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Taking the Roof Off of this Thing

October 13, 2024

Genesis 8:6-12

At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent forth a raven. It went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. Then he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground. But the dove found no place to set her foot, and she returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took her and brought her into the ark with him. He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark. And the dove came back to him in the evening, and behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. Then he waited another seven days and sent forth the dove, and she did not return to him anymore.

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Disturbing the Peace

October 6, 2024

John 2:1-11

On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.

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Cutting Back the Puckerbrush

Good morning church family,

Just shy of the turn that would take him up the Stage Road and past the church, Sandin heard sirens wailing from behind. Easing the right-side tires onto the soft shoulder, Sandin looked in the rearview mirror and saw a Bolton town cop car kicking up dust and closing fast on his position; its blue strobes flashing wildly. A Bolton fire truck was not far behind it, roaring and rumbling as it came. Coming to a complete stop, Sandin watched the emergency vehicles blitz by. The speed of the fire truck shook his sedan as it whooshed past; the sound of its big diesel engine reverberating in his chest. A quick check again in the rearview mirror revealed a second fire truck several hundred yards back and coming at a quick pace. Sandin kept his foot on the brake and looked distractedly out the passenger-side window. There, just inside the tree line and only a few paces from the shoulder, stood a road sign. Untrimmed tree limbs and unchecked sumac and puckerbrush had threatened to completely obscure the sign from passing motorists. Attempting to peer through the foliage, Sandin leaned across the armrest. The metal sign post stood about seven-feet-tall with a little sign bolted to the top of it. Looking intently at the weathered block letters spaced neatly in three careful rows, Sandin was able to make it out. “BOLTON BIBLE CHURCH,” the sign read. Below the message was an arrow directing traffic and at the top of the sign a simple, white cross blazed the blue background.

“Hmm,” Sandin thought to himself. “I’ve never noticed that sign before.”

Sandin wasn’t from Connecticut. He’d grown up in Southern California and gone to college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He met a girl from Vermont while studying there and the two fell in love and were married not long after graduation. After a successful internship at Raytheon, he was offered a job in aerospace technology at one of their offices in Connecticut. Sandin and his wife settled in the town of Bolton; eventually buying a house and starting a family. They’d been there almost nine years now and they loved it. Growing up in church and having been baptized at an early age, Sandin’s faith had always been an important part of his life. Upon moving to Bolton, he began looking for a church before he’d even begun trying to get the power and cable TV turned on at the house. He and his wife had worshipped around for a bit before settling in at Bolton Bible Church.

Bolton Bible was a non-denominational, very Evangelical fellowship of conservative Christians. It was not a large group – maybe sixty or seventy souls in attendance on a good Sunday. But they were a wonderful family of earnest and loving believers who cared for each other and maintained a steadfast commitment to the Gospel. Bolton Bible was led by a quiet, well-spoken, and sincere pastor who spent the lion’s share of his time in his well-appointed study. The pastor did almost all of his socializing, counseling, teaching, and connecting from the pulpit on Sunday and the lectern on Wednesday night. Consequently, he was not well-known to his people but they revered him and were genuinely grateful to God for the blessing of such a studious and scholarly shepherd to watch over them.

The town of Bolton was well-settled and home to a population of highly educated, upwardly mobile, affluent New Englanders. It was a pretty leafy little town – mostly homes and neighborhoods. There wasn’t much by way of commerce and industry aside from a couple of nondescript office buildings and a shopping center set well-off of the road. The church building, which was a neat and elegant construction in the classical colonial style, fit in well. The church people did a good job keeping up the building and grounds and most townspeople regarded the church as affectionately as they did the big red barn and silo belonging to the only remaining farm in town. But as far as the unbelieving public was concerned, the church’s building wasn’t much more than a bit of civic décor and its members nothing but harmless stewards of a sentimental heritage.

As the second firetruck thundered by, Sandin checked his mirrors before climbing back up onto the pavement and taking the turn onto the Stage Road. As he drove past the church building, the pastor’s pickup was the lone car in the lot. Sandin thought some more about that sign back on Hammonasset Avenue. “It must have been important enough to someone,” he thought to himself, “to go to all the trouble of having that sign made and approved by the town and installed and all.” He drove a few hundred yards in silence; the quiet humming of his Audi’s engine the only soundtrack. “And now,” the uncomfortable line of thinking continued, “that sign must not be important to anyone.”

