire program of songs while only stopping a handful of times for direction, “that’s not half-bad. Please try and watch me at the beginning and end of every song. Some of you were jumping the gun on some of those songs and some of you were holding notes at the end like opera singers. Not a good look or a good sound. And whatever you do, try and blend your voices together with the other ones singing around you. No one should be able to hear any of us singing but only hear all of us. Comprende?” Mrs. Swicker tapped the top of her music stand with her pencil. “Alright, in just a minute I’ll give you some final instructions on how we’re going to enter into the auditorium tonight and how we’re going to exit. I’ll also be giving you some reminders about how to dress and,” shooting a look over at a motley bunch of seventh-grade boys, “how not to dress.” Impish laughs bubbled up from the boys in the lower risers and a gust of sighs descended from the risers above where girls with arms crossed rolled their eyes. “Now, are there any questions?”

Isabella Carpenter raised her hand. “Do you know where our parents are going to be sitting? Will they be able to see us from here?”

“Yes, Isabella. Don’t worry – everyone will be able to see you. Anyone else?”

Cassidy Paradis raised her hand. “Did you want me to sing the mezzo-soprano part on Joy to the World? It’s no problem. I know the music.”

“No, Cassidy,” Mrs. Swicker said; beginning to look a little defeated. “Please just sing the melody with everyone else. Thank you. Okay, are there any more questions?”

It was then that Kegan, a chubby, somewhat cerebral kid who had a Vulcan manner of talking, raised his hand. “Maybe I should have asked this a long time ago but I didn’t think about it until you told us to try and smile while we’re singing. I have no idea who this Jesus is or who the ‘dear Christ’ is who’s supposed to ‘enter in’.”

Mrs. Swicker folded her arms and cocked her head in earnest consideration. She knew Kegan wasn’t grandstanding or clowning and deserved a thoughtful answer. The question had turned the room unusually quiet. “Jesus was a Jewish messianic figure,” Mrs. Swicker began; her speech careful and halting. “He lived back during the Roman Empire, I believe. Think of him as a symbol of good triumphing over evil; or at least wanting to. Jesus is something like a promise of all that’s good with mankind and the world.”

“So, these songs are Jewish then?” Kegan answered sincerely.

“You know, Kegan,” Mrs. Swicker said; looking to quickly put a bow on this topic, “I’m not really, entirely sure, but…”

“I’m pretty sure,” Kegan interrupted his teacher, “that Christmas is a Christian holiday.”

“Well, certainly Christmas is Christian, Kegan. You’re certainly right about that.” Mrs. Swicker lowered her voice an octave and spoke in a summary tone. “But none of these songs have anything to do with religion for us. These are just some traditional folk songs that we’ve chosen for their beautiful music and uplifting lyrics. If you’re having trouble smiling as you sing, just replace Jesus in your mind with whatever warm and sweet thing you love and find hope in.”

Mrs. Swicker, who had a soft spot in her heart for Kegan, looked over at the young man and dared a follow-up by giving a knowing nod. “Okay?” she asked.

“I guess so, Mrs. Swicker,” Kegan answered, plunging his hands in his pockets; only just then noticing that everyone was looking at him. “I just think it’s strange. Why a religion would make such a big deal about a little baby.”

“I guess I don’t really know,” Mrs. Swicker said, cocking her head again. “Perhaps it’s something to look into.”

“Maybe I will,” Kegan said under his breath and mostly to himself. “It might be nice to have a real reason to smile.”

We’re looking forward to gathering together tomorrow to sing and celebrate the good news that we know and believe with all our heart! Our light hearts are a triumph of Heaven. But the heavy hearts of our neighbors are the charge of Heaven for our lives. What a great and joyous work it is to go and tell the good news to others. We are blessed! May the Lord, mighty God, bless and continue to keep us!

  • Pastor Tate
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Have a Seat

Good morning church family,

Societies produce many points of tension for the people living in the honeycombed communities they create. Take the time we spend in public bathrooms, elevators, and waiting rooms, for instance. Complete strangers forced into tight, confined spaces are left with the difficult decision of either entering into pained conversation with one another or enduring some of the most awkward silence imaginable. I mean, what exactly does one man relieving himself say to another man doing the same or what do we say to one another as we collectively stare at the digital display on the elevator, waiting for our floor number to ding? Or, to mention another tension; how about four-way stops? Of course, there are rules to govern these traffic conventions but absent a uniformed enforcement agent of some kind, the vigilantes are left to employ nods, waves, flashing headlights, and cold stares to keep everything moving in an orderly fashion. And providing one more example; we all appreciate it when a stranger holds a door for us – but not when we’re twenty or thirty paces from that door. In those instances, we try declining with an aw-shucks wave of the hand but quickly hang our heads and do a half-jog to the door while the stranger stares smilingly at our awkward progress. It’s brutal.

