Thanks for joining me on this Sunday night update. Welcome to new subscribers! I would say something to the unsubscribes, but they wouldn’t see it. I’ll keep that to myself.
WINTERISH. That is the term I’ve come up with for our Winter this year. I hate to give up on it, but it looks like the season is just languishing around waiting for Spring to get here. I know I live in North Louisiana and I shouldn’t expect blizzard conditions, but I haven’t even made it through my sweater drawer yet. Strangely my weather app told me that there were snow flurries this morning - although there was no evidence at sunrise. This weekend we dip below freezing for a few hours. Yeah. It’s just winterish. I feel kinda like a penguin in search of a snowbank.
I haven’t been able to get out to take new pictures this past week. There were some pretty days but I had my duties that come first. Maybe this coming week I can see some sunny skies. I did go out by the Ouachita River at Forsythe Park. With recent rains, the river is high and the drive-around was closed off as water was about to overtake the road. I watched a fellow fishing on the road past the parking lot, and saw Wildlife and Fisheries (I presume) come up in a boat and check his fishing license. As someone who doesn’t fish, I didn’t know they actually did that … much less at a public park. At any rate I was eating some Sonic buffalo chicken bites (fantastic!), minding my own business.
This week our church family suffered the loss of a tremendous Christian, Richard Myers. Richard’s heart for mission work in Zambia, Africa defined his heart. With a background in agriculture, he traveled to Africa’s drought-stricken areas to teach them how to build self-sustaining gardens to feed the hungry. He used these opportunities to talk about the Gospel and had a marvelous influence there. He raised funds here in the States that fed hungry families on the other side of the world. His influence in our area was strong as well, having served as an elder for Forsythe Church for a period of time. He and his wife Linda have, for many years, been active, energetic, and influential in our church. Their daughter LinDee is on staff both at WFR Church and Ouachita Christian School. The energy this family has for the Kingdom is amazing. Our love and sympathy extend to these dear friends. The funeral for Richard will be on February 25th at Forsythe Church, at 1:30 in the afternoon. I may write more about that next week.
Sunday at Forsythe my lesson centered on the well-known Rich Young Ruler (Mark 10:17-31). Although this is a familiar story, it is an uncomfortable one in several ways. I focused on three questions from the text: What must I do to inherit eternal life? What do I lack? Who then can be saved? Those questions are provocative. Next week I will also be in Mark 10 as we continue to follow the faith development of the disciples of Jesus, and how that informs our faith journey. This past Wednesday night I continued my study of the Lord’s Supper by considering it as a time of forgiveness … a table of mercy.
READING
This week I finished the Louise Penny mystery A Fatal Grace. It was so so so good! And she left some unfinished business, so now I have to dive into The Cruelest Month (but I haven’t started it yet). Inspector Gamache is such a rich character! I have not been reading The Screwtape Letters as much as I need to, so I’ll spend some time with that soon. In our Bible reading program, we just finished Acts and are now ready for one of the three gauntlets of reading the Scriptures: Leviticus. I know a lot of people give up in Leviticus if they begin in Genesis and just keep reading through. But there are treasures to be found even in Leviticus! Read on, Bible readers!
Gamache was the best of them, the smartest and bravest and strongest because he was willing to go into his own head alone, and open all the doors there, and enter all the dark rooms. And make friends with what he found there. And he went into the dark, hidden rooms in the minds of others. The minds of killers. And he faced down whatever monsters came at him. He went to places Beauvoir had never even dreamed existed. - Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace
WATCHING
I tried to start a few series on the streaming platforms, but have to admit that I am just no good at picking them out. I’ll watch a few episodes and I’m done with most of them. After reading Louise Penny, I was excited to find that there was a movie made of her first mystery book, Still Life: A Three Pines Mystery. I’m sorry. I couldn’t watch it. It just didn’t ring true to me. I did enjoy the Three Pines series from 2022, ten episodes that explored the characters I’m enjoying reading. We all know the book is better than the movie, and probably with a series of books like this, no production could match what we have imagined as we read.
LISTENING
I finished Robert Bailey’s Between Black and White on audiobook and have downloaded the next entry in the McMurtrie and Drake series, The Last Trial. There’s one more book in this series, so the last trial is not the last book. Bailey knows how to build tension in a story and I’ve enjoyed the legal thrillers in this series.
SUBSTACKS: A few posts I recently enjoyed…
Erniet’s poem about Ravens was interesting to me.
Esther Lau - Markers of Wealth
Rex Butts contemplates He Gets Us - But Does the Church Get Jesus?
With the attention I’ve been giving to Substack, I’m basically living in my emails these days. Which can be overwhelming. But my email inbox has found new life and I am enjoying it much more these days, seeing the incoming posts. Not that I can get to them right away, but they are there, waiting for me, and I am finding some joy in that.
I thought I’d share some photos of sparrows. There are more of these birds than any others around my bird feeders, but I still think they are beautiful. Jesus said something about sparrows.
Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. - Luke 12:6
Well, that’s the update for this Sunday night. I hope your week gets off to a great start. Work hard, rest well, and stay connected. The world needs you.
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I also preached today on the story of the rich man in Mark 10, which is part of my sermon series “Good News” on the Gospel of Mark.
Yeah, I get kinda peeved sometime when I fill my 4 feeders up with sunflower seeds and chicken scratch grain (bird rib eye steak), and I see nothing but a zillion sparrows, few cardinals, finches or blue jays.
And then I remember your passage from Luke 12 and I figure, "Well, all is good. Sparrows gotta eat too."