Good morning church family,

Having shaved and showered for the day, Danny quietly turned off the light before opening the bathroom door; being careful not to wake his wife who was sleeping peacefully in the bedroom beyond. Stepping back into the dark room, the blue glow coming from the digital clock on the dresser was the room’s only light. “4:48,” read the clockface. His eyes working hard to adjust to the darkness, Danny felt for the knobs of the dresser drawers and slid them open; pulling out a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and socks. With the skilled quiet of a cat burglar, he got dressed. The brief clattering of his swinging belt buckle was the only sound he made. Danny paused for a moment and looked at the outline of his wife’s body as she lay under the covers in their queen-sized bed. He sighed as he spied the hollow place in the sheets beside her. The tired husband felt atop the comforter for the curve of his wife’s hip; gently waking her as he kissed her on the cheek. “Goodbye sweetheart,” he whispered lovingly, “see you tonight.”

Padding down the stairs in his stocking feet, Danny walked through the living room, turning on the lights in the kitchen and starting the coffee maker. The sudden flood of light energized him as he fished things from the refrigerator and pantry for his lunch. He quickly packed his little Coleman cooler and sat down at the island. Danny couldn’t remember how it had started, but for years now he had always packed the dessert into his kids’ lunches. He bought little bakery boxes with flip-top lids and every morning he would put a cookie, candy bar, or some special confection in the box and write a note and draw a picture on the underside of the lid. Even though Avery was seventeen, Stephen fourteen, and Kirsten eleven, they still loved it just as much as when they were big enough to bounce on his knee.

The last of the dessert boxes stuffed in the kids’ lunch bags, Danny grabbed his keys to start his truck. He listened as the V8 engine rattled to life in the driveway just outside the kitchen door. The glasses in the cupboard chattered just a bit and the handle of the refrigerator vibrated as the engine worked to get in rhythm. Danny grabbed the breakfast sandwich he’d made the night before and put it in the microwave. He poured the coffee out into his thermos and turned off the pot. Taking his coat off the peg on the inside of the pantry door, Danny put his Coleman under his arm, his sandwich in his mouth, and with coffee in one hand, he opened and closed the door with the other.

It was a clear and cold autumn morning. Hopping in his truck, the temperature on the dash read 36° and the time read 5:21. It was election day in Michigan and all across America. Danny wished the polls were already open so he could shoot over to the Knights of Columbus and vote, but the doors wouldn’t be open for another hour-and-a-half. He put the half-ton Ford in gear and let the revving engine roll him out onto the street. He needed to be at the town sheds in Saginaw before 6am where he’d meet with the crew and start his day. “If I hustle with that grading job, I should be done mid-morning,” Danny said to himself as he reached to turn on the radio. “I bet I can buy a little time and swing back over to vote before lunch.”

Danny had worked for the Saginaw County Road Commission for over twenty years and had a good crew of guys working for him as he worked to keep the local roads and roadways safe and up to snuff. As part of that work, a couple-hundred miles of dirt road throughout the county needed grading once in the spring and once again in the fall. Danny hoped to tackle a rough patch of road in Chesaning on this particular morning and maybe do some repair to some portions of the shoulder that had washed out over the summer. The office had gotten a number of complaints from homeowners and motorists who said the washboards on the road were something awful. “It’s like driving over a hundred speed bumps!” was one of the screeds left on the office voicemail.

After setting up his crew for the day’s work, Danny drove out to where he’d left the grader on the side of the road the night before. It was a beautiful autumn day and the early sun promised to warm things up quickly. Danny climbed up into the grader and quickly got to work. He’d graded, sanded, plowed, brushcut, and repaired this stretch of road hundreds of times over the years. He’d scooped up a good amount of road kill off of it too. With an able confidence, he got right to work.

Danny wasn’t twenty minutes into the effort when, up on a nearby hillside, he noticed an old man struggling with a wheelbarrow as he walked toward a little house on the ridge. Danny kept one eye on his work and the other on the man. He didn’t like what he was seeing. The man appeared unsteady on his feet and looked to Danny to be laboring. Danny struggled with whether or not to make it his business to walk up and check on him. He needed to get this stretch of road finished before getting on to the next thing and, of course, he was hoping to shoot back home and vote.

But Danny pulled the grader over just shy of the old man’s driveway and turned off the motor. He scrambled down out of the rig and began walking briskly up the gravel drive. Walking along, he spied four or five cords of split firewood sitting in a pile not far from the house. Getting nearer the single-story ranch, Danny saw the man feebly attempting to stack wood out of the wheelbarrow and into a lean-to that sat beside the house.

