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

Good morning church family,

Stu and Sidney couldn’t stand each other. Some of the disdain was really quite natural. Stu was the kind of guy who would look askance at a man who didn’t have a little dirt under his nails or who used words like “askance”. He drank beer, drove an old stoved-up pickup truck, and wore a cap everywhere except to bed. His schooling, formal and otherwise, had stopped with his graduation from high school, his career advancement had stalled with his promotion to forklift operator at the scrap yard, and the romantic in him began and ended with the purchase of a heart-shaped Whitman’s Sampler from CVS every February.

Aside from age (they were both in their late fifties), faith (they were both members of the same church), and location (they both resided on planet earth), Sidney had nearly nothing in common with Stu. Sidney was the kind of guy who had his hair cut every two weeks – at a salon. He drank herbal tea, drove a leased Passat, and wore khakis when mowing the lawn. His home had a library, his office had a Monet, and his wife kept a scrapbook of all the love poems he’d penned for her over the years. Nature, indeed, had not made Stu and Sidney a pair.

But the white-hot dislike the two had for one another had little to do with their polar-opposite personalities. Much of the hatred stemmed instead from a dispute the two men had at a church funeral; of all places. It was a silly thing really. Five years earlier, Sidney’s mother-in-law had passed away and a funeral was to be held at the church. The funeral received the full Calvary Baptist treatment. A formal sanctuary service was prepared with both pastors on hand, a pianist and organist provided for accompaniment, audio-visual workers scheduled to handle sound and projection, and ushers dressed in formal attire had volunteered to hand out the laser-printed programs produced in the church office. A full platoon of church ladies had fanned out across the fellowship hall to ready the tables for the kitchen-full of food that had been prepared for the reception that was to follow the burial. The trustees had ensured that the grass was cut, the walkways edged, and all the hedges trimmed. The building looked a picture and Sidney couldn’t have been more pleased to find it so when he and his wife arrived early on the morning of the funeral. But his pleasure in the proceedings, along with his calm and composure, would begin to erode when, after checking on things inside the building, he ran back out to the car to fetch a framed picture they’d forgotten to bring in.

When he’d driven up to the church earlier that morning, Sidney had noticed the hearse parked along the street with a flag car in front of it. One of the workers from the funeral home, who stood in the lot attending to folks arriving, had recognized Sidney as a member of the bereaved family and kindly motioned for him to park behind the hearse in preparation for the processional to the cemetery. Sidney and his wife had nodded solemnly to the black-suited undertaker and he’d whispered his condolences with a bow as they made their way toward the church.

But now, as Sidney went out to get the framed picture, an awful sight unsettled him. Parked behind his newly washed and polished Passat was Stu’s beat-up, old pickup truck with its rusted rocker panels, its collapsed suspension on the driver’s-side rear end, its Bondo-ed and house-painted front end, and its bagful of empties laying in the back of the bed. Sidney stopped cold in his tracks and stared at the sight. He knew whose truck it was. He’d seen Stu come into the fellowship hall, carrying some kind of covered dish that Stu’s wife, Cindy, must have prepared. Sidney had hoped that Stu was just dropping off the dish and wouldn’t be staying; seeing as how he was dressed in jeans, t-shirt, and work boots – and wearing a hat, no less. But that evidently wasn’t the case. Stu wasn’t only staying for the funeral but was going to be driving over to take in the graveside service as well. Sidney stood there trying to imagine the scene when, at the conclusion of the funeral, a host of well-dressed mourners would come filing out the sanctuary doors behind white-gloved pallbearers in three-piece suits carrying the gilded coffin containing the precious remains of his wife’s beloved mother. This solemn and decorous procession would then pass astride the redneck spectacle that was Stu Beauchamp’s old dumprunner. This simply wouldn’t do – the truck would need to be moved. Sidney grabbed the framed picture and headed back into the building to find Stu.

Entering the church, Sidney went directly to the sanctuary. The room, smelling of cut flowers, was cool and quiet. The only sound was the air-conditioned air blowing softly out of the duct work above and the quiet humming of the projectors that were already filling the screens with lovely images of the deceased. Scanning the long, elegant sanctuary, Sidney spied Stu sitting all alone in the back pew with his head down and his phone propped up on his belly.

“Good morning, Stu,” Sidney said; cutting into the pew just in front of where Stu was sitting. “Thank you for coming.”

“Oh, hey there Sid,” Stu said, looking up and putting his phone face-down on the pew beside him. “I’m awful sorry about Helen.”

“Thank you,” Sidney said; leaning back against the pew behind and crossing his arms.

Stu sat back in the pew and laid his crossed arms on top of his belly. “She’ll sure be missed.”

“Yes, for sure.” Sidney looked down at his wingtips and nodded silently. He was stalling; trying to think of a way to broach the subject of Stu’s truck. But with every passing half-second, the awkward silence was making the prospect of congeniality more and more remote.

“Hey, Stu,” Sidney finally lifted his head and straightened his shoulders by bracing his arms on the pew behind, “I wonder if you could do a favor for me?”

“Sure, Sid. What can I do?”

“I know it’s kind of a silly thing; but I’m wondering if you wouldn’t mind moving your truck for me.”

“My truck?” Stu asked, crossing his arms a little tighter. “What? Am I blocking somebody?”

“No,” Sidney answered, stammering a bit. “It’s just – you’re not far behind the hearse and you’d kind of be a lead car…”

“So?” Stu interjected. “That funeral guy there – he told me to park there if I was going over to Rosemont.”

