What Would You Say to Fellow Christians in a Farewell Address?

“And now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.” –Acts 20:32 (ESV)  [Read Acts 20;17-17-38]

The context of our focal scripture verse for today is Paul the Apostle’s farewell address in the seaport town of Miletus in Ephesus as he had called the elders and other Christians together to bid them farewell.  In this speech, Paul referred to his own ministry among them as an example.  He was not boasting but rather appealing to the Christians to be faithful and to hold steadfastly to the teachings and doctrines he had taught them and lived out in his own life.  At this point he had “set his face steadfastly toward Jerusalem,” where those diametrically opposed to the Christian faith and the spread of the gospel awaited to accuse and arrest him.  Paul knew this appearance would likely be the last he had with the Ephesian Christians.  He wanted to give them directions and lessons they could hold onto and live by.  He invited them to observe his example and live as he had lived in a steadfast manner (20:18-21).  He spoke of future prospects for himself and the church, declaring that he had been faithful to deliver the message Christ had given him to preach, and he wanted the Ephesian brethren to do the same (20:22-27).  He warned them to be aware of false doctrines and coming heresies (20:28-31).  He encouraged them to have a proper attitude toward material goods, helping the weak and putting more priority on giving than on receiving (20:32-35).  Then came the tearful goodbye and his departure for the rest of the trip to Jerusalem (20:36-38).

What would you say to your fellow Christians if you knew it would be the last time you might teach a Sunday School lesson, your last opportunity to address any of your fellow Christians?  We don’t normally like to think about any situation being our “last,”  or our final opportunity to encourage Christians to be steadfast and immovable, abounding in the grace of God.  It’s sad to think about “last opportunities,” last times to admonish and encourage. But we know this could happen any time, in the twinkling of an eye.

Being a part of a pastor’s family  I have in the past had opportunities to hear my preacher husband give his last sermon to a congregation.  I myself have had occasion to teach the last lesson to a particular Sunday School class.  On June 1, 2014, I  heard my son, the Rev. Keith Jones, preach his last sermon as pastor to the congregation at Morganton Baptist Church as he retired after being in professional Christian work for forty-four years.  A very touching part of that service was son Keith calling two young men from his congregation who had been led to the Lord under his ministry and had just returned from a volunteer mission trip to Peru.  They gave their testimonies of work there and of having the privilege of seeing sixty people come to saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  The message was strong that the work of preaching, witnessing and missions would go on, for others had been disciple to continue the work of witnessing, preaching and teaching.

Saying goodbye in situations where a minister or teacher has worked faithfully are both happy and sad.  Happiness emanates from the opportunities for service with any given group, whether a congregation or a Sunday School class.  But sadness occurs when the one leaving realizes that this may be the last time to drive home an important lesson while leaving those beloved Christians with a positive thought and an avid anticipation that there is more yet ahead for the faithful.  Maybe, as with Paul at Miletus in Ephesus long ago, the people will remember the person and his example more than his farewell address.  For we know how true the adage is:  “What you do speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say.”  Unless the practice supercedes the proclamation and stands as a lofty example of “do as I do,”  then the words are of little effect.  Paul was right on target with his farewell address (Acts 20:32):  “And now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.”   Amen!  --Ethelene Dyer Jones  06.29.2014

God Is Very Good at Making Days

“Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good!  Because His mercy endures forever.” –Psalm 118:1 (NKJV).  “Then God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.  And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.  God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.  So the evening and the morning were the first day.” –Genesis 1:3-5 (NKJV).  “This is the day which the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.”  -Psalm 118:24 (NKJV).

Do you ever try to stretch your imagination and think how it was before God spoke and created day and night, light and darkness, the world and everything in it,  the sky, the seas, the firmament, the animals, the birds, the creatures everywhere, and man and woman?  From nothing—He created everything in perfect order!  With the power of His word He created!

God has been very good at making days from that time henceforth.  At first, calendars were not like we know them today, with 365 days per year except that every fourth year came leap year with 366 days.  Then, man with his ingenuity, and no doubt inspired by God, wrapped the days in countable time called weeks, months, years, decades and centuries.  Even the day/night sequence was paced with twenty-four hours, or 1,440 minutes, or 86,400 seconds.  Rev. Robert J. Morgan wrote:  “God is in the day-making business.  The Ancient of Days is the Manufacturer of Days…One new day rolls off God’s assembly line every twenty-four hours, right on schedule, each one unique”  (100 Bible Verses Everyone Should Know by Heart.  Nashville, TN:  B&H Publishing Group, 2010, p. 165).  Just to consider receiving a new day every twenty-four hours is phenomenal!

