Here at summer’s end they’re now telling us that brushing our teeth and washing our hands are threatening our prized Great Lakes. And let’s be honest—what would Andrews University be without Lake Michigan? (Union College, of course!) What’s up with this headline? Turns out that beauty product manufacturers have discovered we rather enjoy the gritty feel of that toothpaste on our teeth and the sensation of scrubbing our hand soap gives us (good-bye little germs). And so they’ve embedded tiny plastic microbeads to create the feeling of scrubbing. The trouble comes when these minuscule beads are washed down the drain into our sewage, piped to water treatment plants and—because the beads are too small to be caught by the plant filters—subsequently washed out into the rivers that flow into our lakes. But even worse these plastic beads absorb contaminants. As a result fish and other lake creatures are ingesting these pellets, thus inserting them with the contaminants into the food chain of higher ups, including humans. Ecologists have actually discovered vast patches of these microbeads now floating on our oceans. What shall we do? You could, as a recent Chicago Tribune editorial suggested, check for the ingredient “polyethylene” in your favorite beauty aid and write the manufacturer. But poised as we are just a few hours before a new school year at this university, reflect for a moment on the power and influence of something considered by many to be so small as to be inconsequential. Prayer. After all, like a plastic microbead what is one prayer on the sea of life? But the truth is that your prayer combined with my prayer combined with all their prayers can very quickly become a vast and influential swath to be reckoned with, can’t it? For 98 days we have shared a preseason of prayer for this new school year. And to God our prayers have hardly been inconsequential plastic microbeads. Rather He Himself has stirred up this preseason of intercession, as men, women and children have day and night been earnestly calling on Him to fulfill His promise for our lives, our university, our congregation: “I will do a new thing. . . . I will pour water on those who are thirsty and My Spirit on your offspring” (Isaiah 43:19/44:3). How will God respond to this laser-beam focus of our praying? In many ways He has already begun to fulfill His promise, for “the more earnestly and steadfastly we ask, the closer will be our spiritual union with Christ” (Christ’s Object Lessons 146). Intense and focused praying results in deepening our walk with Jesus, irrespective of the object or answer we seek from God. Our lives have been changed simply because we have been praying. But we are asking for more. Much more. And so on this dedication Sabbath let’s keep our prayers banded together and become “The Circle Maker” and stay in the circle until God opens the floodgates of heaven and does what is truly His “new thing.”
Pastors' Blog
By Pioneer Pastors
On the occasion of this farewell for the first woman pastor to serve the Pioneer Memorial Church, I would like to digress from the usual focus of this Fourth Watch blog and reflect on the pastoral ministry of Esther Knott and the journey of women in ministry during her sixteen years of spiritual leadership in this congregation. I first met Esther, when she was a graduate student here at Andrews University. I was still new in the Pioneer pastorate, when she stopped by the church office for a visit. Active on campus as a student leader and having served already as campus chaplain at Broadview Academy (Illinois), there was no question Esther felt called of God to pursue pastoral ministry. I listened as she described her deepening conviction to serve Christ as a shepherd, as a pastor. We talked about the limitations women who sensed God’s call to pastoral ministry were facing, with most career opportunities at that time limited to hospital chaplaincy or Bible teaching. I remember her tears and our prayer that God would open the door someday somewhere, little realizing that more than a decade later she would be invited by the Michigan Conference to serve as one of the pastors of this university congregation. The past sixteen years have seen major strides in the ministry of women pastors within the Seventh-day Adventist Church. No longer confined to chaplaincy and teaching roles, more and more women within our community of faith are now exercising spiritual leadership as pastors and denominational administrators. And I know you join me in praising God for the way in which the Holy Spirit has opened “a great and effective door” (1 Corinthians 16:9) for the women in our movement who sense God’s call to gospel ministry. However, we are not there yet. That is why the world church has established a Theology of Ordination Study Committee to prayerfully and biblically examine and recommend what our denomination’s next step needs to be in regards to ordaining women pastors to the same spiritual leadership and authority that their male counterparts now enjoy. Both Esther and I are on that committee. I firmly believe that God will work through this very human process to guide this church we love toward the mighty fulfillment of Joel 2:28, 29. But let me be quick to note that over the past sixteen years Esther has never raised her voice in defense of her calling or in petition for her ordination. Rather, she has effectively gone about the ministry of Jesus, who “with the Holy Spirit and with power went about doing good” (Acts 10:38). And that, I believe, is the eloquent and effective testimony she has brought to our collective conversation about ordination—her faithfulness and fruitfulness in pastoral ministry in both our parish and our conference speak volumes to God’s shared calling, His shared giftedness and the Spirit’s shared authority in gospel ministry for both genders. While Esther moves on now in obedience to the divine call to focus her ministry energies and gifts for equipping the pastors of the North American Division of our world church, her sixteen years in our midst will remain a shining testimony to the inestimable value of women pastors the world over. And for that we thank God for her, and we say Amen!
