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MABELVALE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH 10500 Woodman, Mabelvale, AR 72103 Rev. Bob Marble, Pastor Phone: 501-455-2503 Fax: 455-8990 e-mail: mabelvaleumc@sbcglobal.net website: www.mabelvaleumc.org |
| FROM THE: The Visitor - .News from the ‘church in the 'Vale' December 1, 2010 Kathy Chandler-Editor Mabelvale United Methodist Church, 10500 Woodman Street, Mabelvale, AR 72103 And the adventures continue … as November has given away to December … one could easily say … as the chill factor is 23 … “now that’s more like it!” And craning my neck up and out of the deep, thick collars around it … wow! … this morning’s sky is a stargazer’s dream! … everything is crystal clear … would be nice if all our lives were as clear … but alas … “give thanks ‘in’ all circumstances…” Breaking the morning horizon … looking as large as a orange, even has a bit of orange glow, comes Saturn pulling Venus with it, pushing a sliver of the moon out ahead … standing here mesmerized in the glory of His creation … I start gazing and naming … I would fill this space it I were to start writing down all the individual stars and constellations, even a nebula or two … however, right overhead I can’t help but be gathered in by Regulus, the alpha star of the constellation, Leo … the Lion. The Lion has always had a special fascination for me … I suppose … C.S. Lewis, my favorite theologian of the 20th century, had a hand in doing that for me … with his Chronicles of Narnia, the fantasy world he wrote to teach children about the Christian faith, and Aslan, his divine lion, his fictional representation of Jesus Christ. Though Aslan is gentle and loving, again and again throughout the Chronicles, Lewis says the he’s ‘not a tame lion.’ Last week Joy and I were taking in a movie and saw the previews of the new Lewis The Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie, the next film from his popular “Chronicles” … where Lucy, Edmund and their nasty cousin, Eustace -- begin their journey much like we begin our spiritual journey … with a cold dip … they fall into the ocean and are rescued by their old friend, Caspian, who is now a king and now embarked upon finding the Seven Lost Lords of Narnia, promised earlier by the lion Aslan … and as the children go to encounter Aslan, the Christ … it’s a spiritual ‘adventure’ … very much like the one our Bible Study classes have just encountered with John the Baptist wearing a camel hair garment and munching on honey and locusts, as he appears from the wilderness, proclaiming a kingdom that might sound to some, a fantasy, as out-of-this-world as the land of Narnia. John tells us it’s very close, and John is like the talking beavers in Narnia, who say Aslan the lion is good … but not tame. So, our question in the study, and is our question of ourselves … ‘who responds to John’s call?’ … all in the region of Judea and along the Jordan … all the Lucys and Edmunds of the world … with deeply unsettled feelings about their lives and want to turn around and head in a new direction … anxious to enter such a heavenly kingdom … and mixed in that crowd … those sour and nasty Eustaces – Pharisees and Sadducees … and do they come out … transformed from their baptisms? As the children pass through the waters of Narnia, they begin a transition that changes their lives. Much the same happens in John among those who truly repent and are baptized. However … Are we, like the children, willing to change our course? … willing to ‘come about’ to a new heading? The ole dawn treader, Bob |
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