Words of Welcome

1 Samuel 17:57-18:5 What is a friend?  In the age of Facebook, that’s not as easy to answer as it was before the advent of Social Media.  I have nearly a thousand Facebook friends, but truth be told I’m not quite sure who many of them are!  Still, I’ve found Facebook to be a wonderful way to reconnect with old friends and make new ones.   Of course, we’ve always known that there are different levels of friendship.  Some can last for a week at camp and others a lifetime.  Some are extremely close and others are more distant. But this need to make friends is a reminder of what God observes in the Garden – It’s not good for humans to be alone.       I know that Facebook or Twitter isn’t for everyone, but we all find ways of connecting and reconnecting with others. That’s the reason many go to reunions.  We like to keep rekindling old friendships.  But, it’s not enough to keep old friendships alive, we have continually make new ones, and for introverts like me that’s not a

2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1   The Hubble telescope has brought into focus the vastness of the universe.  It allows us to see the universe in ways never before thought possible.  But, when it was first deployed they discovered a flaw in the lens that left this new view somewhat fuzzy.  But, NASA launched a shuttle that went out and repaired the telescope, and now we can see the wonders of the universe with a clarity never before possible.  What was fuzzy is now clear. But, you don’t have to go to the Hubble telescope to know the importance of bringing things into focus.  Every morning, when I wake up, I put on my glasses, because without them the world is a complete blur.  In an earlier age, I would have been, for all intents and purposes, blind.   In the Gospels, Jesus occasionally heals a person of blindness.  On one occasion, when he was Bethsaida, a man who was blind was brought to him.  Jesus spit on his eyes and then laid hands on the man.  Then Jesus asked him:

John 3:1-17 It’s easy to get lost in the darkness of night.  It’s hard to get your bearings when familiar landmarks disappear into the background.  You think you know where you’re going and end up somewhere else.  It happens to me with some regularity.   I remember one evening, back when I was in college, I ended up driving my car into a field.  I was, at the moment, on a date, and after my date’s futile attempt to help me stay up on roller skates, we decided to take a drive out to Bonanza, a very small farming town east of Klamath Falls.  Now,  I really didn’t intend to end up in that field, but under the cover of darkness, I didn’t know where I was going.   And no, nothing happened!  I was a perfect gentleman, or better – I was rather shy!  Nicodemus didn’t end up driving into a field, but you could say that in a spiritual way, he got lost in the night.  According to John, Nicodemus, a religious leader and teacher, visited Jesus under the cover of darkness.  He