Pastors' Blog

You knew it would happen someday! But North Texas? Kali Jo and Cliff Scott were “great with child” (KJV) as they raced through town to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Denton. Some things in life just can’t wait.

Mother Kali Jo was hurriedly wheeled off to the delivery room. And a few minutes later—just in time, as it turns out—the Scotts’ in utero fraternal twins were born into this life.

Only something didn’t turn out quite right. Annie Jo arrived first, with younger sister Effie Rose debuting six minutes later. Normally that would be no big deal. But a twist of fate will keep these twins celebrating their birthdays—for the rest of their lives—not only on different days, but in different years! 

Because Annie was born on New Year’s Eve (11:55PM 2022), and Effie arrived on New Year’s Day (12:01AM 2023). Which for that particular hospital meant Annie was the last baby born in 2022—and Effie  the first baby born in 2023. Six minutes and a year apart! Go figure. 

The parents are delighted their daughters will have their own birthdays. The new mom told the reporter, “‘I love it . . . I think it is hilarious and just super fun . . . [We] want to make sure they have their own individual personality and know that they are special and unique’” (people.com/human-interest/texas-twins-born-two-different-years-2022-2023/).

Turns out you and I are “special and unique,” too. Not just because our birthdays are different, but because our divine Parent chose each one of us to be uniquely His. (God has no identical or fraternal twins in His very big Family.) 

What’s more, we have been “accepted in the Beloved” to belong to Him (Ephesians 1:6). And get this, “He chose us in Him before the creation of the world,” long before we were ever born (Ephesians 1:4)! God waited a long time for you and me. But hold on, the news gets even better. 

We were chosen, not just to be little ole regular you and little ole regular me. Turns out God has dreamed some very big dreams for us, for He actually chose us “to be holy and blameless in His sight” (Ephesians 1:4). Talking about high status spirituality, getting chosen to be holy and blameless in His sight is like taking the C-suite elevator straight up to Heaven’s top floor!

“God’s ideal for His children is higher than the highest human thought can reach” (Desire of Ages 311).

So never mind your birth date this New Year. Just remember you were born to be chosen, and in Jesus you are born again to be “holy and blameless” just like Him. And if you had to have a twin Brother born ahead of you, why not be glad it is Jesus (see Hebrews 2:11).

Karen and I shot to the top of the world’s tallest broadcast/communication tower, the Tokyo Sky Tree (634 meters/2080 feet). The view from the Tembo Deck is spectacular. As you gaze out over the 360-degree vista of the world’s largest city, it seems like you can look down on all 35 million of those souls far below—urban sprawl as far as the eye can see. The super elevators that whisked us up and then back down the Sky Tree are clocked at 10 meters (almost 33 feet) per second! 

But the world elevator speed record holder now is in China. How fast does it travel? “The world’s fastest elevator, developed by Hitachi Building Systems [a Japanese company that has built the three fastest elevators on the planet], is installed in the Guangzhou CTF Finance Center, a 530-meter-high skyscraper built in Guangzhou, China. In order to carry guests to the hotel on the upper floors, the elevator climbs from the 1st floor to the 95th in around 42 seconds. Its recorded maximum speed of 1260 m/min has been recognized as a Guinness World Record” (workinjapan.today/hightech/fastest-elevators-of-the-world/). That is a stomach-sinking 21 meters or 68-plus feet per second.  

But to put it in perspective, compare these speeds going up with the speeds going down of an average roller coaster (which if you were foolhardy enough to ride, would drop you at a speed of 33 meters or 108 feet per second). On land that is almost 74 miles an hour. (And of course in a car, who bats an eye at that speed.)

How fast will the new elevator travel, the one our Renovate 2.0 construction project will begin to install on December 27? Good news! It will travel faster to the next floor than our stairs are capable of offering right now. I.e., our senior members or visitors, our physically disadvantaged worshipers, and our young families will be able to travel in quiet comfort without a single worry about negotiating the (obstacle course-like) stairway leading into the sanctuary from our main parking lot right now. We all listened to one of our senior members describe how she prays at the bottom of those stairs every Sabbath morning before negotiating them up to the top in order to reach the sanctuary. Prayers in church? Of course. But prayers before climbing stairs? Not good.

So thank you for the way you have embraced our new Renovate 2.0 project. No one is going to send you a pledge card—no one will call you up. The leaders of our church board believe the inarguable need for this new elevator (especially for our senior members, who have invested the most financially through their faithful years of giving at Pioneer) will be motivation enough to raise the $1 million we need. Already $230,000 has been given or promised toward this new elevator. And I am confident we as a church Family will rise up and provide the funds necessary to complete this essential project by the first half of 2023.

You may give directly through AdventistGiving.org, or through your tithe envelope. Just mark the line “Renovate” with your offering. Naturally, this project will necessitate regular and sacrificial giving over the eight months ahead. But imagine our joy when the doors of our new elevator open to a new chapter in eldercare in the Pioneer Family. It is a Jesus cause and it is a Jesus care that He will bless us to provide: “‘Freely you have received; freely give’” (Matthew 10:8) is His personal appeal to us all. 

Thank you.

DKN

The apocalyptic fury with which the winds of Hurricane Ian slammed into the Florida shoreline last Thursday, and with which they with buzzsaw precision subsequently obliterated a swath of destruction across the Sunshine State to the opposite shores—this unfolding tragedy of nature and humanity is beyond comprehension.