The South Bend Tribune ran a fascinating cover story this week on the Museum of Biodiversity housed on the campus of Notre Dame University. Closed to the public, this climate-controlled museum features a priceless 150-year-old collection of plant specimens from around the globe. The entire herbarium collection is now numbered at 280,000 specimens. But the goal of the university’s scientists is not simply to enlarge the specimen collection. They are looking for “type” specimens—“the exact specimens the original scientist used to catalog and describe the plant species” (SBT 5-29-13). Each collected “type” specimen is carefully photographed and digitally stored for posterity in a huge online database called Global Plants (on the database website JSTOR) that now has 1.9 million entries. We’re not talking little snapshots, either. Each image, in fact, is 200 megabytes, which means each picture could be enlarged to cover a wall and still be clear. So while the museum is closed to the public, its treasure trove can be examined and admired by online visitors for years to come. The Museum of Biodiversity collection has been expanded now to include animal fossils, vertebrates suspended in jars of formaldehyde and even a large collection of preserved insects. But I wonder—do you suppose we could find the fossil of a moral leader somewhere in that collection? Moral leaders are becoming a rare breed on this terra firma, aren’t they? You remember the “type”—that man, that woman, that young adult or teenager (or even child, for that matter) who was uncommonly known as someone who unflinchingly stood up for conviction. Never mind the numbers of those around them who found it inconvenient to stand up at all, let alone to buck the crowd and have to stand alone. Moral leaders—those individuals who in a committee or on a board or in a classroom or dorm room are unafraid to politely but firmly defend what they are convicted is the right moral course to pursue, irrespective of popular opinion. Moral leaders—are they but a fossil relic from the past anymore? Nobody said moral leaders would ever be in the majority, but history has taught us that even just one of them can shift the tide of humanity and rewrite the narrative of history. Just one. But imagine what more than just one moral leader could do—imagine a band of them on a campus like ours. I imagine God imagines just such a reality. In fact, it really is no imagination at all. He predicts it: “‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy’” (Acts 2:17-18). A band of moral leaders—young and old, men and women “in the last days.” For that reason this summer we in this congregation and on this campus are claiming God’s promise in prayer—“I will do a new thing.” We have put off that prayer for too long. It is high time—for the sake of this university and the world into which God is sending it—for His “new thing” to become a reality on this campus. And so with 76 days until the new school year begins, we are praying for new moral leaders. Would you be willing to join us in this prayer?
