Title: God's Glory and Our Comfort
Speaker: Rev. Brooks Willet
Scripture: Isaiah 40
Date: October 8th, 2017
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Midweek greetings, Centennial Family. I thought I would change it up this week with a poem and the accompanying texts that inspired it. The quotes below are from a gifted preacher (called by some the Prince of Preachers!) of the nineteenth century named Charles Spurgeon.
Everybody loves alarm clocks, right? Well, sometimes we love to hate them, but that’s not the whole truth! Alarm clocks are all around us, and that’s a good thing. We’ve got the usual ones by our bedsides (phones now!), some have the little living ones (babies), and we all have internal ones (hunger, for instance).
Recently these two verses from Isaiah 42 have been stuck in my head! As I was studying the text of 1 Peter 2:1-10, I discovered that Peter clearly referenced these verses. He says, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9, emphasis added).
How many pinecones do you think a Loblolly Pine produces in one year? Y’all know those pine trees, right? They are the super tall ones you see everywhere in Columbia. It has got to be a ton (perhaps literally).
The hurricane turned tropical storm turned depression has come and gone, and praise God for the minimal damage it has seemed to cause in our neck of the woods! Seeing some of the footage from the coast and other parts of North Carolina stirs me into prayer for physical safety and needs to be met in this week after the storm—when rivers are still rising from all the rain and surge! I hope you will join me in those prayers.
So, I have a map in my office. For those of you who have not stopped by (shame on you, by the way!), it sits on the mantel over the fireplace. Some have called it large, but I prefer to call it the perfect fit. It is perfect because I only had to trim the edges a little bit to gently force it in between the ceiling and the mantel.
As I sat in the dentist’s chair this Monday morning for a scheduled teeth cleaning, I had some time to think. No matter how hard dental hygienists and dentists try, conversations cannot be held while someone has both hands on or in your mouth.
So, for those of you who don’t know, my daughter, Mary Emmaline, is two going on three. And like most two going on three-year olds, she is quite emotional and strong willed. Because of this, she is also a constant source of illustrations for sermons, Bible studies, and Postscripts.