Sunday (1/25) Service Cancelled

Dear church,

This is now the second week in a row we are having to cancel our worship service due to snow. Lord willing, next week we will be able to gather and worship in person.

Our annual business meeting will be on 2/1, with a snow date set for 2/8.

Times like these are frustrating, but they also provide us an occasion to reflect, and so I would like to offer a few reflections, encouragements, and exhortations for us all.

First, this is a good opportunity to reflect on what we will be missing this Sunday. We are missing the gathering of the saints of God to worship Him. The word “church” means “assembly,” and the most basic things assemblies do is assemble! Moreover, this is the great end for which we are saved – the people of God gathered together worshipping Him. The gathered worship service is in a real way a foretaste of eternity. We are missing what we are made for. (Read Hebrews 12:22-29).

So, if you miss it – good! There is no substitute. Let this help us long not only for a return to 1290 Minesite Rd, but for Christ to return and gather us to Himself.

Second, this is an occasion to ask – why does God send snow? I cannot pry into the depths of providence to say why God sends a particular snowstorm, but I think we can give some answers. God delights in what He has made, even in snow. He delights in the soft fluffy covering made from tiny, sharp crystals. He delights in the wind that blows and builds drifts like dunes in Pennsylvania of all places. And He delights in the way snow defamiliarizes the world to make us see it with new eyes.

But in Scripture we also see that God uses snow to teach us spiritual truths. In Isaiah 1:18 we read this great promise:

Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD:
though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.

We are stained by our sins the color of blood (see Isaiah 1:15). But the wonderful promise (given by God Himself, “says the LORD”) is that we can be cleansed and purified. Made white as wool, white as snow. One of the reasons God sends snow is to teach us about the gospel and how God can make us clean.

Isaiah 1 doesn’t tell us how this happens, for that we look to Isaiah 53 – the suffering servant who sheds His own blood for the sins of His people and makes them to be counted righteous. (Read Isaiah 53).

Third, in this unusual circumstance in which we have been prevented from gathering for two weeks in a row, let me encourage you to practice regular family worship. We have a whole page dedicated to resources to help you on our website. But the basic pattern is clear: read together, sing together, pray together. So why not read Isaiah 1, sing “How Great Thou Art,” and pray together (for the your family, our church, our missionaries, our community, and the world).

Here’s how regular family worship looks in my household. Since we have such littles, this may be more helpful to the parents out in our congregation. At dinnertime we go over a number of different elements, all of which rotate weekly:

• Bible memory verse (one for each letter of the alphabet).
• Book of the Bible (big picture/main point).
• Attribute of God.
• New City Catechism question.
• Article of the Apostle’s Creed.
• Hymn (just the first verse).

That may sound like a lot, but each of those is very short and so the whole process takes around 10 minutes. At bedtime we do our Bible reading and prayer.

You may have noticed that we do these things at established time, that is because we find it much easier if we attach them to daily habits that we do every day, like dinner and bed. The goal is to consistently bring God into the conversation of our family and learn the faith together.

Fourth, and finally, let me exhort you to commit to attending Wednesday night Bible study and prayer. In God’s providence, Sunday’s have been snowy, but Wednesday was all clear. We gather each week to open up God’s word together and seek Him in prayer. Lord willing, we will meet next Sunday; Lord willing, I will see many of you on Wednesday!

In Him,

Pastor Taylor