Earlier this month I had the privilege of speaking for ten minutes to the Andrews Academy student body for one of their morning worships. I had actually spent an hour and a half the night before writing up a devotional for that worship. But as I was praying before leaving my study that night, I had hardly gotten two sentences into the prayer when a “voice” said to me: “Nice devotional, Dwight—but the wrong one.” I was so startled by that thought that I rose straight up onto my feet and said to myself, “No way!” But as I sat back down at my desk, it was essentially, “Yes way.” In that moment of reflection the impression came to tell the students about what had been happening the last few weeks and to end that telling with a call for moral leaders. So that’s what I did that next morning. Told about how a couple weeks before I had been visiting with our youth pastor, Micheal Goetz. We were wondering what it would take around here to raise the bar so high that only God could accomplish it. No question, our campuses need a huge God-sized vision. Revival. A new breed of young missionaries. Etc. We had prayer together. Micheal left. And a few split seconds later there was a knock on my office door. A college kid named Jonathan stuck his head in, “Can you talk.” “No—I’ve got a board meeting in 20 minutes—what’s up?” “I’ve been walking around campus this afternoon thinking how much this university needs God—we really need a revival around here.” Suddenly I’m realizing he’s essentially summarizing the visit I’d just had with Micheal. We talked for a few moments, knelt to pray together, and when Jonathan left he promised that he would find twelve friends of his who would covenant to pray over the summer days ahead—every day—for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on this campus in the new year. That morning at worship with the academy students I told how a week later I’d spent an afternoon with Jose Bourget our chaplain, planning for our new year worship journey at Pioneer come September. He shared how he’d been interviewing university students for positions in Campus Ministry, and how he sensed a spiritual ambivalence among these interviewees. “We need new leaders around here.” We prayed together. The next morning I’m at the academy telling these high schoolers that it is very possible God is calling them—particularly the senior class graduating this weekend—to become the new moral leaders this university is needing. What if the Class of 2013 is in fact under divine appointment to become leaders for the Spirit of Christ on this campus? What would happen if we all committed to praying every day this summer for God to do “a new thing” on both campuses come the new year? And so I invited the students that morning to commit themselves to a “preseason of prayer,” to offer themselves to God as moral leaders, even if they must stand alone. They stood to their feet, many of them. And I am praying that God will honor that commitment, and that for the Class of 2013 and the classmates they leave behind God will fulfill His promise: “I will do a new thing. . . . I will pour water on those who are thirsty and floods upon the dry ground; I will pour My Spirit upon your descendants and My blessing upon your offspring” (Isaiah 43:19; 44:3). A God-sized promise and vision for a God-committed new generation of young moral leaders. I am convinced God is ready—and I am earnestly praying that over the summer days ahead the Class of 2013 and this congregation and these campuses will be readied for His “new thing.” Would you be willing to join me in that prayer?
Drip, drip, drip. There are two ways to empty a tankful of water. You can crank open the faucet and let the water flow. Or—and this method is much slower, but just as effective—you can let the faucet drip one drop at a time. Either way the tank will eventually empty. Two government disclosures this week—one from the IRS and the other from the Justice Department—are a reminder that the prized civil liberties upon which this nation was founded can also be emptied by the perennial drip, drip, drip of freedom leakage. Somebody within the Internal Revenue Service decided that any organization with “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in its name deserved extra scrutiny before being granted tax-exempt status. I.e., right-leaning political organizations were to receive this more stringent examination, all the while moderate and left-leaning organizations were left alone. While I am not a supporter of any political organization—right, middle or left—nevertheless I was astounded that in a nation that cherishes its right to independence from mainstream opinions such a blatant discriminatory action of government is possible! Then a few days later we learned that the phone records of the news organization, the Associated Press, were secretly examined by the Justice Department of our national government without ever informing the AP organization of its investigation. Purportedly the government was concerned about news leaks regarding the CIA’s clandestine efforts in Yemen to thwart another airline bombing. I.e., for the sake of presumed national security, the civil liberty of freedom of press can be breached with no disclosure at all. Again, political alliances notwithstanding, since when does this nation’s government have the power to abrogate the constitutional rights of its citizens and organizations, irrespective of security demands? Drip, drip, drip. One more reminder that the apocalyptic scenario predicted in Revelation 13 is losing its improbability one drip at a time. “Blessed is the one who stays awake” (Revelation 16:15). A red-letter admonition near the end of time and Scripture for this generation. Because one day we will awaken only to discover that the tank has been emptied. One drip at a time. But the notion of “drip” isn’t entirely negative. Because in the metaphors of Scripture even a drip portends water, and outpouring water is God’s favorite descriptor of His outpouring Spirit. “For I will pour out water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out My Spirit on your offspring and My blessing on your descendants” (Isaiah 44:3). But have we become satisfied with just a drip, when in fact God is offering the torrential outpouring of the Holy Spirit? That’s why we’ve chosen as a university congregation to consider the ninety days between us and the advent of another new school year to be a critical “preseason of prayer.” And so we are pledging ourselves to pray every day between now and the new year for God to fulfill His promise, “I will do a new thing” (Isaiah 43:19). No longer can we be satisfied with the interminable drip, drip of “the old thing.” We desperately need the promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit on this university. Rearranging the furniture or new wallpaper will never slake our thirst or fulfill our mission. “I will do a new thing and pour out My Spirit on those who are thirsty.” Then why wouldn’t our prayers for that thirst and His promise be our #1 priority this summer?