Now none of the above examples represent any profound stresses in our lives nor are they illustrative of any real hardship we must endure, but instead are just little tensions for us to experience and study. There’s a lot that we might learn about human nature and the way we’ve been designed by God when we ponder on them a bit. I got to thinking about this recently when I was reading Paul’s letter to the believers in Ephesus. A part of the following passage jumped out at me: “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…” (Ephesians 2:4-6)

What struck me was that last part about Christ making his followers “sit together in the heavenly places”. I think we all understand the odd tension that’s created when a person in your company is standing while you and everyone else present is seated. You can picture it – you’re dining out with some friends when someone you know comes over to your table to say “hi”. Unless the exchange is very brief, you will feel the need to either have the person sit at your table with you or you will feel compelled to stand with him during the dialogue. The conversation is bound to be pained otherwise. You feel the same sort of thing when someone comes and stands by your desk while you’re in your chair at work or when someone drops by your house for a visit and proceeds to just stand there in your living room while you and everyone else is seated on couches and recliners. I get a keen sense of this phenomenon whenever I go and visit someone in the hospital. One of the most important things for me to do in order for the visit to have any chance of being a blessing, is to find some place to have a seat when I enter the patient’s room. Every moment that I remain standing in a moment like that, a palpable tension builds in the room until I either beg an early exit or finally have a seat. Why is that? Well, as social conventions go, sitting is certainly a more casual, unhurried, and open-ended manner of relating than standing seems to be. When someone opts not to sit down but to remain standing, he’s putting the whole exchange on a timer; the conversational equivalent of leaving the car running. But to sit down is to communicate a certain commitment to the time and place; it’s a decision to fellowship with another in whatever is going on. Sitting down somewhere with someone says “I’m with you in what’s going on here”, “I would like to belong here”, and “I’m in no rush to be somewhere else”.

Too many of us (myself included) leave the car running, so to speak, when we come to worship or when we sit to read the Bible or volunteer in some Gospel effort. We come into the Lord’s presence and He offers us a seat but we dip our heads, shove our hands in our coat pockets, and kindly decline. “We can only stay a minute,” we tell Him and then proceed to half-heartedly lean against the door jamb or anxiously shift our weight from foot to foot. We’re there with the Lord in what’s going on but, then again, we’re really not.

But praise the Lord – because of His great love for us and His mercy, He won’t let us stay in that cagey state for long but instead gives us new life and raises us up to where He sits. He lifts us out of all the worries, concerns, and entanglements that make our eyes dart about and which keep our souls shifty that He might bless us with Heaven’s perspective of things. The Lord lightens our hearts, lifts our heads, and causes us to want to dwell with Him. He makes it so we want to take off our coat, have a seat, and stay a while.

So, what do you say? Will you pull up a chair?

The Lord’s invited all of us to His house on Sunday morning! He has something to give us, something to tell us, and something for us to do. It’s going to be so good for all of us to be together with Him then and throughout the week. Isn’t it grand to be a Christian! May the Lord, mighty God, bless and continue to keep us!

–        Pastor Tate

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The Brush Pile

Good morning church family,

Standing on his back deck; sipping his morning coffee and surveying the yard, Warren Butterfield was wondering to himself, “When is the best time of year for a family of red squirrels to go homeless?”

Warren was in his pajamas but had put his coat on before stepping outside. Steam poured off the top of his mug like a smoke stack as he struck a stoic pose; one hand in coat pocket and the other wrapped around the warm ceramic cup. His wife and kids were inside and still asleep in their beds but Warren was up and at ‘em; eager to make the most of his Saturday. He had a pretty decent punch list for the day. Warren aimed to get the last of the leaves out of the yard and into the woods, take the patio furniture off the deck and tuck it away in the garage, shut down the riding mower, tune up the snow blower, and stack the couple cords of split wood he’d had delivered earlier in the week. And if all that got done with any daylight to spare, Warren’s wife had one more job for him.