“Morning,” Danny said, startling the old man a bit. “I was just down there grading the road and I saw you up here working. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t need anything.”

“Oh, thank you,” the old man said, turning to face Danny but unable to straighten up. Danny thought he must be nearing ninety. “I think I’m alright. Just picking away at that pile over there.” The old man put his hands on his hips and tried to smile. “I’ll get it all in before snow flies, I reckon.”

“That’s a lot of wood,” Danny said, returning the smile. “You don’t have anyone to help you?”

“Naw,” the man said while staring blankly at the pile; a hoarse rasp in his voice. “I manage alright.”

“I’m sure you do,” Danny said, joining the old man in looking over at the tall pile. “You living alone here?”

“No; my wife’s in there,” the old man said; swatting his hand back toward the house.

Danny looked at the desperate state of things around the house and at the proud old man dressed for work he really could no longer do. He looked up at the smoke curling out of the chimney stack and felt the conviction of the Lord. He knew He needed to offer some help.

“What do you say you let me and my son come over this Saturday and stack all this wood for you?” Danny asked humbly.

The man hesitated and looked Danny square in the eye; trying to measure him.

“We’ll let you direct us – we’ll stack it any which way you like.”

“Well,” the old man replied; cocking his head ever so slightly, “I suppose I might let you do that.”

“Wonderful!” Danny said with a big, honest smile. “We’ll be here right around 9am. Is that alright?”

“Sure enough,” came the humble reply. “You can come whenever you like. I’ll be here. I really do thank you, sir.”

“It looks like you’ve got more than enough wood there for this week,” Danny said with another smile, “and there’s no snow in the forecast, thankfully. I’d be pleased if you put that wheelbarrow away and leave the rest of the fun for me and my boy.”

“Alright,” the old man replied, “I won’t argue with you.” The two men shared a laugh and shook hands before Danny went back down the driveway to finish grading the road.

The work went quickly and Danny was back in his pickup truck before eleven. He didn’t need to be at his next job until one in the afternoon. He decided to hightail it back home to Saginaw and see about voting.

On the radio, the hosts were talking poll numbers, electoral college maps, and demographics. Danny opened his cooler and began fishing out items for his lunch. He listened to the chatter and looked out at all the signs, banners, flags, and billboards barking out their support. “Good Lord,” he said as he began peeling back a banana, “grant us favor today.”

As he drove on, eating his lunch and listening to all the breathless talk on the radio, Danny began growing anxious. It seemed as though someone was trying to tell him something. He reached over and killed the radio.

“What do you say, Lord?” Danny asked nonchalantly. “Who are You voting for today?”

The only reply coming was the sound of the rolling and running of the car as it rumbled down the road.

Danny smiled and reached for a piece of his wife’s zucchini bread. “I guess that’s right.”

“Well,” Danny said, keeping one eye on the road and the other on the Saran wrap encasing the zucchini bread, “I sure wish I could go in there and vote for You.”

“What do you mean?” the Lord replied loud and clear. “You’ve been voting for Me all day.”

It’ll be good to come into the house of the Lord tomorrow and share the communion meal with Him and each other. I can’t think of better medicine for all that ails us! And there’s so much more than that in store. God is so good! May the Lord, mighty God, bless and continue to keep us!

• Pastor Tate

Good morning church family,

“I’m sorry,” the disembodied voice on the other end of the line begins, “but the person you are trying to reach has a voicemail box that has not been set up yet. Please try again later. Goodbye.”

When she’s done giving me the bad news – and it’s always a woman’s voice that’s dispatched to do such a thing – she calmly and dispassionately hangs up on me. I take the phone away from my ear and look dumbly at the screen, the way a child looks at his mommy when his balloon floats away or when his ice cream falls out of the cone and onto the pavement. But my phone, like my mommy, only looks back at me blankly.

“Well,” I console myself, “at least they can see that I called. And – like she said – I can always try again later.”

I decide to place another call to another person. It rings and rings.

“I’m sorry,” the same female cyborg answers, “but the person you are trying to reach has a voicemail box that is full and cannot receive any more messages. Please try again later. Goodbye.”

In olden days I would have just put the handset back into its cradle on the wall, watched the cord twirl up in a bunch underneath, and walked merrily away. But now I just stare into the backlit abyss that is my smartphone; waiting for some notification to give me direction.

“I suppose I could send a text message,” I suggest to myself – a grimace appearing on my face. “I mean, they’ll see that I called but because I didn’t leave a voicemail – they won’t think it’s important. They’ll never call back.”