We’re all still shaking our heads with disbelief and joy over the headlines out of Cleveland, Ohio, this week. On Monday afternoon the 911 dispatcher heard the plea of a breathless female voice: “Help me. I’m Amanda Berry. I’ve been kidnapped, and I’ve been missing for 10 years now and I’m, I’m here, I’m free now.” Emergency responders were at the door within minutes. “They’re more in there,” the young woman pointed to the second floor of the shuttered up house. “Two more.” One desperate phone call, and the world learned their nearly unfathomable story—a decade long nightmare for three young girls, kidnapped one by one from their nearby neighborhoods, and held captive in a rundown house in that blue collar neighborhood, held by three men—brothers, all now in their 50s—held against their will. For a decade. And nobody knew. Not the three grieving families who were sure their girls were dead, not the authorities who knocked twice on that front door but didn’t investigated further, not the neighbors who every day passed by the garbage-bag-covered windows of that decrepit house—no one knew the unspeakable horrors Amanda Berry (now 27), Michelle Knight (32) and Gina DeJesus (23) endured in lost silence for ten years. Held against her will. There surely is a Mother’s Day reflection embedded in this stunning headline. Not that our beloved mothers—God bless them—were ever held against their will by our needy childhoods. Quite to the contrary. As it was with my mother it surely was with yours, too—she endured all that she put with from a rascal like me (you, no doubt, were more cherubic than I) for the sake of her deep love for her children. Career dreams interrupted or even put on indefinite hold, fanciful visions of global adventure shelved away for another day or another lifetime, all because of a mother’s relentless love for the child she received from God. Held against her will—hardly. She was held by the will of God to pour out His love through her to the likes of you and me. But beyond this national holiday, the truth is that there are women the world over who by desperate circumstances or cultural decrees are being held against their will. The recent tragedy in that Bangladeshi clothing factory that collapsed on top of hundreds of female workers was a reminder of the tens of thousands and millions of women on earth who slave away for a pittance of a wage, for the survival of their hungry families. Held against their will by circumstances we find abhorring. There are countless other women who have poured themselves into careers that have hit the proverbial glass ceiling—held back against their will by cultural norms that allow only males to “ascend” to such elevated responsibilities. Jesus’ compelling example of filial love for His mother as He hung dying on the cross and His countercultural elevation of women in service and ministry throughout His life are evidence enough of God’s heart for the women of this race. Surely on this day in which we remember our blessed mothers we might also say a prayer for all the women who, held against their will, still wait for that God-moment when the locked door will fly wide open—open at last to God’s high ideals and personal calling for the daughters of His family on earth.
What does the collapse of the Bangladeshi clothing factory have to do with this graduating class of our “best and brightest”? More than meets the eye. I was stunned to watch the now-arrested owner of the doomed factory in Dhaka declare on camera just hours before the collapse that there was no problem with his building—never mind the large cracks in the walls—the building is safe. In fact on the morning of the collapse, the owner and his associates were commanding hesitant workers, mainly women, to enter the factory and resume their shift work. Minutes later the eight-story block building collapsed in a roaring heap of dust. The death toll now stands at over 400, with another 1300 still missing. Side-stepping the growing furor over western clothing companies that have taken advantage of essentially “slave labor” (as Pope Francis described it), I wonder if this tragedy is a parable of the civilization we live in and the world our graduates now enter. Could it be that the siren voices that increasingly warn us of massive economic cracks in the walls of our societies are going unheeded? And are the efforts of our political leaders to dismiss our growing concerns over this teetering economy as unconscionable as the Bangladeshi factory owner’s assurances? Could it be that we—all of us—live in a disintegrating infrastructure that, barring some sort of miraculous divine intervention, will collapse much sooner than we had thought? Bangladeshi rescue workers report that the pleas for help emanating from the bowels of that concrete heap have weakened into silence. How many survivors are yet trapped in that cement tomb? If only bare hands could dig their way to them, to carry them to safety. What about the hands and the heart of this university’s graduating class? Could it be that you have been tapped by the Nail-scarred One to hurry out into this collapsing civilization in search of survivors? Could it be that irrespective of your degree, your career, your ambitions and life goals, Heaven desperately needs your unique giftedness to connect with a generation that doesn’t even know it is entombed in this doomed earth factory? Maybe that’s why you were born? Oh sure, after the tens of thousands your parents have invested in you, it may seem logical to conclude that your goal now is to “earn it back.” But maybe it’s to “give it back.” To the entrapped, the entombed in both the Third and First World. Too hopeless a cause these lost survivors? Or could it be the only cause with hope that is left? T. S. Eliot: . . . And right action is freedom From past and future also. For most of us, this is the aim Never here to be realized; Who are only undefeated Because we have gone on trying . . . (“The Dry Salvages”) Jesus Christ: “‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it’” (Mark 8:34, 35).