“Warren,” his wife Beth had said one warm autumn evening as they sat out on the deck enjoying the twilight, “that brush pile of yours looks awful. Can’t you pile that up somewhere else where we don’t have to look at it all the time?”

“Honey,” Warren playfully replied, “this isn’t exactly the palace gardens back here. That’s the Vermont wilderness you’re looking at. That brush pile is the quaint, bucolic display of a gentleman farmer hard at work. Embrace it.”

“’Bucolic’? Really?” Beth came back at him. “Good grief. Well, listen, if I’m forced to embrace that brush pile – I’m just warning you – that might be the only thing I end up embracing around here.”

“Is that a threat?” Warren asked as he leaned in for a kiss.

Beth just made a face while turning to give Warren nothing more than her cheek. The brush pile would have to go.

But now, standing there on his deck; the early morning chill finding its way past his coat and sending a shiver up his spine, Warren was plagued by an unsettling thought. All summer long and throughout the fall, he’d noticed that a family of red squirrels had taken up residence in the aforementioned brush pile that was located in the back corner of the yard. Several times, he’d stopped what he was doing to watch as the handsome little creatures scurried and scampered across the lawn or into the woods beyond. Less common than their grayish cousins, Warren thought the rusty-colored rodents to be smart-looking and even adorable. When collecting the downed tree limbs that fell in summer wind storms, Warren was careful to place them gently atop the pile; not wanting to damage the squirrels’ nest or make them anxious. His care and concern for the little critter family had not been a conscious one up to this point; even though his eye was often drawn to that part of the property in hopes of spying one of them.

Taking another sip of his cooling coffee, Warren began considering what might happen to the squirrels if he pulled the brush pile apart and dragged it into the woods. “With the cold and snow coming,” he thought to himself, “how quickly could those squirrels build another nest?” Continuing to think, he asked himself, “I wonder if they have any little ones nesting in there? That would sure be awful if I dumped those poor things out onto the cold forest floor.”

Warren shook his head and turned to go back inside. He was resolved to do nothing about the brush pile without looking into the matter further. “Anyway you look at it,” he argued to himself as he stepped back into the wonderfully warm house, “I really ought to wait until next summer and give the little guys a few months to find new accommodations.” He was hopeful Beth would agree.

Warren poured a second cup of coffee and pulled one of his wife’s blueberry muffins out of the bread box. He turned the lights on over the dining room table and pulled his Bible from off of the top of the China cabinet. Sitting down, he opened up to the Psalms. Everyone now and again, Warren liked to read through the Psalms in one of the months with thirty days in it. Reading five psalms a day; he could work his way through the whole hymnal in a calendar month.  

Having finished both muffins (Warren had been back to the bread box midway through his first psalm of the day), he took his mug in one hand and leaned back in his chair; propping the Bible atop his crossed legs. Warren enjoyed these quiet times of stillness. Over the buzzing hum of the refrigerator, the whoosh of the humidifier fan blowing down the hallway, and the neighbor’s car warming up across the road, Warren listened for the voice of God. He read Scripture in the same way one might take a leisurely walk in the woods. He wasn’t there to map it all out, to chop anything down, to hunt for trophies, or to get his exercise in for the day. He wasn’t hoping to find anything in particular on his jaunt but he wasn’t avoiding adventure either. He just loved being in the woods, so to speak. He loved tramping in the wild environment of the Scriptures; shutting his mouth to open his eyes to the wonderful perfection of the Word and all the pristine beauty captured in every expression of the heart and mind of God. His best devotional times were ones that were unhurried and free of slavish duty and obligation.

Sitting at his dining room table, Warren was enjoying one of these walks in the woods when the Lord suddenly stood in Warren’s way instead of walking beside him. Warren had just begun reading Psalm 8 when verse 4 stopped him dead in his tracks. “What is man,” King David had asked there, “that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?”

“How is it, Warren,” the Lord inquired, “that you care enough about red squirrels to worry about their salvation from the cold but that you don’t care enough about your fellow man to worry about his salvation from hell? Don’t you know that I’ve called you to be mindful of him and to care for him?”

In the otherwise neat and tidy world of Warren’s faith, his reticence to share the Gospel with others was an eyesore to the Lord. Warren was suddenly haunted by the recollection of several opportunities for sharing that he’d been given in the past week but which he’d allowed to go by the boards.

