House-to-House
Family of Hope House Church _ July 2021
Living by the Values of the Future
I heard George Brunk III, former dean of Eastern Mennonite Seminary, once say, “Our faith is not so much about preserving values from the past as it is about living out the values of the future.”
In other words, we’re not simply to resist change and hold on to our heritage, good as that may be, but we’re called to radically demonstrate a way of life here and now that has never been, except perhaps in the Garden of Eden.
As a people of God, we are to be an advertisement about what the future will be like when God is fully sovereign, when God’s will will be done on earth as it already is being done in heaven. We are to be a people who refuse to wait, and who are already living by the rules of the forever future, when people everywhere will live by the prophet Isaiah’s vision in the Bible and will “beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks,” and will “study war no more.”
In the age to come “the wolf will lie down with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child shall lead them.” and “they will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.”
That’s a future we can all live with, and one we’re being enlisted now to join in becoming an Exhibit A, a showcase of what God’s forever world will inevitably be like. If we believe that, live with that gleam in our eye, everything about our life now will change.
- Harvey Yoder
Notes, Prayers and Praises
WE WILL HAVE ANOTHER IN-PERSON CHURCH SERVICE at the Vlasits home at 3399 Cavers Drive, Keezletown Sunday July 11. Otherwise we continue to meet online from 4-5:30. For a phone connection dial 646-876-9923. For video: https://zoom.us/j/2849269967.
PRAY FOR ALMA JEAN AND HARVEY as they plan to move to 1540 Hawthorne Drive at VMRC’s Park Village sometime at the end of July.
JULY BIRTHDAY BLESSINGS to Lois Rivera-Wenger 7/30!
LEWIS AND MARY ELLEN OVERHOLT plan to spend the month of August in Germany with their daughter and husband.
WE PRAY HEALING BLESSINGS for Cathy Atwell, Kent Palmer, Donna Sacra and for others dealing with stressful health issues.
July Lectionary Texts
4 Jeremiah 33:14-18; 31:31-34 Messiah and New Covenant
11 Ephesians 1:1-22 (John 14:25-27) Power and Glory
18 Ephesians 2:1-22 (Matt 28:16-20) Death And Resurrection
25 Ephesians 4:1-16 (John 15:1-4) One in the Spirit and One in Faith
July Services, 4-5:30 pm
That's so true. Christianity is forward intent.
ReplyDelete