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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2006-07-27, Page 11,July 30 - POTLUCK ' Guest Speaker - " Name Withheld for security reasons ** Missionary to China Christ-centred, Bible-believing, Fellow ship-friendly. Growth-geared 1Vater Cfiriztiaa Teggiaip 10:30 a.m. - Joint Worship at Church of God for July & August 308 Blyth Rd., E. Wheelchair Accessible Tuesdays 7:30 pm - Wingham Small Group Pastor: Ernest Dow - 519-523-4848 getlivingwatenorg) 6%. Sunday 7:30 p.m. Wednesday Friday 10:30 a.m. - Morning Worship Service Pastor Don Plant speaking Evening Worship Service Heather Elliott speaking about her trip to Kenya 7:00 p.m. - Adult Bible Study 7:30 - 9:30 p.m. - Drop-in Youth Centre There will be no Sunday School for July and August BRUSSELS - ETHEL PASTORAL CHARGE UNITED CHURCH OF CANADA Sandra Cable, Worship Leader Church Office 519-887-6259 E-mail - bepc@wightman.ca Sunday, July 30 Ethel United Church 9:30 a.m. Brussels United Church 1 1 :00 a.m. Celebrating our Christian Faith together in worship Blyth United Church Corner of Dinsley & Mill Street Sunday, July 30 Worship Service, Sunday School & Nursery 11:00 a.m. Minister: Rev. Robin McGauley /la 2Velcome Office: 519-523-4224 Sanctuary HURON CHAPEL EVANGELICAL MISSIONARY CHURCH SINGASONX Of Auburn - 519-526-1131 07)0g PASTOR DAVE WOOD 6""fts-9 & PASTOR DON PLANT JR. Trinity, Blyth 9:30 a.m. St. John's, Brussels 11:15 a.m. MELVILLE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH c,oo-ANhtlks 0 Building, 5 It is People Touching COVOMWlitY Chore,. 4 01‘441 00$ T of he Church is not a Please join us for worship SUNDAYS Morning Service 10:00 am Evening Service 7:30 pm BLYTH CHRISTIAN REFORMED CHURCH Pastor John Kuperus • Hwy. 4, Blyth (T.5. People" Summer Worship 10:30 am - Sunday Service Shared with Living Water Christian Fellowship Phone 519-440-8379 308 Blyth Rd. E. - Pastor Les Cook 519-523:4590 THE ANGLICAN CHURCH OF CANADA veece,,tted voa (4 come awe wondo add ad SUNDAY, JULY 30 The Rev. Tom Wilson, B.A., MDiv. 519-887-9273 BRUSSELS We are worshiping with our friends at Brussels United Church for the month of July. Services at Melville resume on August 6th. Rev. Cathrine Campbell - 519-887-9831 THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JULY 27, 2006. PAGE 11. From the Minister's Study God forgives so should we, says pastor By Pastor John Kuperus Blyth Christian Reformed Church Jesus teaches us in The Lord's Prayer to pray, "Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors" (Matthew 6:12). When we look at the battles in the Middle East, it seems like each party wants to get even. But do we need to go to the Middle East to find battles? No, in our own homes if there is not forgiveness, we live in bitterness, conflict and hatred. Forgiving is a discipline every human being needs to engage in. The bottom line is we are all flawed people. The Bible says, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Without forgiveness walls are erected so that we do not allow people into our hearts. We have been hurt and say, "I will never let anyone hurt me again." We protect ourselves. This protection mechanism works to protect ourselves, but it makes us lonely people. Our hearts are not built to be hidden behind walls. Our hearts were built to be open with love flowing in and out. I'd like to share a tale from a book by Lewis Smedes that describes the need to forgive. In the village of Faken in innermost Friesland there lived a long thin baker named Fouke, a righteous man, with a long thin chin and a long thin nose. Fouke was so upright that he seemed to spray righteousness from his thin Mr. and Mrs. Tibor Oravec and Kristien of Hartville, Ohio visited with Mrs. Mabel Wheeler last Friday. On Sunday, July 23 more than 50 Campbell relatives gathered at the Belgrave ball park pavilion for their annual reunion. This year it was hosted by John and Gayle Galbraith, Mike and Dianne Galbraith and Kelly Oullahan. After John welcomed everyone, Bruce Campbell said the grace remembering Ivy Cloakey who had passed away and praying for Lorne Campbell who is a patient in University Hospital, London. Everyone sat down to a buffet dinner. Games and contests were conducted. Photo albums and pictures were on hand. The reunion came to a close with Bruce thanking the Galbraiths for a job well done. lips over everyone who came near him; so the people of Faken preferred to stay away. Fouke's wife, Hilda, was short and round. Hilda did not keep people at bay with righteousness; her soft roundness seemed to invite them instead to come close to her in order to share the warm cheer of her open heart. Hilda respected her righteous husband, and loved him too, as much as he would allow her. But her heart ached for something more from him than his worthy righteousness. And there, in the bed of her need, lay the seed