Pastor Craig - March 2019

 “I’m really excited about some software called Word Search. It puts the entire Bible (NIV) on my hard disk. It takes about 2.5 megabytes. And it is FAST. The regular price is $189.00. If you write your sermons on a computer and have a hard disk---this if for you! Order your copy through Saratoga Press now for only $139.00. Send your check or charge card number. It comes with a demo disk. Try it out with the book of Genesis before you break the seal on the total package. If you don’t like what you see in the demo, return the package (with the seals unbroken) and get a full refund. Send your check or charge number to …………”

 This was part of a mailing sent to pastors that I found written 30 years ago. The author was so excited to share this “newfound” resource with his fellow pastors. He knew that it would help in looking up critical and illustrative verses in the Bible to be used for sermons because of course it was FAST. Imagine, instead of flipping through the Bible and wondering where a verse was all you had to do was type in a few words and immediately you were sent to that particular verse with its notation of book and chapter in the Bible and all for the incredible price of only $139.00. It’s a MIRACLE!

 I would bet that the author had no idea how technology would change over the next 30 years. The idea that we could do this same thing from a device that we could hold in our hands and that it would be FREE would not have entered into his thought process at all. What we consider commonplace would and did sound like Science Fiction 30 years ago. On a side note, it was said that the design of the original flip cell phones were modeled after the “communicators” on the series Star Trek.

 The Church is about to enter into the Season of Lent, 40 days, (not counting Sundays). It is that time where we can get a chance to understand the significance of the cross and the death of our Lord, Jesus Christ for our sin and for our sake. Year after year, the Lenten season rolls around. It becomes predictable. We know the story. We know the outcome. We have lived this season for some of us all our lives.

 Even as a child, I always thought it was strange to come to a church service that was in the middle of the week and was at night. It was almost eerie to sit in the sanctuary without the light coming through the beautiful stain glass windows. It gave off the feeling of foreboding. As if the light had already been sucked out of the world.

 Yet, year after year, we need to be reminded of the sacrifice and the reason we gather. The technology of the world continues to change around us. The latest and the greatest “thing”, is only a footnote in the life that God has provided for us through the love, hope, death, and resurrection of his beloved Son.

 I wonder how many people ordered this great computer program and realized that the Bible on their desk was all the “technology” they needed.

  In Christ,

   Pastor Craig