Good morning, Friends! Happy New Year!
Thank you all so much for coming today. I hope that you all had a great Christmas!
Last week Gene and I took down all of the Christmas decorations. It’s amazing, just how many of them we have! I’d never counted them before.
We stored away 20 wreaths, 2 giant boxes that hold the Christmas tree, another giant box of greenery, 3 boxes of super-fragile hurricane lamps, another big box for our 25 window candles, about a mile of extension cords, 17 boxes of tree ornaments, two Moravian stars, and other things I can’t even remember. Probably a partridge in a pear tree!
I always hate for Christmas to be over. It’s such a joyful time. We sing carols that we only sing for one month out of the year.
I don’t know why we don’t sing them more often. I remember one year, I had us sing Joy to the World at Easter, and you all looked at me like I was crazy!
But actually, the words fit for Easter, and for just about any time of the year for that matter.
“Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King! Let every heart prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing. . .He rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations prove the glories of His righteousness, and wonders of His love. . .”
That’s a year-round message, if ever there was one.
The thing I miss the most after Christmas is all the lights coming down. The first year my wife and I were here, no one on Springfield Road put up any lights or decorations. The whole street was dark.
That year, we were living in the house across the road, and we put lights in all the windows. I went out, and bought those electric candle lights to go in every window of the church that faced the road.
The next year, we moved into the parsonage, and we started putting up some outdoor lights, too. Every year since then, one or two other houses along Springfield joined us and put some lights up.
It’s true, what they say about sharing the light and being a light to the world. People used to tell me they thought the church was closed and abandoned, because it was dark all the time. I heard that, and I went out and bought some dawn-to-dusk lights to go on the front porch and along the colonnade. Gene and his wife bought solar-powered spotlights to go on the marquee sign down by the road.
I know most of you live in other parts of town and don’t often drive past here at night, but we try to make this place look bright and inviting. Christmas time, especially.
Anything you can do, to share the light, to spread the light, to reach out with light – that’s a good thing to do. Whatever lifts people’s hearts, that’s important!
These few poinsettias at the front of the room this morning are all that’s left of our Christmas decorations. Last week I took one to an older person in our meeting who can’t come to church. She almost cried. She said that every year, she always buys a poinsettia. This year, she couldn’t get out, and it was the first time in over 60 years she wasn’t going to have one.
It would be great, if all the rest of these poinsettias could make it out the door today. They could brighten your home, or you could take one to a friend or a neighbor. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t buy a flower, or pay for it. Please take one, today, and share a little love and color with someone this week.
Last Sunday, we had such a good time! It was pouring heavy rain, and I thought nobody would be here. But people came! We all looked like a bunch of drowned rats, but we made it!
We had worship in the chapel, and my wife and I set up this huge display with dozens of Christmas Nativity creches, and giant paintings of the three kings.
Instead of a sermon, we sang Christmas carols from different times and different places around the world.
Christmas isn’t just something that we do here at Springfield. Jesus came for all people, in every country. And in those dozens of Nativity creches, we saw the love that different people have for Jesus.
Our pianist came up and asked me, “Isn’t there one from China?” I told her, “We’re still looking for one!”
Jesus came to be one of us, and the faces of Jesus and his family were from around the world, too.
Today we’re starting to move on. It’s the New Year, and if you’ve been watching the news, you know that it started with several tragedies.
We pray for all the people who were hurt and killed, and for their families. We don’t know all the details yet, but it looks as though these events were driven by anger and hatred and despair. Mental illness may have been part of it.
That’s why it’s so important for us to notice people who are hurt and isolated. That’s why we need to listen when people say they aren’t coping, or when they have memories and everyday situations that just overwhelm them.
But did you notice, one of the top stories this week? It’s been going viral on the internet.
We all know about the hurricane that hit North Carolina last fall. People have been doing all kinds of things to help.
A lot of families lost their homes in the flooding, and they’ve been living in shelters and in tents. All kinds of people have been helping. People have donated RV’s and camping trailers. People have been taking time off work to come and repair and build homes.
On New Year’s Eve, a crew of 62 Amish carpenters, with their wives and children, showed up in Boone. In just 48 hours, they built a dozen new houses for people who had been homeless and freezing.
The Amish have centuries of tradition of responding to disasters. In their church, when somebody needs help, the whole community helps out.
The Amish showed up with five 18-wheelers loaded with building supplies. They brought their own food. And they brought along propane tanks for 20 houses and set them up.
They also raised all the money – almost $300,000 – for all the materials and supplies. They didn’t do it to get in the news. They did it because they were Christians. That’s their way.
It’s stories like that, that bring light into the New Year. Yes, there are terrible things that happen. But there are good people – MANY good people! – who try to bring light, and try to share the love of Jesus.
