TMG
Dear Crossroads Family,
We’ll have a good time of worship this Sunday morning at 10:00 at the Community Center (200 N. Ash Street) in Nevada. I hope you’ll join us there! This will be the first Sunday of Advent, so our worship service will also have a Christmas flavor to it as we anticipate the celebration of the birth of Christ. Use the doors at the southeast corner of the building that enter directly into the classroom wing of the Community Center. If you’re not able to be with us in person this Sunday, remember that the sermon (from Genesis 15) will be available on the Crossroads Facebook page, and also on the Tom Rea YouTube channel.
Don’t forget about “Leftover Friendsgiving” for Crossroads youth and their friends this coming Wednesday, December 1, at 6:30 pm at the Rods’ house, *contact us for location*. Bring a friend and come for good food, fellowship, fun, and encouragement!
Thanks to everyone who contributed to such an enjoyable and delicious Thanksgiving dinner last Sunday!
Thanks for keeping each other in prayer during this season of the year. Please continue to pray for Liz’s grandfather (heart issues), for Joe Stanfield (needing hip replacement surgery), and please pray for Mark Mooneyham’s sister Denise (battling illness in California). Let’s pray for the Crossroads family and for those in our circles of relationships who are dear to us ! Please pray for spiritual renewal in our lives and in our community! Thank you!
Bart Larson is an author, photographer, chaplain, and long-time friend of mine who lives in Westphalia, Missouri (near Jefferson City). He sent these thoughts this week following a hike at Painted Rock Conservation Area, near his home. I thought they would encourage you as they did me. (You can view more of Bart’s photography, and learn more about his book Hope in the Dark at http://www.gracereflections.com).
You have probably heard that the world’s population is nearing 8 billion people. What’s amazing is that God knows everyone by name, even you!…even me…and Jesus said that God has even numbered the very hairs on our head. We cannot comprehend such a God who cares for such seemingly small details. Neither can we comprehend a God who could create a universe so big that astronomers now calculate that the number of stars in our universe may be comparable to the number of grains of sand on the earth.
Hiking through all the fallen leaves on the ground today at Painted Rock, I was thinking how amazing God’s creation is. There is no way that evolution could possibly explain how or why trees shed their leaves, and then when spring comes they miraculously grow brand new leaves, each with incredible detail, with photosynthesis, chlorophyll, and the means of siphoning moisture from the ground 20′,30′ or 40′ feet up to very top of each tree. Anyone who could believe all this complexity occurred by random chance has far greater faith than I do. I simply don’t have enough faith to be an atheist. Even renowned scientists such as Albert Einstein believed there had to be a creator God. C.S. Lewis, one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, thought history would one day look upon evolution as the fairy tale of all fairy tales. As someone once said, to believe in evolution is comparable to believing that a tornado could go through a junkyard and by random chance make a Boeing 747 airplane.
I hope you offer a word of thanks to God for the beauty of His creation! … and I thank God for each of you!
I thank God for each of you in the Crossroads Family! I hope to see many of you this Sunday!
— Tom
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