12-09-25

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
December 9, 2025
There were a couple of snafus on Sunday in regard to the worship material and the worship outline. I must own all those! Not to explain away my blunder, but it was a sort of interesting happening. My screen on my MacBook Air started to go out, but thank goodness that I had AppleCare, the three-year warranty. I took it in, and they told me they’d order the new screen and would call me when it arrived. So I got the call last Thursday and planned to take it in Friday evening, though they thought they’d need to keep it for 7-10 days. Ugh! I do have an iPad on which I can do most things, and all my documents are stored in iCloud. So I finished up the worship material and closed out of my computer to get ready to take it to the Apple Store. I then opened my iPad and sent out the worship material. Come to find out, I had closed out the document and shut down the computer before it had a chance to save to iCloud. What I opened on my iPad was a slightly older version, and it did not get a couple of key changes. Double ugh!! At this point, you might be bored or just confused by the explanation, but I do have a point. I find that a lot of people come to Cypress Creek Christian Church, and they hear the message of hope about God’s unconditional and unrelenting love. They are moved by what they hear, yet within a few hours of leaving church, they return to an earlier version of God. Or to say it another way, a previously held understanding of God, which included conditional and rather unpredictable kinds of love, was not completely removed. And amidst insecurities and plenty of voices suggesting one is not worthy of God’s love, they return to an older and more damaging understanding of God. I’m not expecting, even on my best days of preaching, for it to push out everything that is hurtful and destructive within every single person, but my hope is that consistent times of worship, study, fellowships, and prayer, will help to reinforce God’s loving and grace-filled opinion of all humanity. And of course, the all includes you and everyone else.

Continue to bring before me an affirming message about your limitless and unwavering love for me, O God who chose to be present to us in the child born in Bethlehem. When someone wants to tell me I do not belong to your family, provide me with a clear and unerasable confirmation of your eternal presence. Amen.