That Sunday at church, Sandin asked around about the sign. Many, like him, were unaware of its existence.

Jacob Lohr, one of the elders, knew all about it. “Oh yeah,” he began, folding his arms and putting one hand under his chin, “there’s actually three of ‘em – maybe only two now. There’s the one down there on Hammonasset and I know there’s one over on Cranston where it connects to Stage. The one that was back off the bypass; I think that one got taken out by a plow years ago. But anyway – yeah, we had those put up years ago when miss Evelyn Sylvester was still with us. She insisted on it. ‘Maybe no one will ever come because of them,’ she used to say, ‘but they won’t forget we’re here and it never hurts to see the cross.’” Elder Lohr dropped his arms and put his hands back in his pockets. “We sure had a devil of a time getting those things approved by the Bolton Town Board.”

Over the next couple of weeks, the shrouded church sign continued to bother Sandin. He’d become determined to do something about it. It wouldn’t take more than an hour’s worth of work to cut back the encroaching woods but he wanted to check in with the pastor before doing anything; just in case the project was booby trapped in some way that he couldn’t see. That Sunday he waited to talk to the pastor after the service and filled him in on the situation.

“So,” Sandin said, holding a blueberry muffin in one hand; his Bible tucked under one arm and his one-year-old girl cradled in the other, “what do you think? Any reason I can’t go down there and cut all that back and make our sign visible again?”

“No,” the pastor said, a keen earnestness in his countenance, “you most certainly can. There’s one long easement running the length of Hammonasset. But I’m not sure why you’d want people to see that sign in the first place.”

“I’m not sure what you mean by that, Pastor,” Sandin said, a quizzical look on his face as he allowed his little girl to pick off another piece of muffin.

“Well, Sandin, all I mean to say is that I think we have some other trimming we ought to do first before we go directing anyone to come see any of us. I mean our witness and testimony as a people has gotten pretty overgrown with our own brush and weeds these days. That sign only directs people to a building and, as you know, buildings don’t say much.” The pastor looked out the window that offered a view out onto the Stage Road. “God’s made each and every one of us into a sign. And my goodness – we sure need to get our gospel showing again.”

We’re looking forward to gathering in God’s house tomorrow morning to share in fellowship with one another and in communion with Him. I’m so glad we’re all a part of the family of God and I’m so grateful for the blood of Jesus Christ that makes going home again possible. Praise the Lord for His goodness and mercy!!! May the Lord, mighty God, bless and continue to keep us!

  • Pastor Tate
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Correcting our Farsighted Vision

September 29, 2024

Ecclesiastes 9:13-18

I have also seen this example of wisdom under the sun, and it seemed great to me. There was a little city with few men in it, and a great king came against it and besieged it, building great siegeworks against it. But there was found in it a poor, wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man. But I say that wisdom is better than might, though the poor man’s wisdom is despised and his words are not heard. The words of the wise heard in quiet are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good.

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High Office

Good morning church family,

I wonder what would happen if all the woodland creatures who lived in the fields, forests, and meadows of New England got together to form a republic. What if way out in the Allagash they built for themselves a court, capitol building, and executive mansion? When they finally got around to having a vote; who do you imagine they’d elect to serve as wilderness president?

Well, if this woodland republic was democratic, I’d think a mouse would end up the chief executive, for surely mice would make up the largest voting bloc in the land. In fact, I’d think most of the animal’s congress would be populated by rodents; with chipmunks, squirrels, gophers, and voles filling the majority of the seats. I mean, there might be a valley or a glen here or there represented by a whitetail or a turtledove and a I suppose a number of wetlands might elect beavers to serve as legislators, but aside from a few of these outliers, this new republic of the woodlands would surely be run by little critters.