Twin events in the past few days have revealed the catapulted status the social media now enjoy in our society. The Boston Marathon bombings and their aftermath last week and the hacked and tweeted hoax about a White House attack this week are a sobering reminder of the power wielded by a host of cyberspace social networks. “Monday’s bombings, the first major terrorist attack on American soil in the age of smartphones, Twitter and Facebook, provided an opportunity for everyone to get involved. Within seconds of the first explosion, the Internet was alive with the collective ideas and reactions of the masses” (South Bend Tribune 4-21-13). In an instant, pictures and video clips from bystanders in Boston were circulating the Internet. Theories regarding the bombings and potential bombers began to multiply like a rogue virus. Innocent men and women were marked in photographs, in some cases identified by name and found guilty in the court of cyberspace. Some tout the investigative boost and assistance such Internet sleuthing can provide for law enforcement officials, but the fact is cyberspace got it wrong in Boston. “‘This is one of the most alarming social media events of our time,’ said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media studies professor at the University of Virginia. ‘We’re really good at uploading images and unleashing amateurs, but we’re not good with the social norms that would protect the innocent. . . . Sitting at our computers, it’s easy to forget that there are real people represented by these images and names. . . . And that’s when we see the arrogance of the crowd take over’” (ibid). Then just yesterday the Associated Press Twitter account was hacked, and a hoax message—“Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured”—shot into cyberspace. In seconds traders on Wall Street got wind of the “explosions” and panicked. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted in a free-fall, “erasing nearly $200 billion off the broader market’s value” (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/23/hack-attack-on-associated-press-shows-vulnerable-media/2106985/). At best we now live in a world jittery with uncertainty. And this hoax has “underscored a great vulnerability in our 24/7 faster-is-better news environment: stories (even fake ones) travel at light speed and can in an instant upend an increasingly anxious public’s faith in business, government and the news media” (ibid). Why should these two social media events matter to us? Because they are a stunning reminder that a faceless public can quickly jettison judicial “due process” by trying, interrogating and condemning the innocent in the court of public opinion. In a matter of hours, even minutes. And they can do so on the basis of evidence that is actually false or unsubstantiated. How rapidly, how wrongly the faceless ones can render judgment! No wonder Revelation 13 predicts that on the heels of some catastrophic event this nation and the world (and the tolerating public within them) will try, interrogate, condemn and even execute the innocent in the dragon’s furious endgame. Will the faceless public of social media be his pawn? Given the last few days, wouldn’t you be surprised if they weren’t?