Consider the question:  How shall we use the new day allotted to us?  How shall we fill the gift of today that God is so good at making?

I heard of a widow who was feeling sorry for herself and her plight as she faced the prospect of days alone after her husband died.  Then she was reading her Bible and Psalm 118:24 seemed to leap out at her:  “This is the day which the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.”  She decided that she would use a glass-carving instrument and engrave the verse into the panes of the window at which she stood each morning immediately after arising.  Seeing the words carved into the glass became a good reminder to her that each day was a brand new gift from God, made especially for her.  Why should she feel such self-pity when God had provided so bountifully for her?  With the psalmist, she resolved to be glad and rejoice in each day.  Following that experience, her life changed from one of self-pity to one of praise, thanksgiving and seeking to help others.

A Bible dictionary defines “rejoice”  as to feel gladness, to exult and be jubilant, to have a heart that sings.  Vivian Green gave us these classic lines about how to rejoice:  “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass.  It’s learning how to dance in the rain.”

 Here is a quatrain of praise I wrote that can be sung to  “The Old 100^th”—Doxology—tune:

Oh, Lord I thank you for today;

Praise for Your guidance on my way.

When nighttime falls may all be well;

At last in Heaven may I dwell.   Amen.    –Ethelene Dyer Jones  06.22.2014

Honoring Fathers

“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”  Exodus 20:12. ( ESV).

“Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.  Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.” –Colossians 3:20-21 (ESV).

     The fifth of the Ten Commandments and the first with an expressed promise teaches us that we are to honor both our parents.  “Honor” involves love, respect, appreciation, looking up to and accepting the leadership of the one honored.  And of course, parents are to lead lives of respect and honor.  Children are to obey parents.  But parents are to live in such a way that children can respect them.  Parents are not to provoke children or cause them to be discouraged because they set such high goals children have difficulty measuring up to expectations.

     Did you know there are some 70 million fathers in the United States?  Many of these are responsible adults and are seeking to rear and support their children well.  But many, unfortunately, are “absentee fathers” who have abdicated—or never accepted—responsibility for children’s upbringing.

     Looking into the history of Fathers’ Day celebrated the third Sunday in June in America shows that Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington suggested a day to honor fathers in 1910.  She wanted to respect the memory of her own father, William Jackson Smart, a Civil War Veteran who reared six children, herself and five brothers as a single parent after the death of his wife and their mother.  Mrs. Dodd suggested to her pastor that a day be set aside to honor Father’s much as the one in May for Mother’s Day.  Father’s Day in America was observed on June 10, 1910 in Spokane, Washington.  The day was supported somewhat by Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Calvin Coolidge.  In 1966 President Lyndon Johnson signed a Father’s Day proclamation, but it was not until 1972 under President Richard Nixon that Father’s Day was set by signed proclamation to be held the third Sunday in June.

     I honor my own father, J. Marion Dyer.  Like Sonora Smart Dodd’s father, my father lost companions to death and reared children by both his first and second wife after their deaths.  He manifested great faith, love, patience, endurance and example.  I am the beneficiary of a godly father.  I was married to a man who became an exemplary father to our children, seeking to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.  Fortunate are we who have the legacy of a good home and a father worthy of honor. 

     Dr. B. B. McKinney, noted hymnologist of the last century, wrote this prayer in his hymn entitled  

“God Give Us Christian Homes”: 

               “God give us Christian homes!

                 Homes where the father is true and strong,

                 Homes that are free from the blight of wrong,

                 Homes that are joyous with love and song,

                God give us Christian homes!  God give us Christian homes!”

      May his words be our prayer for this Father’s Day.  And Happy Father’s Day, all you wonderful fathers who might read this, and all of you who read and think about the influence of your own father.  Thank God for godly fathers.  –Ethelene Dyer Jones  06.15.2014.

Faith as a Mustard Seed

“The Apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’  And the Lord said, ‘If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.’”-John 17:5-6 (ESV).

