Share from your week; where have you seen God at work?:
Martha – Ken and I enjoyed the Japanese Gardens on Friday. We took a walk up the hill to the Japanese Gardens. At one point I decided to take a picture of one of their gardens. When we got home I looked at my photos on my camera and low and behold there was a rainbow in the garden! Now, I did not see the rainbow when we were there, but we saw it in the photo. So, it just reminded me that we can’t see God. We can feel his promises sometimes, but we can’t always see his promises. We can’t see God, but he is there.
Pastor Brett - Thank you Martha, Amen. We can’t always see God, but God’s promises are there. That’s beautiful.
Sharing/reflections after the sermon on Numbers 21: 4-9 & John 3: 14-21 How do you feel like God is talking to you?
Dianne – The part about the wilderness and what we’ve gone through as a nation this past year. I never thought of myself as really being in the wilderness, because I live in the suburb of Hillsboro. But, it was like that because I was barely seeing people. When I would see people they would wave as they scurried into their houses. I felt really alone; it really taught me to really rely on God, which I thought I had been. I mean I had nothing, my husband was gone, I had little money; I didn’t really want to go to the store. I was scared of going to the store until I finally said – Okay, you just have to brave it, put your mask on and go to the store. And there were other people out there. Some were saying - this is just a hoax and I’m not wearing a mask. This reminds me of the people that were in the Bible saying – I want fish, and I want this & I want that; why can’t I have that? Well, we couldn’t have what we wanted. We couldn’t go to the restaurants that we love to go to, because of this Covid thing. So, we were put in a box and told to stay there, don’t go anywhere. Don’t talk to anybody, you can call them on the phone or whatever, but don’t have any real physical interaction with anyone because you could become ill. And so I learned really to rely on God with my whole heart & soul and physical, emotional; spiritual way. I feel like I have grown even though I was alone. I feel like I have grown out of that and God is teaching me to just rely on him and not on myself. Because, I’ve always been the person that does everything & says – I can do this, just put your mind to it. I did put my mind to saving myself from Covid, because that really was a danger that I couldn’t fight; it was an invisible thing that was threatening me. So, I had to stay in the house. But, I’m so happy that were done with this; it’s almost over. So, don’t give up, wear your mask, I love you all, and I will see you next Sunday!
Pastor Brett – Thank you for sharing the word. The wilderness is a fitting metaphor for some of what we might be going through.
Michele M. – What came to mind for me was – Why a serpent? Why did God pick a serpent to put up on that pole? What came to mind was the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Look what it did that was so against God. Is our God a vengeful God? I don’t know but I think our God likes to get back a little bit and to take that serpent and to make that serpent really like a good thing rather than a bad thing. The serpent always represents the devil or evil so, it’s like taking that and making it into something positive; that serpent will save your life. The correlation between the serpent in the garden wanting to go against God and what he created by bringing evil into the garden. And at the same time in this part of the Bible, the serpent becomes the good thing. That it becomes the symbol of - this will save your life.
Pastor Brett – That’s deep, thank you Michele. God redeeming even the serpent, right? The image of the serpent.
Gavin – Many years ago, Susan Brehmer gave me two books. I wanted to read the Bible, but I couldn’t deal with the therefore, thou, thee, formal version. She gave me The Message and I started to read it and I go – I’m going to read every word of this book! I mean it was just a mission. So, every day at lunch I would spend time out in my van in the parking lot reading as far as I could get in the allotted time. Numbers almost got me! If you’re going to read the Bible, plow through it; it makes perfect sense on the other side. Man, that was very trudging to read that. Susan gave me another book, because I told her I liked the late Reverend D James Kennedy, I had seen him on TV a bunch. I can’t remember it’s either from one of the footnotes in The Message or if it was from D James Kennedy, but the serpent on the pole is the symbol for physician or medical. Anyway, plow through Numbers because it takes effort! Thank you Susan!
Pastor Brett – Yes, Gavin reminding us that the symbol for medical healing is a serpent on the pole. Thank you Gavin, that’s good. I’m going to write that down for my next sermon on this. Susan says – Love that Gavin!
