3-16-2019

 Good Morning All,

      Deuteronomy 4:31; “The Lord your God is a merciful God.  He will not abandon you, destroy you, or forget the promise to your ancestors that he swore to keep."

    I remember watching a documentary show a few years ago about the USS Indianapolis.  This was an amazing story.  The USS Indianapolis was the ship which delivered the enriched uranium for the first atomic bomb.  It mission was very secret.  As it was returning, it was sunk by a Japanese submarine.  The return of the ship back to port was either overlooked or not listed but the men from the ship were in the water for three and a half days before they were spotted by a plane.  There were almost 1200 men on the ship when it sunk only about three hundred survived to be rescued.  Dehydration, salt poisoning and sharks got most of the rest.  There is some debate as to how many the sharks actually killed or if they were just taking the bodies of those sailors who had died but either way it was a horrific event.

    They interviewed one of the survivors during the show.  He stated that the worst part of the whole experience was not the three and a half days wait.  It was the waiting for your turn to be rescued.  Some were pulled out by plane and some were rescued by boat.  All the time the sharks were circling and still claiming victims.  He said that was the loneliest he had ever felt.  He said it felt like a pit in his stomach that just got bigger.  For a while, he probably felt like and abandoned orphan.

     Our verse is part of the teachings that Moses gave to the second generation of Israelites.  These were the ones who would enter the Promised Land and conquer it.  He was encouraging them to remember who was truly leading them and keeping them safe.

    The vast majority of us will never experience what the survivors of the USS Indianapolis did.  Yet in many ways, we do.  The devil does everything in his power to separate you from God’s love; the devil is trying to make you feel God has abandoned you.  He wants to torment you and use your pain for his entertainment.  The devil delights in human suffering.  So, whether it is an illness or surgery that takes longer to recover from than we planned on or whether it is a relationship in our family that seems to be more pain than joy.  It may be the pain of job uncertainty, weather uncertainty or the stresses of changes at school.  It may just be the worry of getting older but not always feeling like it is better.  We all face lots of times when the devil seeks to torpedo us and send in the sharks. 

    Yet through it all, we are never alone; we always have the companionship of the Holy Spirit.  The actual Greek is Paraclete. We don’t have a really good word to translate to it.  It roughly means “the one who travels alongside”.  We use Helper, Advocate and my favorite Comforter as ways to describe this title or action.  The Spirit is our Comforter because he reminds us of all that Jesus said.  The Spirit brings us to faith and then supplies, strengthens, renews and refreshes that faith.  Jesus promised to never leave us as orphans and we never are.  So, the next time the devil whispers to you, tell him to take a hike for you have the Holy Spirit to guard and protect you.

 Dear Father in heaven, we give you thanks for the adoption as sons and for not leaving us as orphans who must find their own way.  Father we find all our comfort and hope in you; keep us this day from all sin and hold us close to your heart as a loving father cradles his dear child.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret