From the Pastor's Desk (Jan. 2025)

Don’t remember the prior things; don’t ponder ancient history. Look! I’m doing a new thing; now it sprouts up; don’t you recognize it? I’m making a way in the desert, paths in the wilderness. ~Isaiah 43:18-19

As we left Christmas Magic at Rocky Ridge Park and made our way home this past week, we opted to take some back roads to enjoy the Christmas Lights on many of the houses around the area. Our tour brought us out of Ore Valley along Chestnut Hill Road where the retired police officer always decorates so beautifully and goes all out! We passed Susquehanna Memorial Gardens and took the right on Oak Road where we passed the Anderson farm fields and wagon where they sell produce in the summer. How one’s mind can go from enjoying Christmas lights to being ready for the fields to be green and diving into the sweet corn again, within two minutes, is beyond me, but such is the mind of your pastor.
Perhaps that’s one of the reasons I love winter so much. On one extreme you have the cold and the snow as we had that night. Trees are bare, fields are empty, dead, and snow covered, and everything is frozen solid when winter is at its extreme. And then the air warms, the earth thaws, green things grow, and within six months of singing Christmas carols, farmers are pulling the first of the year’s produce. Temperatures can fluctuate over 100 degrees between the coldest and hottest days of the year. At its coldest, we wonder how green things can ever grow again, and at its hottest we wonder how it’s possible that pond we are fishing in could be a solid block of ice.
Yet every year the cycle continues, with God making things new every time. And it’s not only on Earth that He works this process, but He does it in the lives of Christians as well. We recently talked about how certain things just don’t go together (like oil and water), and the holiness of God and the sinfulness of humans are but one important example. But through Christ Jesus, even people can be made new. Jesus defeated sin, and we can look forward to a new life because of Him. May we embrace that as we march into 2025. And may our appreciation of our newness be demonstrated by a new passion and hunger for God’s Word, and a greater communion with God in prayer. May 2025 be a year when our faith in God grows and we feel closer to Him than ever before, all thanks to the newness Christ has to offer.
Happy New Year!
^{~Pastor Eric}