All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God…  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:15,18

This Sunday I had some kind of a twenty-four hour bug going on and I had to stay home and miss church. I hate to miss church – especially when Rebekah is preaching! Fortunately HMPC has a decent YouTube channel and I was able to participate at home.

Rebekah wrapped up her three week series on “Perspective,” and I want to pass on a great story she shared. It was first told by former PC(USA) moderator Marj Carpenter but still resonates beautifully; and, in this post-COVID restoration phase of church life, it could not be more timely.

Carpenter was visiting the Presbyterian congregation where the celebrated George Armstrong Custer had served as a church officer. “Before he left to head out west with the 7th Cavalry,” she was told. “Custer met with the board of elders. He told them, ‘Don’t do anything until I come back…’ And,” the church member said with a wry smile – and maybe a hint of pride, “so far we haven’t!”

The Battle of Little Bighorn took place in 1876, just two years after our congregation here in Tarboro was first organized. And the reason the Custer story is the eyebrow-raising kind of funny is because it is so easy for any church to see itself in the same light.

But not here. Action has been one of the defining characteristics that makes Howard Memorial such a unique presence in this community. Not just doing things, but doing important things.

Looking through the perspective of history can be satisfying; and also – if we’re not careful – leave us satisfied. It brings to mind Newton’s Laws of Motion: “A body in motion tends to stay in motion; but a body at rest tends to stay at rest (unless acted upon by an outside force).”

This Body (HMPC) has been in motion for 150 years – because we have been acted upon by the transformational love of Jesus. There is no reason, ever, to come to rest, because there is still so much need for transformational love everywhere we look.

The perspective of history, then, is the story of doing; let love remain in motion – DEREK