“No, I get that. It’s more of a… I don’t know – it’s just an aesthetic thing. You know?”

“Ass-what?”

“’Aesthetic’. Like how things look,” Sidney said; growing less sheepish and more indignant.

“Oh,” Stu said gruffly as he reached for his ballcap and put it on low on his brow, “I see. You don’t like the way my truck looks – is that it? You’re ashamed of it?”

“Come on, Stu,” Sidney said, showing a little frustration. “There’s no reason to get upset,” Sidney continued as Stu stood up; pulling his keys out of his pocket. “Try and understand maybe where I’m coming from. Think of my wife and family. That vehicle of yours could be a little distracting, don’t you think?”

“Listen, Sid,” Stu said, sidling out into the center aisle, “you and yours don’t have to worry about a thing. I’ll just get me and my sorry, third-rate truck out of here so you can have a nice, dignified funeral. I’m sorry for the disturbance.”

“Stu,” Sidney implored, still leaning back but now raising his arms with upturned palms. “That’s not what I mean. You know that! Don’t take it like that.” Sidney just watched as Stu ambled out the back doors. “Goodness gracious,” Sidney said while shaking his head.

As the back door swung closed following Stu’s exit from the building, Sidney stood alone in the quiet sanctuary. His heart was pounding and his blood pressure was up. In the courtroom of his mind, he instantly came to his own defense. It had to be done, he argued. If he lost his cordial acquaintance with Stu – it was no tragedy. The important thing was that the eyesore was going to be removed. Sidney heard the muffled sound of the truck’s rattling engine roaring to life outside. He smiled and tried his best to shake off the whole thing.

Over the months and years that followed, this cancerous interaction would metastasize into a hardness of heart that threatened the faith and spiritual wellbeing of both men. Stu allowed the incident to prey on his insecurities by reinforcing fears he’d long held in his heart that he didn’t belong. He grew even more uncouth and more public in his criticism of the highfalutin, hypocritical foppery he saw in the church. He went from quiet to gruff and from helpful to hands-in-pockets. He had refused to speak to Sidney or even acknowledge his existence despite the fact that Sidney had, a couple of times, made feeble attempts at making amends. Stu often made a point of walking right by Sidney just to ignore him and, whenever possible, he liked to park snug against the Passat in the church parking lot. And for his part, Sidney had assuaged his sense of guilt in the matter by making Stu out to be a monster. Sidney questioned Stu’s honesty, his motivations, and even his salvation. Sidney had litigated the incident at the funeral in his mind and had judged Stu’s actions and reactions to be emblematic of the rot and decay in the church and the country. His dislike for Stu ossified into a disdain for all that was wrong with Western thought and culture. Neither man did what was necessary to remove the pebble in his shoe and now the two were a pair in their limping faith and unhappy hearts.

But everything changed one night during the week of revival meetings that were being held at the church. Every year in September, the church would have a week’s worth of special meetings concluding with a big homecoming service and banquet on Sunday. This year, the church had welcomed a big-name, powerful preacher to serve all week as the evangelist. Every night, the church was packed and the Spirit was moving mightily.

On Thursday night, Sidney got to the church late. His wife was out of town all week and so he walked into the back of the church by himself. Sidney found the sanctuary almost full. The congregation was standing and singing the final stanza of a hymn as Sidney walked up the center aisle looking for an open spot. He was nearly to the front when he saw what might have been the only spot left in the whole room – and it happened to be right on the aisle. He made a beeline for the spot just as the last notes of the last measure were fading from the grand piano. Reaching the pew, Sidney stopped short. The open spot would have him sitting right beside Stu.

Sidney had wanted in the worst way to move on and look for another seat but there really wasn’t one and he knew he couldn’t have kept looking without drawing unwanted attention to himself. So, he stood next to Stu and bowed his head as a prayer was offered before the message. Neither man acknowledged the other.

The sermon that evening was on 1Corinthians 13. As the preacher spoke simply and compellingly on how the Christian was able to love others because of the way God had first loved them, both men began to sweat from the heat of the burning coals being poured over their heads. They squirmed little but were careful to keep their eyes fixed on the preacher for fear that one might betray any conviction to the other. Both Stu and Sidney were glad when the preacher concluded his message with a prayer for the altar service.

As the preacher interceded on behalf of the congregation, God answered the prayer. The Spirit moved and began to soften many a hardened heart; including Stu’s and Sidney’s.

After the preacher opened the altar by making an impassioned plea for folks to come forward for prayer, the song leader stepped to the pulpit and invited the congregation to turn to hymn number fifty-eight in the hymnal. The Love of God wasn’t a familiar hymn to either man but looking down, there was only one hymnal sitting in the wooden rack in front of them. In a moment of magnanimity, Sidney lifted out the hymnal and handed it to Stu. Stu took it and looked briefly over to Sidney. As the music started, Stu fanned the pages open to number fifty-eight. Beginning to sing, Stu held the book out so that Sidney might be able to see. Sidney angled slightly toward the open hymnal and, hardly knowing what he was doing, reached out and took the right side of the hymnal. Stu slid his hand over; keeping hold of the left side. As the two men sang, tears of joy moistened the corners of their red eyes.

“O love of God, how rich and pure! How measureless and strong!

It shall forevermore endure – the saints and angels’ song.”

The Lord has planned a wonderful time for us all in His house tomorrow – I’m looking forward to sharing in it with you! May the countless intercessions for revival be answered in each of us that we might enter His gates with thanksgiving and respond to His word with conviction. May the Lord, mighty God, bless and continue to keep us!

• Pastor Tate