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Village SDA Church

Ron Kelly

Gray Matters

Lord, as we come to the end of this year, I'm praying again, Lord, send us your Spirit most of all.

Give us eyes to see as heaven sees, give us the focus, the joy that heaven has, the deep bondedness, the brotherhood, the sisterhood, the unity.

I'm praying, Lord, that you would send us the people.

Send them, Lord, in any form and fashion that you so desire to send them new souls, Lord, give us eyes for people.

You know from the very beginning of this pandemic when everyone was tempted to just hunker down and close up shop, it was clear, Lord, that your mission was needed now, then and now, more than ever.

And I'm praying now, Lord, give us insight to understand what that stewardship looks like.

I'm praying, Lord, send us a heart for a lost world.

And I'm praying also for the vision and the organization.

Many people well-connected who can move like an army and strike terror in the hearts of the enemy because the captain of the host is in their midst.

Now bless us Lord as I take up this subject of morning gray matters and I pray that you'll bless us as a people on these last days of 2020.

I was in Florida on the site visit with our principal, school board chair, and 1 of our ministerial interns, Martin Ramirez.

And also I want to suggest if you come across something good that you think is credible, don't send it to me on Facebook because I'm not there, but send it to me.

I'm going to crowd resource my sermon this morning and I'm very blessed when people don't send me stuff that isn't good, but when you come across something that looks credible and you think it would bless others, send it to me.

I might use it, I might not use it, but having it to look at is a benefit to me, and why not take advantage of our networking?

So, I was sent a meme, or it was read to me, then it was sent to me via text, and I have searched it out to find out where it started.

It started with a man named Ted Bauer, who lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

And he said he got this from his girlfriend's grandmother, who was 86 years old.

If so, I hope it blesses you, challenges you, comforts you, maybe unnerves you just a little bit.

Hard to discern between what's real and what's just simple panic and hysteria.

For a small amount of perspective at this moment, imagine you were born in 1900.

On your 14th birthday, World War I starts and ends on your 18th birthday.

Later in the year, a Spanish flu epidemic hits the planet and runs until your 20th birthday.

50 million people die from it in those 2 years.

On your 29th birthday, the Great Depression begins.

The country nearly collapses along with the world economy.

On your 41st birthday, the United States is fully pulled into World War II, and between your 39th and 45th birthday, 75 million people will perish in the war.

Smallpox was epidemic until you were in your 40s, as it killed 300 million people during your lifetime.

At 50, the Korean War starts, 5 million perish.

From your birth until you were 55, you dealt with the fear of polio epidemics each summer.

You experienced friends and family contracting polio and being paralyzed and or dying.

At 55, the Vietnam War begins and doesn't end.

At 65, your Vietnam War begins and doesn't end for 20 years.

During the Cold War, you live each day with the fear of nuclear annihilation.

On your 62nd birthday, you have the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tipping point in the Cold War.

Life on our planet, as we know it, almost ended.

And when you turn 75, the Vietnam War finally ends.

Think of everyone on the planet born in 1900.

When you were a kid in 19 fill in the blank, you didn't even think your 85-year-old grandparent understood how hard school was, and how mean that kid in your class was.

Yet they survived through everything listed above.

Perspective is an amazing art, refined and enlightening as time goes on.

Your parents and or grandparents were called to endure some or all, probably not all, of the above and you're called to stay home and sit on your couch.

Now when I was a boy in probably the eighth grade my seventh day of school teacher showed us a video.

It was a video about people that were living in a nursing home.

I have very high esteem for this individual.

I don't know how much of it he previewed.

If he previewed it, he wasn't prepared for how it hit us.

At the very end of the video, 2 people were escaping from the nursing home in their wheelchairs.

They were rolling down some country road as fast as they could go with more vigor than most people in the nursing home have.

And in the background, very distinctly, was the Hallelujah Chorus that was playing.

We all thought that was a hoot, And we laughed and we laughed and we laughed.

My teacher was quite troubled by it, I think for 2 reasons.

Number 1 was that the Hallelujah Chorus is a completely spiritual song set to truly bring glory to God, not illicit comedy at old people escaping from the nursing home.

Number 2, I could guess that he was troubled by the overall portrayal of dynamics of the youth and the aging.

This morning I want to bring to your attention that as we live on the cusp of eternity and the soon return of Jesus, the devil has sought to create a very interesting but not completely new element of how the generations relate to each other.

And so at the very moment in time when we need to hold the seniors in our midst, the men and women of experience, at the very time when they need to be held up the most for understanding how to run this gauntlet of temptation, we find ourselves in a situation where they have been marginalized and their voices the least.

So this morning I want to show you something from the Christmas story and I want to show you something from the Scriptures that modern society has passed by.

The technical revolution has left many of our seniors, not all, I'm surprised sometimes, but the technical revolution has left many of our seniors looking irrelevant, out of touch, and out of date, when the fact of the matter is that there is no educator like life and there is nothing new under the sun.

So at this moment in time, as we anticipate the second advent, I think it's important for you to understand the imperativeness and the role of the seniors in the first advent.

So take your Bibles this morning, open them up to the book of Luke.

In the book of Luke we have 2 very interesting narratives that both involve older people.

In Luke chapter 1, verses 5 and onward, we have the story of John the Baptist.

Now, John the Baptist has a very unique beginning in that he, like the other children of promise made to Abraham, and then to Isaac and Rebekah, and then to Jacob, all of these people are married to barren women.

Now we don't know, according to medical science, whether or not the barrenness was in the bosom of the man or the woman.

Unfortunately, in the age of Abraham and the patriarchs, it was attributable to the woman.

While we cannot ascertain where the barrenness was, we know that Abraham couldn't have a baby, or at least it appeared that way.

Of course, Abraham has a baby, so in this case the barrenness is in the experience of Sarah.

But this dynamic of children as miracles in one's old age is a component that repeats itself throughout scripture.

When we come down to the forerunner of Christ, we have an old man.

He is of the tribe that will offer priestly service of Levi in the temple.

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Gray Matters

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