Would you rather eat an orange, freshly picked from a citrus grove in Southern California or an orange-flavored piece of candy, picked up at the gas station?  Both items look and taste kind of the same, but the effect each one has on the consumer couldn’t be more different.  Both taste good, but only one is good for you.  We tend to think of sophistication as a good thing.  About an incomprehensible piece of modern art, we might say: “How sophisticated!”  Of a university’s course offering in situational ethics, we might say: “How very brave.  How very sophisticated!”  We might even be persuaded to buy the world’s most sophisticated beverage: water-flavored water.  For all the allure of sophistication and the envy it produces, its meaning and definition is not very attractive.  To sophisticate something is to make it less natural or simple; to alter or pervert it in some way.  It’s an old Middle English word derived from the Medieval Latin sophisticare, meaning to tamper with, disguise, or trick.  In this week’s reading for our Sunday morning roundtable discussion, Desi Maxwell makes the case that much of modern Christianity is too sophisticated; more corn syrup than citrus.  We’ll be challenged to shed the synthetic in pursuit of the authentic and to inventory our faith to see how much of our thought and practice has Christ’s trademark on it.  Prepare to find your walk energized and your faith freed.  See you Sunday morning!

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To find God is to begin a lifelong pursuit of Him. This sounds like a contradiction or a bit of nonsense, but it’s true. When a man falls in love with a woman, he does not ask for her hand in marriage that he may end his pursuit of her, but only to begin it in earnest. So it is and should be in a person’s relationship with God. When a person is called by God and surrenders his life to Him, he has found God in fullness and secured the promise of spending eternity with Him in heaven. But what salvation also wins for the believer is a newfound peace with God that leads to fellowship, intimacy, and real friendship with Him. Too often, our church’s pulpits and programs have taught that a person’s pursuit of God ends in baptism and that’s a terrible mistake. To those whose growth in God has been stunted by such spiritual malpractice, A. W. Tozer has written a wonderful word of challenge and encouragement. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God reads like a modern day prophecy written to a people in exile and offers the would-be pilgrim a clear pathway back to the Promised Land. A group of us here at the church are reading through this book and meeting on Sunday mornings at 8:30 to discuss what we’ve learned. We’d love to have you come and join the pursuit!

Somewhere in the Sonoran Desert in Scottsdale, Arizona you’ll find the frozen remains of Ted Williams. Somewhere in San Juan, Puerto Rico you’ll find the old bones of Ponce de Leon. And somewhere in the foothills above the Dead Sea you’ll find the sodium chloride reduction of Lot’s wife. Death is difficult to live with. It doesn’t do to run from it. It’s not living to dance with it. And it’s not right to spit at it. The Bible thinks it best to be prepared for it by beating the old stinger to the punch. While the world conspires to have us either embrace death or think nothing of it at all, the church is called to dispel the power of death by welcoming it into our consideration and calculation. As we look this week at an old tale and a couple of famous poems, let’s look to sit with the enemy – uncloaked and without his scythe.

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