It’s Friday and I’m already pretty keyed up for Sunday.
Why?
Because we get to look at what is at the same time THE MOST BEAUTIFUL and LEAST FOLLOWED verse in Scripture.
Huh?
To see what I mean — and to know the Scripture in question — it’s Sunday.
8:30, 10, 11:30 at the Moss Campus.
Many moons ago, I had a chance encounter with the late Ben
Haden, a Chattanooga-based pastor with the Presbyterian
Church of America who enjoyed a measure of fame with the television
ministry Changed Lives. Our conversation was on the bucolic
grounds of Camp-of-the-Woods in the Adirondack Mountains,
where I spent a collegiate summer teaching tennis (what else?) and
he spent a week as the guest preacher.
When I was fourteen, my parents and my older brother Clayton
(he is number seven out of eight, and I round it out
taking the eighth place) and I spent a semester in Australia. My father
was nearing the end of his career as a member of the faculty in
the School of Law at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas
and he decided to take a six-month study sabbatical in the land
down under. To this day, I have a sneaking suspicion he did a bit
more sabbathing than studying, but that’s not the point of this story
(which, as you know by now, must have only one point).
A lot of you know this, but here goes: I am the eighth of eight children. No blending. All biological. All Davis, all the time.
I am also quite a bit younger than the rest, as #1 was 23 when I was born and #7 was seven. He (#7) went off to college when I was 12, which means that for the bulk of my adolescence I was . . . wait for it . . . an only child with seven brothers and sisters.
Yesterday’s message …
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So here’s something I’m pretty sure about: no one came to church today hoping that you would be MORE discouraged when you left than when you arrived. No one. No one was like, “I’m just too peaceful and too content and I hope someone says something or sings something or prays something that just sucks the life out of me! I’m too peaceful, I need more trauma, so I’m going to church!” Of course not. It’s much more likely to be the reverse. “I feel trauma, I need peace. I feel anxiety. I need serenity. Maybe church will help.” Of course, that’s much more common.
I am loving the “Missing Peace” series. We had a strong start on January 5, and then Devin Tharp took the series to a whole nother level last Sunday.
And then this coming Sunday, January 19, includes a section of Scripture I am eager to explore with you and a bottom line I can’t wait to share with you.
We’ve all had it: relational pain.
Angry words. Intentional oversight. Passive aggression. Triumphant emails. Ended friendships.
Whether you are naturally wired to pursue confrontation or avoid it, the end result is the same — a relationship that had been at the core of your life now removed from it.
I still remember my first one point sermon. It was in the fall of 2006, during a series called Freedom, in a message on forgiveness involving Jacob, Esau, and Joseph. It landed here:
Forgiveness is learned, so teach it well.
I tell you of that sermon from days gone by because a family was sitting
in the Good Shepherd congregation that day—a family full of its
own versions of melodrama and intrigue—who not long thereafter
moved quite literally across the country. As a pastor, I hate it when
that happens! We said our bon voyages and I assumed, sadly, that I’d
never see the family again.
Julie and I spent the week of January 6-12 in Prague, the Czech Republic.
Why would we go to Prague? In January?
To visit with our son Riley and his wife Natalie in the middle of their year-long mission to that Central European country. Riley and Natalie are with Cru and have a ministry with college students in Prague.
While the people of Good Shepherd were worshipping in spirit and truth yesterday, Julie and I were returning from a week in Prague, Czech Republic.
Who goes to Prague in January? Empty nesters who are visiting their son and his wife. More on THAT tomorrow, of course, as it’s Top Five (Or Maybe More) Tuesday.