of sadness. One morning, having worked since dawn to knead his dough for the ovens, Fouke came home and found a stranger in his bedroom lying on Hilda's round bosom. Hilda's adultery soon became the talk of the tavern and the scandal of the Faken congregation. Everyone assumed Fouke would cast Hilda out of his house, so righteous was he. But he surprised everyone by keeping Hilda his wife, saying he forgave her as the Good Book said he should. In his heart of hearts, however, Fouke could not forgive Hilda for bringing shame to his name. Whenever he thought about her, his feelings toward her were angry and hard. When it came right down to it, he hated her for betraying him after he had been such a good faithful husband to her. He only pretended to forgive Hilda so that he could punish her with his righteous mercy. But Fouke's fakery will not rest well in Heaven. So each time Fouke would feel the secret hate toward Hilda, an angel came to him and dropped a small pebble, hardly the size of a shirt button, into Fouke's heart. Each time a pebble dropped, Fouke would feel a stab of pain like the pain he felt the moment he came on Hilda feeding her hungry heart from a stranger's larder. Thus he hated her more; his hate brought him pain and his pain made him hate. The pebbles multiplied. And Fouke's heart grew very heavy with the weight of them, so heavy that his body bent forward so far that he had to strain his neck upward in order to see straight ahead. Weary with hurt, Fouke began to wish he were dead. . The angel who dropped the pebbles into his heart came to Fouke one night and told him how he could be healed of his hurt. There was one remedy, he said, only one, for the hurt of a wounded heart. Fouke would need the miracle of magic eyes. He would need eyes that could look back to the beginning of his hurt and see Hilda, not as a wife who betrayed him, but as a weak woman who needed him. Only a new way of looking at things through the magic eyes could heal the hurt flowing from the wounds of yesterday. Fouke protested, "Nothing can change the past," he said. "Hilda is guilty, a fact that not even an angel can change." "Yes, poor hurting man, you are right," answered the angel. "You cannot change the past, you can only heal the hurt that comes to y6u from the past. And you can heal it only with the vision of the magic eyes." "And how can I get your magic eyes?" pouted Fouke. "Only ask, desiring as you ask, and they will be given you. And each time you see Hilda through your new eyes, one pebble will be lifted from your aching heart." Fouke could not ask at once, for he had grown to love his hatred, But the pain of his heart finally drove him to want and to ask for the magic eyes that the angel had promised. So he asked. And the angel gave. Soon Hilda began to change in front of Fouke's eyes, wonderfully and mysteriously. He began to see her as a needy woman who loved him instead of a wicked woman who betrayed him. The angel kept his promise; he lifted the pebbles from Fouke's heart, one by one, though it took a long time to take them all away. Fouke gradually felt his heart grow lighter; he began to walk straight again, and somehow his nose and chin seemed less thin and sharp than before. He invited Hilda to come into his heart again, and she came, and together they began again a journey into their second season of humble joy. Forgiving is giving up the right to get even. Forgiving recognizes that life is not fair. Forgiving is hard. The alternative is to live in bitterness and anger. In the short prayer Jesus taught us to pray, he taught us to ask for forgiveness from God and linked to that is our forgiving others. In another place, Jesus says, "But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive you." Our relationship with each other affects our relationship with God. There is a saying, "Time heals all wounds." Is that true? The answer is no. How many of us can share a wound that happened years ago and it is like it was yesterday. It has been scratched into our memory in vivid detail and you can describe what took place with like with a video camera. A statistic I read recently said, 10 years after divorce 41 per cent of the women and 31 per /cent of the men still feel angry and rejected. Breaking up, moving away, quitting our jobs, growing hedges or changing churches does not heal the pain. Whether an injury is real or imagined, the cure for the pain is to forgive. This pulls out the bitter root that that poisons our life. It is important to forgive others, and it is equally important to receive forgiveness from God. We receive strength knowing the God of t he universe "So loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). God loves us and we receive forgiveness from him when we ask. If He is willing to cancel our debts with him, which is huge, then we ought to be willing to cancel our debts with others.