            Who among us has not desired an increase in our faith?  In Matthew’s account of the statement about faith as a grain of mustard seed, it was preceded by the story of Jesus’ healing the boy who was an epileptic, described by his father as falling into the fire or water when one of his attacks came upon him.  The boy had first been brought to the disciples for healing, but they could not help him.  Jesus said to them:  “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to bear with you?”(Mt. 17:17).  When the disciples asked Jesus why they could not cast the demon out of the boy, Jesus told them, “Because of your little faith.”  Then he gave the statement about having faith as a grain of mustard seed.  Is there a meaning behind this statement that we sometimes do not understand fully?

             Mustard was a large plant in the Holy Land which grew rapidly.  Its seeds were thought to be the smallest of those in the plant world.  Jesus used the mustard seed to symbolize the rapid growth of the kingdom of God as seen in Matthew 13:31-32:  “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field.  It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”  As in our focus verses for today, Jesus used the mustard seed to teach a lesson about faith.  When the disciples asked Jesus to increase their faith, they were talking as if they expected Him to imbue them with faith.  The truth is that faith must begin within the believer.  And if it is present and active, it can flourish and grow (as the simile of the small mustard seed shows).  The small mustard seed brought forth a plant eight to twelve feet tall.  Jesus used practical and well-known illustrations to drive home His truths.  Just like the little mustard seed produces annually a plant big enough for birds to build nests in, so a little bit of faith can develop and grow in the believer and bear remarkable results.

             As I read this passage from both Luke and Matthew, I recalled a time in my life when my faith had to develop from the small seed I had.  I finished my bachelor of arts degree from Mercer University in December of 1952.  I applied for and received a job teaching fifth grade at a public school, beginning in January.  In an interview with the principal, I learned that the class had already had five teachers in the short period from the time school had opened in the fall.  She advised me the job would be hard and that I would have to be a strict disciplinarian in order to manage the class and teach them.  She asked me if I thought I was up to the task.  Needing a job badly, and wanting to try my skills as a teacher, I responded that I thought I could meet the challenge.

            Children in the class were from what was known as “the peach orchard section,” a somewhat underprivileged area.  Several of the children were behind for grade level.  I sensed a bit of belligerence and questioning on my first morning with the class.  I thought it best to talk to them gently, with a few funny stories mixed with my “teacherly” advice.  We discussed goals and what they would like to accomplish in the half-year of school remaining.  Before I signed and received the job, I had prayed that I could be well-matched with my students and that we would have a strong rapport and a good second semester of school.  Every day, I prayed that God would work through me with His love to reach the children at their point of need.  Certainly that first day with them had been bathed in prayer.

            We were well into the first class when suddenly there was a serious interruption.  I realized that one of my students was having an epileptic seizure.  My principal had warned me that one of the students had epilepsy.  I did not expect a seizure on my first day there.  I had some sterile tongue depressors in my desk, so I quickly went to little Peggy and began to apply what I knew to do for a child with the affliction, although I had never  before had an experience working with one.  I asked one student to go quickly for the principal, who immediately came.  As it happened, with her mother going early to work, Peggy had to get herself ready for school and catch the bus.  She had either not taken her medication—or else she was out of it.  With that and the excitement of a new teacher, she had gone into seizure.  This was before the time of regular on-site school nurses.  The principal and I were able to give little Peggy the help she needed and the seizure did not last long.

             I remembered the incident from Matthew’s gospel and applied it immediately to my situation as a new teacher in a challenging environment.  My principal and I were able to have a conference with Peggy’s mother, and with the nurse who visited several schools within the district.  With proper medication for Peggy, patience on my part, and cooperation from a class room of students who were hungry for a little tender, loving care, that half-year of teaching became a very memorable way to start a thirty-plus year career in education.  You can be assured that I did much praying, even while Peggy was having that epileptic attack on my first day as her teacher.  I am thankful to God that my seed of faith grew stronger just like the small mustard seed grew into a large plant. The issue is not the size of our faith but the presence of it in our heart.  Another metaphor concerning our faith is having enough to move the tree from where it is planted to the sea.  The Bible has many illustrations about accomplishing what seems impossible.  We have to apply our faith to the challenges we face in order to move through them and work in them.. “ Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  (Hebrews 11:1).  – Ethelene Dyer Jones  06.08.2014