The Lament

Sometimes we pray and expect God to answer our prayers. Sometimes we pray and hope God will hear us. Sometimes we don’t even know how to pray.

Fifty people died in a shooting rampage in Orlando early yesterday morning. The twenty-year-old son of Pastor Bill Greiner, the senior pastor of our sister church Eagle Ridge Church of God in Midland, died in a car collision last week, early on Sunday morning. And ten years ago last week, I wrote a blog post in which I tried to process the shooting deaths of seven people across the alley from our apartment in Indianapolis, which came just a month after the deaths of five people from our college in another auto collision.

How do we make sense of the tragedies in our lives? Where is God in all this mess?

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June Youth Update

Summer temperatures have finally arrived! What a beautiful Memorial Day Weekend! It’s the time of the year for graduations, and this year we have four students graduating. They are Elizabeth Dale and Sabrina Torres from Bullock Creek, Tristan Mapes from Midland High, and Brandon Devericks from Windover. They will be honored in Sunday morning worship on June 12 with each of them receiving a gift from the church. Plus, the pastors will be taking them out to dinner at a local restaurant. Congratulations!

State Youth Convention was a great success with the music of Finding Favor, the Worship Leaders – Leo and Megan Flores plus our speaker Marsha Reeder. Everyone had a wonderful time as we worshiped, served, played and were inspired and impacted in our walk with the Lord. Great Weekend!!!

June will be a month of graduation parties, church gatherings and the finishing of the school year. We are still “silently” fundraising for the three young ladies we have attending the International Youth Convention. Keep those bottles/pop cans coming and if you wish to help any of them financially, let us know.

iyc logoWe will depart for San Antonio, Texas for the International Youth Convention on June 30, 2016 from Tri-City Airport and will return on July 7. The theme this year is “One God, One Truth, One Body and One Mission” based on Ephesians 4:4-6 – “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” We will be participating with nationally known speakers, artists, student conferences, service projects, tourist attractions and MORE while staying at the Marriott Rivercenter and Riverwalk. It will be a GREAT week for our students!

High School Sunday School classes continue with Pastor Jerry until July 31. Youth Meetings and GRADS @ Grahams on Sunday nights for the 2015-2016 school year are over for the summer. However, watch for details of events and happenings yet to come through July.

As most people know, Pastor Jerry will be retiring from Youth Ministry in the local church on July 31 to pursue grandchildren, other ministry opportunities and retirement life. Connie will continue to serve in her role as Youth Director for the Michigan Church of God, so we will continue to participate in state youth activities and functions. We will be formally departing from Mt. Haley to pursue other ministry opportunities and allow Mt. Haley to re-invent their youth ministry without the Grahams. We will visit occasionally and always have you in our prayers. PLUS, we have offered to organize and prepare a mission trip for Mt. Haley to Guatemala next February. If so, and you want to go on a mission to Guatemala, registration will be $150 on September 18, 2016 with the total mission costs being $450. (Includes registration and insurance) plus airfare. Our church has been faithful in this mission and we want it to continue for those who want to go. Cost of the house construction will be $6000 and we already have almost half of the funds in the treasury. Praise God and follow your heart to Guatemala.

Parents and church, your prayers, support and encouragement are greatly appreciated and we look forward every week to sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with our students through interaction, study, fellowship and relationship. Thank you for sharing your son or daughter and our congregation for holding the youth up in PRAYER.

Love God, Love People, Live It!

Blessings,

Pastor Jerry

Stained Glass: A Window of Faith

Yesterday afternoon, Tara and I had the opportunity to sing in a “choral evensong,” a formal worship service in which most of the service is sung by a choir and accompanied by a pipe organ. This took place at Trinity Episcopal Church in Bay City, a church where we have sung on several occasions in the past few years. It’s a beautiful historic building with a high vaulted ceiling and wonderful acoustics. Prominent throughout the sanctuary, like many buildings of that period, are several stained glass windows.

I found myself looking up at one of these stained glass windows at the end of this evensong service. We choir members had walked down from the choir loft to the back of the sanctuary, where we sat to listen to the last piece of music from the pipe organ. As I looked up at the stained glass, I was amazed by the beauty of what I saw: not just the picture displayed in the window, but the way the glass shined in the sun. Here is something completely material – a window comprised of many different shapes and colors of glass – that shines with the light of something beyond itself, something immaterial. The beauty of the window cannot be seen completely until the light shines through the glass. Continue reading →