With a sigh of resignation, I open the text messaging app on my phone. “What I wouldn’t give for a piece of parchment, a quill pen, and an ink well right now,” I say to myself. “I’d scratch out a neat and tidy note with as elegant a hand as possible, nobly review the composition as the ink dries, bend the correspondence into a trifold crease, pour a dollop of hot wax over the fold, and carefully affix my seal into the wax. I’d then ring for my manservant who would ably dispatch a courier to deliver the message. Then, with the happy sound of the courier’s horse galloping away from my courtyard, I would return to the silent reverie of my study.”

Putting fantasy aside, I begin writing out the first text message. I labor over the introduction. Should I use “hey”, “hello”, or some other greeting? Should I use the person’s name? Would an exclamation mark be over the top? A comma be too formal? What about a smiley face emoji? Ugh – I hate it. Then there’s the body of the message to fool with. I prefer complete sentences and a strict adherence to grammatical standards but in the texting medium this feels something like wearing a suit and tie to a barbecue. So, I settle on the grammatical equivalent of business-casual – the jeans and untucked collared shirt of contractions, colloquialisms, and fragments. Brutal. Finally, there’s the conclusion to write. My instinct is to always give a proper benediction at the end of any message but, because texting is more akin to conversation than correspondence, a grand goodbye could appear as though I’m stiff-arming any future reply – I just sat down to dinner and I’m already standing up and putting my coat on to leave. But despite all these tortured ruminations, I manage to muddle through and prepare something for the send button.

As my clumsy thumbs are busy tapping it all out, the Lord looks over my shoulder and shares a thought with me. What He has to say isn’t the type of thing that demands my full attention – He’s happy to have me multitask as we talk. “Have you checked your voicemail box recently?” He says, perhaps trying to check some of my frustration and bring in a little humility.

“Hmm,” I utter my acknowledgement with a slight nod of the head, “that’s a good thought, I don’t remember clearing out my box anytime recently. I should do that.”

“I’m not talking about your phone, John,” the Lord says with crisper tone.

I don’t know about you, but when I get alone with the Lord – when I’m intentionally setting aside some “face to face” time, as it were – both God and I seem to have an agenda. I have things I want to share, vent about, and fellowship in. I usually have requests to make and I often seek some guidance of some kind. Sometimes all I really want is to enjoy the Lord’s company and be blessed by some of His undivided attention. God is so loving and patient – He almost always allows me to go through my entire agenda with Him. But, as I said, He almost always has things He wants to do and accomplish as well. He often begins His portion of our meeting by reviewing old business – things that we’d discussed in previous meetings and which I’d promised to take care of. I know this is coming and I try to have taken action lest I spend the entire time squirming. There are usually some words of encouragement and some new business too – things He’d like for me to begin aligning my heart, mind, and energies with. But the agenda item that He’s most sure to cover is the one that deals with necessary areas of correction in my life. He’s faithful to point out for me things that He’s unhappy with and that I need to change.

I suddenly realize that this is what God is referring to when He asks about my “voicemail box”. It didn’t happen overnight and I wasn’t even entirely conscious of it at first; but I had begun managing my times alone with the Lord in such a way that He wasn’t afforded the opportunity to chasten and discipline me anymore. For instance, I adopted a blanket confession of sin that I would make at the beginning of each of our meetings. This was heartfelt actually and usually accompanied by a sincerely penitent bending of the knee. “That ought to cover it,” I’d assure myself. I also began only allowing a proxy to cover most of the Lord’s agenda – restricting His voice to Scriptures of my own choosing and readings of His saints that serve only to provide glancing blows here and there. But, as moderator, I was careful to make sure the meeting passed at such a pace that the Spirit was never allowed the floor. Awful. But perhaps the most underhanded of all my changes was the way I began scheduling our times together with a hard break at the end. I have a 9 o’clock appointment, let’s say, and so I begin my time with God at 8:45. There’s just enough time for my items and, “Oops, we’ll have to circle back on anything You might want to bring up later, Lord.”

But of course, “later” almost never comes. And now my voicemail box is full of important messages that I haven’t listened to and I’ve changed my quiet time in such a way so as to disable the function of Heavenly messaging altogether. This is how you end up having prophets coming to you with stories about pet lambs and such and how you end up with matted hair that looks like feathers, fingernails as long as claws, and grass stuck between your teeth.

So, I put my phone down and look God in the eye again. Thankfully – mercifully – the call comes through.

What a wonderful blessing from God is the family of God! God wouldn’t have any of His children be orphans in this world but ensures that each is given a home to belong to, to be nurtured in, and to blessed by. And what a wonderful home is ours! I look forward to a rollicking time in the living room tomorrow morning! Until then – may the Lord, mighty God, bless and continue to keep us!

• Pastor Tate

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