We were in the middle of our staff meeting Monday afternoon, when my phone beeped a text message. It was from Karen: “Bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.” Everyone around the table grabbed their phone, as with the rest of the nation we watched the first pictures from the marathon finish line. The orange explosion—twice, just a block apart. The surreal pause. Then mayhem. And now the casualty count this morning—3 dead, 183 injured, 13 amputations. Our hearts and prayers reach out to Boston and the grieving families. But haven’t we dreamed this nightmare before? “Déjà vu all over again.” And yet, have you noticed, our shock levels seem a tad depressed? Granted, 9-11 was a tragedy of epic proportions. But the steady drum beat of subsequent global terrorist acts—London, Madrid, Bombay, Kabul, Baghdad, Jerusalem—has beaten down our once painful sensitivity. Add to the international carnage this past year’s twin tragedies in our own homeland—the mass killings in Aurora, Colorado, and Newtown Connecticut—and it may explain a collective freezing or at least diminishing of our emotional acuity. The repetition of evil numbs our perception of it and depresses our response to it. After all, how many times in a row can the human heart be triggered by inconsolable grief? “‘This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!” (Mark 9:7) What would Christ say to Boston, to our nation, to the world? What word from Him could assuage our pain, our fears? Would it be a healing word for our beaten emotions? Or is there any healing left for us? If as is evident our civilization is retrograding—if this steady drum beat is but a harbinger of that which is to come—then does it not follow that those who hear Christ most clearly (His followers, His disciples, His friends) will be His Kingdom’s most natural frontline to advance a word of hope and promise in the midst of this emotional carnage? Wouldn’t it follow that beyond educating our young, our most significant resources should be invested in communicating the healing word of Jesus to as many alive today as possible? In every nation on earth? What if we raised up a generation of young, within this generation of earth, to be trained, equipped and mobilized to personally take that message of healing into this world? Today. The GYC and AYC movements, and other such similar spin-offs, may yet prove to be the godsend the church has been languishing for. Otherwise, if the institutional church simply keeps processing its young through its universities, with degrees but minus the passion and equipping of radical young disciples, what have we done to advance the Kingdom agenda in a society now desperate with fear and hopeless confusion? At some point, somebody is going to say, Enough is enough. God help it to be you.
According to a recent Huffington Post/YouGov poll of Americans, 32% of us expressed our desire for Christianity to become the “official” religion of the United States. Forty-two percent of respondents opposed that notion, with 32% of them “strongly opposed.” I share their strong opposition. That’s why it really isn’t so inconsequential that a group of eleven Republican state representatives in North Carolina this past week pushed for a state resolution declaring that while the U. S. Constitution forbids the establishment of religion, that prohibition only applies to the federal government and not to the states. Thus, according to these legislators, each state has the right to establish a religion in that state according to the dictates of the electorate. Their resolution did not pass. While many considered their legislative maneuver doomed from the start, their effort nevertheless has elevated the issue to a much wider discussion. Turns out the quest for the “Christianization” of America is not new. In the latter half of the nineteenth century a group of ministers banded together to form the National Reform Association. According to a blog on the website First Things, they proposed the following amendment to the preamble of the Constitution: “WE, THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES, [recognizing the being and attributes of Almighty God, the Divine Authority of the Holy Scriptures, the law of God as the paramount rule, and Jesus, the Messiah, the Saviour and Lord of all] in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” (http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/04/09/no-surprise-that-32-of-americans-want-a-christian-constitutional-amendment/) John Fea, author of this First Things blog and the book Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?, notes that these National Reform ministers “were very careful to affirm that they were not opposing religious liberty and were not interested in creating a theocracy. But they did want to give Christianity a privileged place in America. This meant the promotion of Bible reading in schools, the preservation of the Christian sabbath, and the public recognition of the teaching of Christianity as the nation’s moral guide.” The preservation of the “Christian sabbath”? Is that where the “Christianization” of America would lead us? This week we learned one out of three Americans would like to see Christianity established as the official religion of this nation. Let the moral (or immoral) conditions of our society continue to deteriorate, and it isn’t rocket science to assume such numbers will only increase. Let a series of natural, national calamities strike us, and I imagine a majority hue and cry for a state-sponsored religion (“return this country to God” would no doubt be the moniker for such a move). The point? You can get there from here. Which means that from here on out vigilance on behalf of religious liberty is critical. And diligence on behalf of our apocalyptic mission is essential. Somewhere I read that what we neglect to do in a time of prosperity, we shall yet have to do in a time of great duress. Thus for us the sentiment of the young Christ is all the more applicable: “Don’t you know that we must be about our Father’s business?” (see Luke 2:49). Would to God the church were awake!
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