Dear Caldwell,
After last week’s wonderful adventure in bilingual worship, we return this week to our Lenten Walk and the series of sermons on Christian traditions that stem from Jesus Christ’s own habits. This week we will consider the Holiness tradition/discipline, which author Richard Foster calls the life of virtue. The central questions for us Sunday: How does Christ see into others’ hearts in scripture? What does that tell us about Christ’s heart? And, how does that insight shape our own hearts (and, thus, our actions)?
Also Sunday, we are given yet another opportunity to practice the tradition of hospitality. We welcome to our campus Bread of Life Christian Ministries, a Presbyterian congregation that will use our gym (the WIlliam Henry Belk Fellowship Hall) for worship and other activities for at least the next 6 months. We will adjourn from Caldwell’s worship service and move en masse to the gym (wait til you see it!) for a brief service of covenant and rededicatin of the building, followed by fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ.
I’m pleased to report that Jimmy Todd and Johnny Johnson continue to gain strength. Please keep Ann Alford in your prayers as she has contracted a painful case of shingles. Leave it to Ann, though, to use the experience for perspective. She wrote to me: “I have all I need. Food, clean drinking water, decent bed, medical treatment and medication. Surrounded by friends. All one has to do is think about the people in Japan who are trapped or were swept out to sea and were never given the opportunity to recover. Some died-alone-days later in great physical pain and mental anguish. My lot is easy when I think about it.”
Please keep the session in mind and prayer as well as we travel to a retreat tonight and tomorrow.
Sunday promises to be another wonder-filled day. See you then,
In Christ, John
(About the photo: Darryl Wilburn is back. Darryl generously volunteered his carpet-cleaning services when we opened the women’s shelter last fall. Lo and behold, he is the brother in law of Bread of Life’s clerk of session, who hired him to clean the carpet in Belk Hall. It’s never looked better. Welcome back, Darryl, good to see you again.)