This Lord’s Day, we are celebrating our 40th birthday as a congregation. Forty years is a biblical generation, and since God promises His covenant mercy to a thousand generations, we still have 999 to go. But of course you must realize that the promise to a thousand generations is a promise offered to each generation, which means that we never have to worry about His kindness to us expiring, like a lease.
On such an occasion as this, and as we look forward to what God will be doing in the years to come, one principal response must be gratitude.
First, we are grateful enough that we are still here. There were many opportunities for this church to blow up, and we haven’t. This is entirely owing to the mercies of God.
We are grateful for the quantitative growth God has bestowed on us. Our attendance this year is significantly higher than it was this time last year, and last year was significantly higher than the year before.
In the third place, we are grateful for the qualitative growth that God has bestowed on our entire community. From Logos School to New St. Andrews College, and from NSA to our sister congregation at Trinity, and from there to all the burgeoning ministries that so many of you are involved in, we thank the Lord. And in the community, we have a publishing house, movie studios, online education options, and more. A tremendous amount of good is being done, and God is to be thanked.
Fourth, we are grateful to God for our friends, around the country and around the world. Through various means, God has privileged us with countless relationships with many saints who are engaged in the same work as we are.
Fifth, we thank the Lord for our enemies . . . bless their hearts. They keep trying, they keep over-reaching, they keep taunting. If they keep their food mixer going much longer, they are going to turn into a meringue. Just as we thank God for the caliber of our friends, so also we thank Him for the caliber of our adversaries.
We also thank God for a congregation of saints who don’t get flustered when the controversy that the Lord told us to expect arrives, right on schedule. Don’t be amazed, the apostle says, and we are grateful for a congregation which takes things in stride.
And last, we are grateful to be enjoying the fruit of so much reformational work — in education, in worship and liturgy, in our music, in our doctrinal understanding, in our love for one another, and in our love for Jesus Christ. God is good.
One generation past. Further up and further in.
Further up and further in! Blessings!
We, as many others, celebrate with you.
May the High King of heaven keep your families in perfect peace, whose minds have been set on Him these four decades. We thank Him for the good gifts He has measured out to us through the saints in Moscow; Jim Wilson, whose quiet faithfulness somehow nurtured and cultivated that much less quiet faithfulness of his son, who has so nurtured and cultivated countless ones of us. Forty years! How time flies.
“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
Oh wait, sorry. That was G. K. Chesteron, not me, but still, I was thinking the same thing!
OK, here’s one from me:
“Speaking as a friend, how certain are you, that me and your enemies share the same diameter?” (caliber)
What is the caliber of meringue anyway?
But seriously, any good that shines through your congregation comes from God, and the nice thing about that kind of good, is that it is Eternal!
“Fifth, we thank the Lord for our enemies . . . bless their hearts. They keep trying, they keep over-reaching, they keep taunting. If they keep their food mixer going much longer, they are going to turn into a meringue.”
No yolk!
(Lemme ‘splain that pun: meringue is made of egg whites. Just one drop of yolk, and the whites cannot turn into meringue. The humorlessness of our enemies contributes to the fine froth they’re prone to getting into.)