Fifth Week Bible in 90 Days

As we began this week to renew our spirits by bible study and experiencing the Grand Story as presented by Adam Long during the "Olah" (burnt offering) service, we experienced both grief and joy. Stepping through the door in our church service into the Kingdom, we immediately encounter divergence of the path. One way, broad and well-traveled, points toward Epithumia (of the flesh) and the other path narrow, rocky and ascending up the mountain points to "Olah".

As we pause to think, deciding which way to go, we remembger from Sunday School, John the Baptist, a wild man coming out of the forest chanting, "Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord". We sorrowfully remember the path not taken 38 years ago, upon the birth of our stillborn daughter. I chose to take the broad path to not have a funeral and that decision has been a bitter root between my wife and I ever since. This week, in indescribable sadness, we grieve with the young mother and father, who have met with the same circumstance but in true faith are lifting their loved one up to the Lord. We know that unending tears will bring them closer to the Father as they cope with their loss.

THE SERMON
Ted Cooper in our Bible in 90 Days video emphasized that we are either obstacles or instruments in our own, grand story. We say in the Psalms and Proverbs that Pride always goes before death but that Humility is the path to Righteousness. Adam, in the sermon entitled "What About the Pygmies?" asked, "Where is your heart?" He points out in Psalms 67, there are three markers of where one's heart should be: whatever decision we make should be for God's glory and that we will be blessed by this and that we should have a heart for all peoples, even the Pygmies, when we stand silently before God and listne to his voice. We learn of the unreached "people groups" everywhere in the world, who do not have enough of their own people knowing the Grand Story to even reach themselves. We see now that the flyer in our church bulletin on Project See,is where our own church youth missionaries can impact the world (and themselves) in spiritual transition.

BIBLE STUDY DISCUSSION
Jamie expressed frustration about certainty in knowing the voice of God and Rick pursued this with the question of just what, should we cultivate in understanding when God speaks to us. Some answers were found in John 10 and John 15 where we read about the "sheep, knowing their Master's voice and following Him through the gate and out into the pasture; or about the Vine, whose prunig of the branches produces righteous fruit by our abiding in Him and following His commandment "Love One Another". Considering this, in reflecting upon the Proverbs, we begin to gain wisdom in choosing the path of our story.

MY WIFE AND I'S PERSONAL 'OLAH
Feeling lead by some unknown hand, two of God's instruments made our way to the prayer station, where we asked a church elder to pray for Tara Das, a little girl in Bangladesh, whom we've supported for several years. Tara has asked us to pray for she and her family. She is the blessing of God in the memory of our own, little lost daughter. After our prayer, we took the sacraments, the reminder that Christ suffered and died for us to cleanse us of sin, the Redeemer of God's Grand Story. Then we turned to light three candles, one for our grand child born last week, another for a grandchild to be born next week, and one for Tara. In her last letter, Tara thanked us for the little journal, hand-carried by a MIssion of Mercy missionary to her, in which she loves to read the Bible verses on each page while she writes of her "memorable events". The offering receptacle stands next to the burning candles and there we placed our offering, the amount to provide Tara, our little pygmy, with education, food, clothes and medical care for a whole month.
We pray that our 'Olah, is pleasing to God and we feel that it is, as we are dwarfs no longer, but rather, stand tall on Christ's mountain where our song is, as Longfellow wrote, "Let us now be up and doing, with a heart for any fate; still pursuing, still achieving, learn to labor and...to wait".