St Helens First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

185 S 12th Street St Helens, Oregon   Phone: 503-397-2151  
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Have you ever had the problem of your computer not co-operating with the plans you have made? Say like you just want to write an article but you cannot seem to get the curser to change – you know the pointing thing- to change on the page to become the line from which all these letters get together to form words. Well, that has been part of my morning today. And by now, your history of reading mystery novels and figuring them out, you must have come up with the deduction, “it must be working now.” And so it is - for now. The more I pondered the problem, the more I wondered just how many other moments in our lives or in ministry for that matter have this same problem. We might know what we would like to have done or said; we can even point out where we think it should start but we struggle to get it to come out right. Even the simplest of tasks can get bogged down between the pointing out of the need - to the getting the right parts together. I do believe that in this new year we are off to a great start with people using their gifts to the glory of God. 
Remember Romans 8:28
“Father God, in the name of Jesus we ask, please help us to continue to get “it” together for the good.”
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In a book of light reading, I have been taking another journey across America this summer. And with the gas prices up, this method of travel suits me fine for now. The book is “One Man’s America” by George F. Will. He “crisscrosses the country to illuminate what it is that makes America distinctive.” 
Ok, so I copied that off the jacket cover- but it is true. And it has been a wonderful journey that has included a great deal of history and insights that I am pleased to receive. One such insight from the chapter, “When War Was the Answer,” is from the quote by a nineteenth-century French scholar Ernest Renan, who defined a nation as a community of shared memory – and shared forgetting. I agree with Mr. Wills’ application of this definition, to the process Europe has gone through to heal relationships after World War II. I can see that this definition would be well suited to describe what the church is in the business of doing. We are gathering as a community with shared memory as to all God has done for us and the wonderful gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. We also are the community which shares in the process of forgetting the moments we have been hurt or offended so that our possibilities in the future are not jeopardized by our past.
Matt. 5:23 Phil 3:12-14
Heavenly Father, help us to remember and forget in ways that please you. 

Pastor Don