But if the animals decided to populate their government the way we populate ours, a trip to the Allagash would reveal a truly dumbfounding reality. For inside the animal’s capitol building you wouldn’t find a bunch of field mice and tree squirrels pontificating on the importance of deforestation control or wrestling over acorn subsidies and such. No, you’d find a bunch of coyotes there instead; raccoons, skunks and hawks all sitting back smoking cigars while they sell the future of the woods down the Kennebec. A big fat bear would be asleep in the Speaker’s chair and a little weasel would have his feet up on the desk, twirling a gavel in his hand. And there in the woodland White House, a sly fox would be holding forth in the oval office.

I never saw a single episode of the hit Netflix drama House of Cards, but I did read a good bit about it. I was fascinated by the popularity of a show that portrayed the people’s government in Washington as a hothouse for the flourishing of every kind of corruption, perversion, and degradation. What was particularly interesting to me was that no one saw the sad storylines in every episode as unrealistic. The nation just shrugged it all off; thinking to itself, “Yeah, I guess that’s about right.” Even though there was nothing ennobling or inspiring in either the plotlines or the characters that were being developed, our countrymen spent good money and precious time watching this stuff. America was entertained by the debasement of its own government.

What is wrong with us? Why, in a republic like ours where the people have a vote, do we have so many wolves, weasels, and thieving raccoons representing us in congress? Why is the White House so often a den for a fox? Why aren’t we represented and led by everyday critters like us – men and women who are simply looking to work hard and provide for kith and kin; all while pursuing happiness? I mean, most of us are pretty ordinary. We’re not a bunch of sophisticates and elites with nefarious agendas for the radical transformation of our country and world. The vast majority of Americans aren’t one-percenters who’ve made their millions and billions by using access to power to secure no-show consultation jobs and lofty positions on Fortune 500 boards. We’re not a nation of nihilists. And yet, if you look around the halls of government, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks or talks or lives like us. Why is that?

Well, I suppose it’s possible that power’s corrupting influence on people is entirely to blame – we keep sending good people to Washington, the thinking goes, but then something in the Potomac River water turns Mr. Smith into Mephisto. While there’s certainly something to this theory, it’s just a little too neat and tidy for me.

I think instead that we, the people, have allowed Washington to become the kind of place that attracts dodgers, scoundrels, and other bad hats. I think we’ve so demeaned politics at this point and become so accepting of a culture of corruption in elected office that robbers find license in our sighs of resignation and are emboldened by all our shrugging. When we rate candidates not by their character but by how artfully they lie and obfuscate, we unwittingly promote the wicked. When we award points for honey-tongued promises and applaud clever evasions, we’re courting partnerships with manipulators. I’m an adult and I recognize that when there happen to be a lot of weasels on the ballot that my obligation is to vote for the lesser of two weasels. And I’ll certainly continue trying to make those decisions in wisdom. But we must mourn over a ballot like that and pray earnestly for better ones.

My simple plea – which, admittedly, is but a voice crying out in the digital wilderness – is that we do everything we can to make character an issue in elective politics. As we continue to strive as Christians to live holy and upright lives, let our righteousness be reflected in our representative government – however small and insignificant that reflection might seem. Don’t allow the jadedness of Washington politics to dim our light or take the seasoning out of our salt. Let us remember what Solomon said in the twenty-eighth chapter of Proverbs, verse one, “The wicked flee when no one is pursuing, but the righteous are bold as a lion.” When we give up on Washington or Concord as hopeless places, we give up an opportunity to allow God to use us in those places. When the light that God has kindled within us shines from atop the stand He’s placed us on – remember that it gives light to all that are in the house that they might see our good deeds and glorify their Father who is in heaven. What a ministry!

As we prepare to go to the polls this election season, don’t forget the high office that we’ve been elected to by Heaven. We daily serve as agents of salvation to a condemned world. And if the Spirit of God reside in little mice like you and me then we, the lowliest of critters, become kings of the jungle.

We’re looking forward to gathering in God’s house tomorrow and I pray that we’ll find that a ladder like the one Jacob saw years ago, has been set against the back wall. I pray that God will be bringing Heaven down to us and that we will be sending the concerns and praises of Earth back up to Him. It’s going to be a wonderful day! May the Lord, mighty God, bless and continue to keep us!

  • Pastor Tate
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