Warren placed the Bible and his coffee mug back on the table and pushed his chair out. He slid down onto his knees and prayed a simple prayer. “Lord,” he began, “thank you for putting this stumbling stone in my path this morning. I’m going to put this at the top of my punch list today and for the week to come. With your help, any opportunity you give me – I’ll try and take it. I don’t want to see any of your creatures left out in the cold.” 

We’re looking forward to gathering together tomorrow morning and enjoying fellowship with one another and communion with our Lord. It’s the first Sunday of Advent! It’s going to be so good to replace our longing with desires fulfilled. May the Lord, mighty God, bless and continue to keep us!

–        Pastor Tate

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Dump Run

Good morning church family,

Matt Munger never read a thing aside from the essays and articles his teachers assigned for him to work on in school. And work it was. Every paragraph was agony for Matt as he tried to get something out of words that drifted off the page and seemed to swirl about his head. Reading for him was something like trying to get honey from a hive with hundreds of stinging bees swarming angrily about his head. And that’s what makes the story of Matt reading his way to Jesus so remarkable.

Saturday was dump day in the Munger household. Since Matt’s father worked most Saturdays and the older kids were always off doing who knows what, Matt was usually pegged to help make the dump run with his mom. In the little town of Orvil, Vermont, the citizens had to haul all their garbage, recyclables, and returnables to the town dump located at the end of the Meetinghouse Road across town. Matt’s mom would give the word and Matt would begin loading the car. The Mungers stored everything going to the dump out in the garage. All the trash was stuffed into 25-gallon, black plastic bags sold exclusively by the dump for the purpose. Several plastic bins lined up against the wall separated colored glass from clear, plastic items from metal things, cardboard and newspaper from the beer bottles and soda cans. Sometimes there might be another thing or two to load in; a rusted-out tricycle, a discarded vanity, or anything else no longer deemed useful. Matt tucked everything neatly into the back of his mom’s Subaru, with one extra item having to go on the back seat. He then headed back into the kitchen to wait for his mom.

The drive over to the dump had grown uncomfortably quiet over the last year. Being thirteen now, Matt was no longer very keen on being driven around town by his mom. There was a time when he would have welcomed such an adventure; a knight on errands with his queen. But now, Matt was uncontrollably sullen – retreating under the bill of his cap and the hood of his sweatshirt while slinking down in the seat. His mom, a wiry and energetic woman who noted the change in her son with the stoicism of a lioness letting go of her cub; kept her eye on the road and her mind on the to-do list.

Nearing the entrance to the dump, Matt was glad to see there wasn’t much of a line; just a couple pickup trucks and a minivan. It was a damp and cool March morning. The sky was a shade of gray that made Matt think it might rain or possibly even snow. He sat staring at the cloud of white exhaust pouring out of the truck muffler in front of him while wishing his mother would turn on the radio.

They eventually advanced into one of the parking spots for offloading. Matt’s mom stopped the car and shut off the engine. “Take that hood off, son,” his mom said as she began getting out of the car. “You look like a thug.”

Matt dutifully pulled back his hood and straightened his ball cap before climbing out of the car himself. He rarely argued with his mom. Opening the hatchback, he kept an ear on the conversation his mom was having with the dump attendant to hear what he’d have them do with the old space heater they were junking.

His mom’s exchange with the attendant over, she began walking to the back of the car. She was about to report where the heater should be discarded when Matt cut her off with a gloomy look and four fingers held up on one hand; indicating that he’d heard that the heater was to go in dumpster #4.

“Okay, honey,” she said. “Listen, I saw Jen over there with Kaitlyn. I’m going to go say hello for a minute.”

Matt nodded assent and set about to unburden the Subaru of all the Munger garbage. It was quick work. Matt enjoyed throwing things into the dumpsters; delighting in the destructive nature of the work. No one junked glass with more gusto than Matt Munger.

Once all of the usual items were disposed of, Matt took the space heater out of the back seat and walked it over to dumpster #4. Eyeing an old computer monitor near the bottom of the big, metal container, he aimed the heater and threw it with all his might. He only managed a glancing blow to the screen and the black glass failed to shatter or even crack. Matt looked around and saw the attendant smiling at him. Matt put back up his hood.