Our Scripture today is one you may know already. It’s from the Old Testament, from the prophet Jeremiah.
Reading Jeremiah can be kind of a downer at times. There was a lot of bad news for God’s people, in Jeremiah’s day. What they were facing make our troubles look like a sunny day at the beach.
The last remaining portion of the country was invaded. Jerusalem was utterly destroyed. Every government official, every member of the royal family, every minister and leader, was taken away in chains to exile. Even God’s temple was ransacked and destroyed.
One of Jeremiah’s contemporaries, the prophet Ezekiel, had a vision. He saw the glory of the Lord, leaving the Temple. God was gone.
All this happened more than 500 years before Jesus was born. And in many people’s minds, the glory of God stayed gone, until the Savior was born.
But in the midst of this, Jeremiah had a word of hope. When things seemed so dark, he still saw a light. This is what he said:
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will restore your fortunes.
I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”
Message – “Future and Hope” Joshua Brown“I have plans for you,” God says. “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. . .”
Jeremiah 29:11-14
I have always been so impressed by people here at Springfield who tell me, “God has a plan. . .”
People have said this to me during hard times, when we’ve been struggling. People have said this to me, when they were sick, or even dying. “God has a plan. . .”
It’s not always our plan. It’s not always a plan we understand. But the faith, that God is alive, and that God is working towards a goal that God knows – that’s amazing.
A plan isn’t the same thing as a blueprint. A blueprint shows you where every last board and beam, every wire and pipe and nut and nail is going to go.
Sometimes people think God’s got a blueprint, and I’m not always sure about that. Or people think that God’s got a timeline, and every second of every day is all scripted out. I’m not sure about that, either.
I think God’s plan, is that God wants things to grow. And God knows how to make that happen. And God is out there planting seeds, all the time.
But for a seed to grow, as Jesus said, the soil has to be ready. The weeds have to be pulled up. The varmints have to be kept away. The rain has to fall at the right time, and the sun can’t be too hot. Everything has to happen right. (see Luke 8:5-8)
God knows what it all should look like, but things get in the way. A lot of things are caused by humans. War, greed, corruption. Violence and not listening to God. Competition, instead of cooperation. Lots of stuff.
But God still has this plan. We read about it, over and over again in the Bible.
This world was created by God, to be a garden, and we’re supposed to be the caretakers of it.
We are all created to be sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons of each other. That’s God’s plan. We’re all supposed to be helpers of each other.
Everyone is our neighbor. That’s God’s plan. No one is a stranger. No one gets forgotten, or left behind.
God is very much aware that we make mistakes. Big ones. God knows this better than we do. God’s plan includes this.
God planned from the very beginning to send a Savior into the world. Jesus was born at Christmas, in Bethlehem. But as the Savior, he’s been here since the very beginning. Jesus was part of God’s plan, all along.
And God’s plan has all kinds of tools, both to fix things when they go wrong, and to build things, and make them go right. God’s tools include:
• telling the truth, all the time
• being faithful, and not worshiping other gods – and there are lots of other gods in our world today
• treating everyone fairly, the way we want to be treated ourselves
• loving everyone, even our enemies, even people who aren’t like us or who don’t vote our way • caring for the sick, the children, the poor and people with no one to protect them
• living peacefully, even when everyone else says that war and violence are the answer
• being patient, and always taking time to pray
The list goes on and on. But you get the idea. God has ways for us to deal with things. And anything we can’t deal with, God can handle. God can handle everything.
And the opposite is true. Every time we see people lying, cheating, spreading hate and division, even if they try to pretty it up, we know they’re not part of God’s plan.
“I have plans for you,” God says. “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. . .”
God isn’t using us in order to hurt us, or to burn us out. God’s plan in the present is always for life, for light, for justice and joy.
But as Jeremiah says, God’s plan is always for hope and for a future. God wants, with all God’s heart, for us to be blessed.
Jesus said that he came to bring life, and that God wants us to live abundantly, overflowing and full and free. Jesus also said that whatever we give, in his name, will come back to us, many times over. Many of you have lots of stories you can tell about that!
When God gives us something we don’t deserve or hadn’t expected, that’s called grace. God is very much in the grace business.
Everybody likes giving surprise presents. God loves to hand out surprise gifts. Call it grace, call it angel visits, call it unexpected blessings, call it answers to prayer. God loves to give good gifts. And we need to be thankful for them!
Remember what I said: a plan is not a blueprint. A plan is more like a vision, a dream. God sees a world where people live at peace with each other. Our job is simply to get with the plan.
God says, “You will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
“I will be found by you,” God says, “and I will restore your fortunes. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”
That’s God’s plan. Now and always, this year and next year, and every year to come, that’s God’s plan.