Thoughts on Life and Worship

It was just a month ago that I attended the Juneteenth Celebration hosted by Pastor James Hailey and Allen Chapel at Standish Park.  I hadn’t known much about the history of the day and I was grateful that the City of Galesburg was able to have such an informative and inspiring event.  Pastor Hailey was gracious enough to even invite me to deliver the Scripture reading from Psalm 126, part of which read, “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.”  And, indeed, the event was a joyful experience.  What struck me the most about Juneteenth in Standish Park was the proclamation of the gospel.  Over and over, whether in stories, testimonies, songs, or preaching, the power of the love and faithfulness of Jesus Christ was heard.  As a pastor, I have ears to hear it, of course.  But the message of the Good News could not be missed on that blessed afternoon.  A lot of water has passed under the bridge since the racial unrest of the 1960’s and 70’s....

    Introduction – Apollo 13 and Our Current Malaise On April 11, 1970, the crew of Apollo 13, the third attempt to land men on the moon, blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center on the Florida coast. Three days into the mission and nearly a quarter of a million miles from earth, there was an explosion in one of the oxygen tanks.   The crew’s message to earth has been immortalized: “ Houston, we have a problem .”   The mission, which had been focused on exploration and discovery was radically changed in a moment.   All of the efforts of the crew and their support team on earth were now focused on the men’s survival and return home.   They abandoned their plan to land on the moon and, instead, circled around it in order to use its gravitational pull to “sling-shot” the craft back to earth.   The whole saga of improvisation and survival was effectively dramatized on film in 1995.   In a sense, I believe that we, in American culture, may be havi...