From experience, Matt knew that his mom might be more than a few minutes talking. She knew everyone in town and was always up for a good chat. Ever since he was a little kid, he’d learned how to kill time in grocery stores, gas stations, post offices, and bank lobbies. Walking back over to the recycling station, he made his way to the far bin that sat beside the one keeping all of the corrugated cardboard. This bin was smaller than the rest and not nearly as deep. This was where the good people of Orvil dumped all their old books, journals, magazines, and catalogs. Matt had for years found some pleasure in sifting through everything in this bin. There were always a lot of old Good Housekeeping and Better Homes and Gardens magazines, ancient encyclopedias, dozens and dozens of Land’s End and L.L. Bean catalogs, and enough romance paperbacks to dam a small river. But every once-in-a-while Matt would hit paydirt and find a Sports Illustrated or a stack of Field and Stream magazines that he could take out and enjoy leafing through.

On this particular day, Matt wasn’t having much luck finding anything interesting. He’d found a Reader’s Digest and tucked it under his arm. If nothing better was discovered, he could at least read through the humor sections and maybe have a laugh. He was about to give up, when he noticed a magazine he’d never seen before. It was about the size of a Reader’s Digest but was called Guideposts. The headlines on the front were unremarkable to Matt and the person featured wasn’t anybody he recognized. What did catch Matt’s eye were the words “this is for you” written in blue pen on the upper right corner of the magazine. The front cover was glossy and whoever had written the message must have struggled to make the markings, for each stroke had been made over and over again; pressing deep furrows into the cover. Matt opened up the little magazine to the first page and scanned the table of contents. There were articles appearing to deal with matters like diet and nutrition, workplace conflicts, and grandparenting. Nothing seemed to be “for him” until he saw the headline: “Going Broke to Get Rich”. That grabbed Matt’s attention for some reason. The byline on the article read: “How losing millions led one man to much, much more”.

Matt was intrigued and turned to the page where the article started. He read the first couple of paragraphs and was immediately taken in by the story of a man who’d started a computer software company in the late nineties and who had built incredible wealth within a few short years.

“Alright, honey,” Matt’s mom said as she got back to the car, “I’m all set. Let’s get going.”

Matt snapped out of his reverie and closed the magazine. His mom hopped into the car and got the engine running. Matt tossed the Reader’s Digest back into the bin but folded the Guidepost into the back pocket of his jeans.

For the rest of the time running errands and during the whole ride back home, Matt couldn’t get the words “this is for you” out of his head. He couldn’t wait to steal away to his room later and read the rest of the story. He sensed the message of the article might actually be for him.

Arriving back at the house, Matt walked right past the refrigerator, the television, and the game room to his bedroom upstairs. He quickly turned again to the story and read the rest of the article. It ended up being a story of trial, heartbreak, and bankruptcy with the man in the middle of it all losing everything and wanting, at one point, to take his life. But in the depths of his despair, this man found Jesus and became wealthy in a very different way. The article concluded with a telling of Christ’s parable of the pearl of great value. Before the article was even over, Matt somehow knew that he wanted to get his own hands on that same pearl. Many years later, when Matt would tell the story of his conversion, he’d always say he came to Christ that afternoon while reading a Guideposts article in his bedroom.

“Honey!” Matt’s mom called up the stairs. “Dinner’s on the counter.”

Matt came out of his room feeling the way he often felt when walking out of a movie theater; with the real world seeming like a fiction for a moment. But he trundled down the stairs and walked into the kitchen; grabbing a plate and dishing some lasagna onto it. His mom was the only one there.

“Where is everybody?” Matt asked.

“They’re on their way,” his mom answered while leaning against the counter sipping a glass of iced tea. “Your dad’s upstairs changing.”

“I thought I heard him come in.” Matt was now pulling a piece of garlic bread out of the foil.

“Say, Honey,” his mom began uneasily, “when we were leaving the dump, I noticed in the rearview mirror that you put some kind of magazine or something into your back pocket.” Matt stopped fixing his plate and looked into his mom’s interrogating eyes. “That wasn’t some kind of girlie magazine was it?”

“No, Mom,” Matt said embarrassed; shooting his eyes back down to his plate. “Not at all.”

“Then what was it? I’m just curious.”

Matt thought for a moment before looking back up at his mom. “It’s actually not a magazine at all,” Matt said with a sweet and innocent smile. “It’s a pearl.”

We’re looking forward to coming together tomorrow morning to be encouraged in our faith and to lift one another up in love and strength. Isn’t it grand to be a Christian!?! May the Lord, mighty God, bless and continue to keep us!

  • Pastor Tate
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Momentum

Good morning church family,

“Don’t be reckless,” I remember my dad telling me. “But remember – momentum is everything.”

