Messenger

February’s Messenger
The Pastor’s Message – John S. Naugle

Scale and Perspective

Ever since I announced my diagnosis of prostate cancer, folks have been asking “how are you doing?” or “how do you feel?” I really appreciate each concern. I find myself taking seconds to allow each careful expression to sink in. There is no sense being in a hurry to reply. The large roller coaster emotions have subsided into smaller speed bumps of internal feelings.

There are endless daily tasks and concerns, and for the most part those items are small in scale. It’s raining and so finding my umbrella is a priority. Today’s list of things to do includes an endless number of small things. I’ve been pushing some of the small tasks to the back of the kitchen table.

The large scale considerations have a way of creating their own space and priority. In the Old Testament, the people of these stories are described as living from one large event to another. God intervened into their lives by establishing covenants or contracts. Today when we read the Old Testament, it seems like God was breaking into history quite frequently, but most of the time, people just lived from day to day. But that daily life was enormously influenced by the latest current contract. The Greeks developed a vocabulary to describe their experience of the large scale life changing events verses the passage of time in between these large events. A “crisis” was a huge life changing event, whereas “chronos” describes the time in between, the routine