Thought for Today
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,
Psalm 36:6 Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your judgments are like the great deep; you save humans and animals alike, O LORD.
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
1 Timothy 1:17 To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
This year, the U.S.A. celebrated our 250th birthday. “The United States Semiquincentennial was the 250th anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence. Festivities marked various events leading up to the 250th Independence Day, July 4, 2026.” (en.wikipedia.org) Most of us had never previously encountered the word semiquincentennial before these celebrations began.
On a global historical scale, ours is a relatively young nation. We learned in school about the Pilgrims and the Puritans who first came to the shores of North America. Some of us have read about the first immigrants to the Western Hemisphere, “It is believed that the peopling of the Americas began when Paleolithic hunter-gatherers (Paleo-Indians) entered North America from the North Asian Mammoth steppe via the Beringia land bridge, which had formed between northeastern Siberia and western Alaska due to the lowering of sea level during the Last Glacial Maximum (26,000 to 19,000 years ago).” (ibid) Some of us have read about the first Europeans to reach our shores. “In 986 Norsemen settled Greenland and Bjarni Henolfsson sighted the coast of North America but did not land. In 1021 Norse settled briefly in L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland.” (ibid)
Our recent sojourn included our second visit to London. On the first visit, we toured Westminster Abbey. “In the 1040s King Edward (later St Edward the Confessor) established his royal palace by the banks of the river Thames on land known as Thorney Island. Close by was a small Benedictine monastery founded under the patronage of King Edgar and St Dunstan around 960A.D. This monastery Edward chose to re-endow and greatly enlarge, building a large stone church in honour of St Peter the Apostle.” (www.westminster-abbey.org)
As part of this trip, we visited Paris and saw Notre Dame. “Excavations carried out during restoration work in the nineteenth centurye have revealed remains of capitals and mosaics under the forecourt. These elements prove the existence of a religious building from the Roman or Merovingian period, dedicated to Saint Stephen. This earlier church was located under the current forecourt. Not far from the cathedral, the church of Saint Jean le Rond housed the sixthe to the XIIe century a large water tank, used as a baptistery. On the current site of the cathedral choir, the former chapel of the episcopal palace was located, reserved for the bishop. The eastern tip of the island was occupied by a group of buildings reserved for the diocese.” (www.notredamedeparis.fr)
That is a lot of history. I thought about the history of our country and of our faith this morning as I opened one of the hymnals we use in worship. The first hymn in The New Century Hymnal is “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise.” In that hymn, God is referred to as “the Ancient of Days.” In one of my favorite Bible translations, done by James Moffatt, Hon. D.D. (St. Andrews; Oxford), D. Litt., the holy name of God, whose abbreviation is known as the tetragrammaton, is rendered as the Eternal.
Our human history spans thousands of years. We read in our Bible about events from thousands of years ago, about Pharaohs, kings, empires. There are stories of prophets, patriarchs, priests and rabbis from ages long ago. But, our Bible begins with “Genesis 1:1 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth.”
In the U.S.A. we continue to celebrate our 250th ‘birthday.’ Some of us can and will visit the cathedrals of our faith’s past, monuments to the dedication and faithfulness of our ancestors-in-the-faith. I have visited the Alamo and other monasteries of the conquistadors. They are also monuments to our faith and its history.
History is important. History is only part of our faith journey, only the point of origin of that journey. We must also keep our minds and our eyes firmly fixed on the destination of our journey, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Bask in the history of our faith, advance the Kingdom of God, trust God,
Pastor Ray