The accumulating statistics are numbing—over one hundred humans dead, countless wildlife destroyed, seaside villages wiped off the face of the earth, inland towns storm-surge flooded beyond recognition—to the place hurried estimates (being upwardly revised almost daily) put the monetary losses suffered at “between $180 billion to $210 billion” (www.newsweek.com/hurricane-ian-threatens-cause-120-billion-dollars-damages-1747675). 

“‘Ian will go down as one of the most damaging and impactful storms in U.S. history, along with 2017's Hurricanes Harvey, which caused $190 billion in total damage and economic loss, and Irma ($80 billion); Sandy in 2012 ($210 billion); Katrina in 2005, ($320 billion), as adjusted for inflation,’ AccuWeather said in [an] initial press release on Thursday” (ibid).

But then, how can you put a price tag on total loss?

Michigan friends who had owned a mobile home (snowbird getaway) in Fort Meyers called us on Thursday to report that while the hurricane straps kept the mobile structure anchored to the cement slab foundation, Ian’s raging winds stripped the roof and gutted the contents. Gone. (Fortunately, our friends sold the home a few months ago—unfortunately, the new owner had just finished remodeling the interior.) Loss.

It’s funny how we use the word “loss.” The neighbor kids hit a baseball out into the unmown field and can’t find it. Loss. The stock market plunges and our retirement portfolio drops. Loss. Ukraine recovers territory it lost to Russia. Loss and gain. Puerto Rico's and the State of Florida’s power infrastructure is blown to smithereens. Loss. Praying now for gain.

We lost our keys—we lost our souls—how very different the stark meaning of being “lost” turns out to be. What makes the difference? Of course, it is the value attached to what is lost. 

No wonder Jesus minces no words: “‘For what will it proffer a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?’” (Mark 8:36)

Of course, it is the value attached to what is lost that determines the degree of loss. In this case, Jesus describes the loss as eternal. And who wants to lose that badly, who wants to lose forever?

Which, let me be quick to add, makes the risk Jesus willingly suffered, to save the likes of you and me from the enemy’s raging fury, utterly astounding. “[The Father] permitted [the Son] to meet life’s peril in common with every human soul, to fight the battle as every child of humanity must fight it, at the risk of failure and eternal loss” (Desire of Ages 49 emphasis supplied).

Loss. What Heaven was willing to risk—eternal loss—for the sake of saving your and my lost souls. We bow before Calvary’s incalculable cost. But we celebrate Christ’s incalculable gift. 

And in that spirit of self-sacrificing joy, we turn our hearts southward to the sufferings of our neighbors, and for them, we send more than prayers and love. We give. For the fastest way to get your gift to where it is desperately needed, please go to https://relief.floridaconference.com and note the various options for giving. 

As Jesus so succinctly put it, “‘Freely you have received; freely give’” (Matthew 10:8). For them. For Jesus. 

Can you imagine a world without water? Think about it. Nearly every single daytime or nighttime, waking or sleeping, human activity is dependent on water. Why, if water disappeared from this earth, we would last around three days. “Dehydration happens quickly, causing extreme thirst, fatigue, and ultimately, organ failure and death. A person may go from feeling thirsty and slightly sluggish on the first day with no water to having organ failure by the third” (www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/325174).

And yet our friends in Jackson, Mississippi, at this very moment of writing, are living—all 250,000 of them—with unusable water. You can turn the faucet on and eventually there may gurgle forth a brown, gritty trickle of water. But no usable amount of water or water pressure for flushing toilets, brushing teeth, taking showers, washing dishes, washing anything. No fighting fires for sure! And on top of that, bottled water is almost non-existent—they’ve run of it, too.

“Since 29 July, households have been under orders to boil all water for drinking, cooking and brushing teeth, to fend off bacterial infections. Now the crisis looks poised to escalate with the possibility the main treatment facility, OB Curtis, could fail completely after its central pumps were seriously damaged in the wake of recent flooding of the Pearl River, following heavy rains” (www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/31/jackson-mississippi-no-running-water-flooding).

For months authorities have been warning of the collapse of Jackson’s water treatment plant. “The city’s mayor, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, said the water infrastructure had suffered from three decades of chronic underfunding” (ibid). Well, for Jackson, Mississippi, it’s “apocalypse now.”

Are you living without water? Not the faucet kind of water, but heart-flow water? She was, the Samaritan woman Jesus engaged there at that noonday well. Sure, she had all the H2O water she needed, but her soul was parched, dehydrated, dying, really. Jesus knew it—hence His offer. Pointing to the well, He spoke: “‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life’” (John 4:13-14).

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? We take for granted that even Jesus’ kind of thirst-slaking water will always be their mañana, so why worry now? “‘[But] the days are coming,' declares the Sovereign Lord, 'when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it’” (Amos 8:11-12).

Then isn’t it a no-brainer for us to keep Jesus' spiritual faucets wide open with His water of life—while we have it: “‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them’” (John 7:37-38). 

But wait a minute—keep reading: “Jesus did not convey the idea that merely one draft of the water of life would suffice the receiver. . . . The cisterns will be emptied, the pools become dry; but our Redeemer is an inexhaustible fountain. We may drink, and drink again, and ever find a fresh supply. . . . From this source [we] may draw strength and grace sufficient for all [our] needs” (Desire of Ages 187). 

It is the Bible’s last offer: “‘Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life’” (Revelation 22:17).

Poor Jackson, Mississippi. So thirsty, so dry, but no water. Poor you and poor me, if besides the thundering Niagara of Jesus’ living water, we live with parched souls and die of dehydration. 

It must not be! 

So let the one who is thirsty, drink. The fountain still flows.