UPDATES

Hopefully all of us have returned safe and sound from our respective festival sites. I have heard many a wonderful account of how so many of you were blessed with what you experienced both in the way of messages and practical learning experiences that arose in your daily experiences of practicing a millenial mind and heart set.

As a festival coordinator, I am winding down festival work over the next two weeks. Even though the messages are over, the music is sung and the lessons are learned; there are always department head reports to review, surveys to analyze, reports to be sent in, and articles to write. 

Next week, I start to focus on the World News & Prophecy Seminar Season as I hope to offer several new presentations this year. I hope to offer those presentations to our own congregations.

As always, my first focus is towards the welfare of our own members in our circuit. Please know that I am always a phone call away and would be more than happy to visit with you. It need not be an emergency or something "big."  Often it is nice to travel over smooth stones together before those rough roads of life come along.  So your call---to my line.

REMINDERS

1) Young Adults Bible Study in San Diego this week at 12:30 p.m. Please arrive a little early!     

2) Our video series on the Tabernacle & the 1st &  2nd Temples begins in Redlands on October 20th & in San Diego on October 28th.

3) The Blessing of the Children in San Diego will be during the 1st portion of services this week.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

The festival experience for 2007 is now behind us. We have traveled down the road of God's plan from the New Testament Passover up to the 8th Day of the Feast. It has been a journey.  Perhaps the verse that best sums up the festival learning experience is discovered in John 16:33 as Christ states, ""These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."                                                    

Let's seize upon that proclomation and allow it to be our guiding light as we now move into our ordinary lives that have been called for extraordinary purposes to glorify God and His Christ in all we do---be it in thought, word or deed.  While the New Testament Passover 2008 is 1/2 year away, we do not need to worry about walking in the dark. The light is in us. By the presence of God's Spirit dwelling in us, we literally have the Spirit of Christ dwelling is us. Thus the feast days are not merely events, but their meaning is existent in us day by day----for as Paul so emphatically reminds us "the festivals are a shadow of things to come, but Christ is the substance (Colossians 2:17)".  In that sense, we no longer have to travel from pillar to post in some state of worry or panic as to whether we are able to make it, but rather we realize that our Heavenly Father has allowed Christ to set up shop in our lives and our hearts that He now defines as His temple (1 Corinthians 3:17).  Therefore let us move into October, November, December, January, February and March not afraid of the dark, but rather as "keepers of the light" with the confidence that whatever good work God has started in us that He will see it through (Philippians 1:6-7) for it is not about whether we "can make it" (We can't!), but it is about what He is accomplishing with, by and through you as "it is God, who works in you both to will and do for His good pleasure (Philippians 1:13)."  Rather than measure the months till the next festival season, let us be about our Father's business by measuring ourselves in accordance with the fullness of our Savior, High Priest and Elder Brother-----Jesus Christ (Ephesians 4:13).   The calendar of faith always turns quicker than the calendar of fear----and before you know it---yes---it will be time, once again,  to rehearse the saving acts of God through Christ as given life in the fullness of Holy Day expression. The question is which calendar do we have hanging up on the walls of our heart?

A Special Sabbath blessing from our household to yours,

Robin & Susan