To sign up for the blood drive:
1. Click HERE to sign up online.
2. Visit the FCC FaceBook page and sign up on the Blood Drive event.
3. Call Peck Brennan at 817-925-5304
Tom’s Turn - Reflexive Decency
I’m so sorry to have been ill and to have missed talking (at least by Zoom) and writing with and to you. Many thanks for all the expressions of love and caring. We are better, just still weakened.
I shared this story in one of my daily devotionals in December. I’m sharing it today because I think we need it and I hope it will help.
There was something of a row a month or so ago in North Little Rock, Arkansas. A man put up his Christmas decorations. It was the normal stuff: a sign saying “Joy,” some lights, and a Santa Claus. The only thing unusual is that this Santa was a dark-skinned man. The homeowner later explained it was all about a lesson for his four-year-old daughter.
Well, someone didn’t like it and sent the homeowner a letter. The letter stated that “everyone knows Santa Claus is white – has been for 600 years.” And, just for good measure, the letter invited the homeowner to leave the neighborhood. The letter was anonymous, of course. It has been my experience that the worst among us are cowards in the end.
Now, I could quibble with the facticity of the letter’s claim that Santa Claus is white, “has been for 600 years.” Actually, the real life man the Santa Claus legends are based on was a rather dark-skinned man, Nicholas (or Nikos) of Mira, a bishop of the church in the Middle East, Asia Minor, what we now call Turkey. No Nordic skin-tones there. And he lived in the third century. So I don’t know where the neighborhood racist got “white” or “for 600 years.”
But the important part of what happened in North Little Rock is a love story, a very good story, a story of reflexive decency. When the rest of the neighbors found out about the racist letter they all went out of their way to make the family with the black Santa feel welcome. They made them members of the Neighborhood Association. They dropped in to get acquainted, to bring cookies. One made a sign for the yard, saying, “Love Thy Neighbor - Y’all.”
Racism (and all hate, really), you see, works against God, because it makes those whom God loves not love each other. But the great thing about this story is that love (which IS God!) overcame the works of evil. Light shined brightly in the darkness. People reflexively turned to decency. They broke silence if only long enough to say, “How are you?” And then stopped to listen, really listen.
“Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” “Love your enemies and pray for those who spitefully use you.” “Love one another.” These are always our marching orders.
Friends, there was a lot of un-loving going on in 2020, and it has not abated in 2021. The multiple crises of these days have left us with a mass depression as a nation and as a world. Many a heart is turned in the direction of hatred and anger and spite. But every crisis has a tipping point, a point at which the structure that has propped up the crisis crumbles, and change happens. In that one neighborhood in North Little Rock, Arkansas, the change swung in the direction of love, and hope, and peace, and decency – in the direction of New Life from God.
We decide which direction the change will go. What will you decide?
I’ll see you online next Sunday morning and each weekday at 3:00 p.m. Please remember to share any of our worship, devotionals, Bible studies, and so forth on your social media pages. Share the Good News with your smile – and your mask! To prepare for worship Sunday read Acts 19.1-7.
