Monday, January 25, 2010


The church service yesterday was very interesting. The First Baptist Church of Temple was destroyed by fire on Tuesday of last week, so the church service was held in the Mayborn Convention Center. There was a big crowd, with a larger attendance than usually seen on a Sunday morning. The service was excellent with a lot of time lamenting the loss of the church building and also a lot of reminiscing about the church sanctuary playing a big role in the lives of the members including; worship services, weddings, funerals, Christmas and Easter pageants and much more.

The pastor emphasized how the terrible tragedy of the fire would bring the church closer together and serve to bond the members. With the attendance and the evidence of outside support this week, he sure seemed to be correct on that point. Whenever there is trouble, people seem to rally to each other’s support and forget their differences. Just in the past couple of weeks much of the world had come to the aid of Haiti. Many folks, who at other times would be rivals, rallied to the support of the church this week. It was announced that the Assembly of God Church was taking an offering to pay the expense of renting the Mayborn Center for our church service. The Methodist Church is offering its facility for our church services until we have something permanent. The Episcopalians brought food to the staff everyday and opened the doors of their facility for our various meetings. Everyone has rallied around to lend their support in the time of tragedy and in a time of need.

Isn’t that the way it is with many other things in life? Siblings may squabble and fight but will defend each other to the death if challenged by an outsider. The same goes with nations. In WWII when Pearl Harbor was bombed by Japan and we were threatened, across the Atlantic, by Hitler the nation rallied to defeat this evil. The US now seems to be united on the issued of defeating terrorism and Bin Laden. Not everyone is completely on board with this last issue, but will be when we experience another direct assault like on 9/11.

One of my favorite movies is, “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” It’s the same theme. The rest of the Universe was threatened by our stupidly on earth for making war and possibly bringing this into space.. The rest of the folks in space sent a spaceman and powerful robot to warn us to cool it or face extinction.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could always have the attitude of being united and helping one another every day? Unfortunately, we need a crisis or external threat to get our attention. Maybe the folks from outer space will do us a favor and invade the earth or we might even discover an asteroid racing toward earth to potentially reduce us to a cinder unless we work together to destroy it. There are things out there as bad as an asteroid or an alien like; hunger, disease, global warming, cultural and religious differences, war and the rapid depletion of earths supply of both water and oil. We sure need something to get our attention before it’s too late. The way things are moving my time on the porch is limited.

2 Comments:

Blogger jeff ludwick said...

Unfortunately you are, as usual, correct again.
What a wonderful movie that was. It used to scare me to death. I think I will see if I can find it in a rental store but it may be only on 35mm film.

On the billboard at the Methodist Church of Eddy yesterday:

"Please pray for our family at 1st Baptist Church in Temple"
Pretty nice I thought.....

11:19 AM  
Blogger Michelle Montgomery Wright said...

As you suggested, everyone will and is pulling together and FBC will be stronger than ever now and for the future. Martin Knox is a great pastor and leader and so are Gary and Doug. I so love to come home and attend services at FBC Temple.

5:41 PM  

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