“My prayer is not the whimpering of a beggar nor a confession of love. Nor is it the trivial reckoning of a small tradesman: Give me and I shall give you.
My prayer is the report of a soldier to his general: this is what I did today, this is how I fought to save the entire battle in my own sector, these are the obstacles I found, this is how I plan to fight tomorrow.
My God and I are horsemen galloping in the burning sun or under drizzling rain. Pale, starving, but unsubdued, we ride and converse. “Leader!” I cry. He turns his face toward me, and I shudder to confront his anguish.
Our Love for each other is rough and ready, we sit at the same table, we drink the same wine in this low tavern of life.”

Lent: the last Christian season to be colonized by Hallmark and other trinket-making industries. It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m sure it will. It’s only a matter of time. First, they took Christmas from us. Then they took Easter with that ridiculous bunny and those disgusting Cadbury eggs. Then they moved on to snag All Hallows Eve. Next they started chipping away out our saints, like St. Patrick and St. Valentine.

But the season of Lent is difficult terrain for our capitalistic society to colonize into a profit-making season. After all, “tis the season to be… fasting” is hardly a motto that could stir the masses into a buying frenzy.

But it is for these very reasons that Lent just might be all the more significant for Christians to practice in our modern culture. There is something about it that cuts across some of the most powerful currents in our society. If for nothing else, it reminds us that we as a church are shaped by disciplines and practices that are utterly foreign to our dominant culture.

Jesus' coming means we have a right to be place at the Table of God. You have a right to draw near to Christ that cannot be denied by the Evil One. As you look back on 2008, have you taken advantage of this great privilege? Are you more in love with Jesus now than you were a year ago? Do you know Him a little better now than six months ago? Are you hearing his voice more often? Don't let Satan steal the great blessing of His presence. You don’t belong in the doghouse. Jesus sets you a place at the table.
Jesus has given us the right to live in a family where we have significance, where we belong. Many of you came into the body of Christ not knowing what you were worth, or where you belonged. Jesus came, at just the right time, to show you what you are worth to God. You don't belong in some ethereal, spiritual way, with your name written in a heavenly book somewhere, but you belong right here in this congregation. This is a body where everyone fits, everyone belongs. Wendy belongs. Widows belong. Poor people belong. People fighting addictions belong. People who doubt belong.

Today is the Anniversary of Pearl Harbor, a day that still lives in infamy. Some here at Hopwood remember that day...a day the United States was invaded by a hostile force bent on destruction and domination. Everyone who heard the news knew that life in the US would never be the same again.
Today we gather in the dark, dead of Winter, with our country fighting two wars, with our economy bleeding jobs, with disease and poverty ravaging the peoples of the world, we gather this morning to remember a an entirely different kind of invasion.

...pay attention to what Dr. Hodes said. He said that when he came to a tough decision point, like the decision to adopt those two desperately sick boys into his own family, the answer that came to him was like God himself offering him an opportunity to help these boys. Don’t say no,” said his heart. “Don’t say no” to God.

A couple of months ago, I got a call from the Library here at Milligan. “Hey, we’ve unearthed a couple of boxes of Hopwood archives. Are you interested?” Was I interested? Finding this stuff was like stumbling across the long-lost book of the law in the wall of the temple. The boxes arrived and I went through the notebooks and documents as gently as one might handle newly discovered Dead Sea scrolls. I carefully opened the brittle pages, and treasured the words set down so long ago. There were working notes from Mrs. Thompson’s long lost history of Hopwood. There was a registry from 1915. There were minutes of elders’ meetings from 50 years ago. We don’t want to forget our history. We’re making plans to celebrate 175 years together on Buffalo Creek. We’re actually a few years older than that, but you know how people tend to round downward once you reach a certain age. The Buffalo Creek Christian Church, later known as Hopwood Memorial, may have been established here as early as the late 1820’s. Church historian Addie Thompson wrote that “For several years there was no building for weekly services so (the church) met on the banks of the creek, in barns, mills, cemeteries, homes, groves, or any place they found suitable. Later a log church was built on land donated by Joshua Williams.”