Message from the Pastor. . .

I got up the other morning and turned on the television in the kitchen to catch up on the news and weather. As I was flipping to my favorite channel, I noticed a message from the cable company telling me that they were upgrading the cable system and I needed to obtain a ―Digital Transport Adapter (DTA)‖ to watch some of the channels. I suspect that some of you received the same message. Well, I made a trip down to the cable company and picked up the little box that they said I needed. I connected it to my television and I not only received the channels that I expected, I also was able to see additional channels as well.

As I’ve reflected upon this, it reminds me of how my spiritual journey has sometimes limited my ability to see and experience the blessings in the world around me. There have been times when my spiritual life has not been what it should or could be. And I have been satisfied in seeing only the blessings from God that affected me directly. As I think about it, as I focused on how ―I‖ have been blessed, I also began to shrink my spiritual life by focusing only on myself. Without the DTA box on my TV, I was satisfied with only receiving six or seven channels. However, by connecting the box, I began to receive another fifty channels. Sadly, these additional channels were already brought to my TV, however I wasn’t able to tune in and enjoy all of the channels that were actually available to me.

God’s blessings are all around us. Sometimes they affect me directly and sometimes they affect others. By not making good use of the spiritual disciplines, that we have access to, we deny ourselves the ability to fully experience God at work in not only our lives, but in the lives of others. And very often we are blessed as we take actions that bring blessings to other people.

As we begin the season of Lent on February 22nd I hope that you and I can take a look at our spiritual journeys with the intent of expanding our spiritual lives as we more fully experience the blessings. For some of us, we may need to swap the ―box‖ by making some major changes to our spiritual disciplines. For others, we may need to ―tune in‖ our spiritual lives by making adjustments to what we already do. And still others may need to ―tune out‖ those things that distract us from experiencing God’s blessings.
During Lent, we will be providing several opportunities for us to ―Experience the Blessing‖. We will begin with worship on Ash Wednesday with our friends at Jackson Chapel UMC at their new place of worship. We will be encouraging you to read Charles Sheldon’s classic book, In His Steps and perhaps join a small group for discussion of this book. We will also be providing a couple of ―movie night‖ experiences around this same classic. Our worship theme will be ―Experience the Blessing‖ where we will explore how God blesses us and help us focus on looking for how God blesses others through us. I look forward to experiencing God’s blessings with you as we move through Lent together.

Pastor Ken
Living In God’s Hope Today

Worship with us Sunday Morning 8:15, 9:30 and 11:00

Brook Hill United Methodist Church
8946 Indian Springs Road w Frederick, Maryland 21702
phone (301) 662-1727 w fax (301) 631-1202 w brookhill@bhumc.org

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