This sage advice was given to me back when I only had a learners permit in my pocket and was about to try and get the family’s 12-passenger van from the campus of Vermont’s Castleton State College, where I had a job working in the cafeteria, to our home which sat high on a hill several miles away. It had been snowing throughout my dinner shift and by the time I was ready to punch out and head for home, most of the roadways had a couple of inches of greasy, slushy snow on them. As I walked out of work, I spied our big, blue van parked across the way. Approaching the van, I noticed that my dad, who had come to pick me up, was sitting in the passenger seat. “Oh no,” I thought to myself. “He’s going to have me drive.”

Unlike most teenage boys, I was not particularly motivated to do what was necessary to get my license and be let loose on the open road. I’m not entirely sure why that was, but I imagine it was a combination of the general malaise I was experiencing following a severe bout with depression and an inborn inclination to stay away from the edge of the nest. Whatever the case, I may be the only Vermonter in history to walk into the DMV and ask to have his 3-year learner’s permit renewed.

That Chevrolet Beauville van was a lot of car for a kid like me to try and handle. You’d turn the key in the ignition and the engine would roar to life; the van gently rocking in rhythm with the revving engine. It was as though the van was a strung-up bull stamping its hoof on the arena dirt; eyes red with rage and ready to be unleashed on the enemy hills and roadways ahead. I’d done okay riding that bull, but I had often witnessed my mom and dad struggle to keep it between the ditches when snow was piling up on the roads. The prospect of going tobogganing in the Chevy was a frightful thing to me. Without a lot of weight in the back and the Tate family economy unable to afford proper tires for the winter track, the van had a tendency to skid about and lose the lane. The worst of it was that our house was down a road that followed a river; wending and bending through the hollows of dense Green Mountain woods. The little country road was without a shoulder and thus without much room for error. If all that wasn’t enough, the driveway going up to our house was a couple hundred yards of steep incline with two hairpin turns switching back across field and meadow. Many times our van was left abandoned somewhere below while the family trudged up the hill with the groceries and everything else in tow.

“Hey Dad,” I said as my father emerged from the van with a car brush in his hand.

“Good evening son,” he replied; going right to work in clearing the snow from off of the windshield and over the door frames and side mirror. “Why don’t you hop in and drive, okay?”

I stood there in the dark wearing my uniform, black sneakers, and light coat; looking up at the parking lot light which showed a heavy snow falling down out of the sky. I was encouraged by the confidence my dad showed in me in that moment and the nonchalant manner in which he asked made me feel like more of a man than I was.

“Alright,” I said; walking over and brushing off the driver’s side mirror with the sleeve of my coat, “if you think so.”

With both of us in the car, my dad handed me the keys and I brought the big van to life. Settling in behind the wheel; I adjusted the seat and mirrors and turned on the wipers and headlights. Before putting the engine in gear, my dad went over the keys to winter driving. I listened the best I could but my heart was revving now in rhythm to the engine.

“Don’t be reckless,” he concluded soberly. “But remember – momentum is everything.”

On that drive and many more like it since, I’ve come to recognize the wisdom of my father’s words. Drive too fast and you can easily lose control. Drive too slowly and you can easily get stuck. The key is keeping a pace that has you scaling the treacherous steeps without skidding over the cliffs.

This advice has also served me well in my walk with the Lord. As it was with Abraham leaving Ur without an itinerary, the disciples leaving the Mount of Olives without a program, or Peter leaving the boat without a life preserver; God often calls us to take leaps of faith in our life. We’re given mountains to climb, rivers to cross, and valleys to navigate. And because these all exist within the environment of a desperate and fallen world – the way is often perilous and treacherous. To be prideful and reckless is to welcome disaster. But to be paralyzed with timidity is to be stuck on the wrong side of opportunity. What we need as believers is momentum. We must, with confidence, accept the keys from our Father, start the engine, put it in gear, and let our foot off the brake. We must give our faith some gas; careful to never get too far in front or too far behind the Lord. We must strive. We must struggle. We must endeavor. We must step out. In short – we must be leaping.

And when we do – fear not. God will see us home safe and sound.

We’re looking forward to gathering again in God’s house and having our hearts swell with gratitude for the hope we have in Jesus and with rejoicing for the fellowship we enjoy with both God and one another. It will be good to take a holiday from sin and its sad effects and enter into a Sabbath rest for our souls. Hallelujah! May the Lord, mighty God, bless and continue to keep us!

  • Pastor Tate
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