This coming Sunday is one of my favorite LPC Sundays. Confirmation Sunday.  After eight months of weekly, intense, fun, challenging, rewarding study, seven students from our 2017-2018 Confirmation class – six ninth graders and an eighth grader –  will share statements of faith and lead the congregation in worship.  What joy!

For now I will start with thanks.  To Joe, Carol, Tyler, Casey and others who led the class. To Sunday School teachers and VBS leaders who have loved these seven since they were Angels and Bible Busy Bees. But especially, and particularly with this class, to a group of parents – in every instance – who took seriously their responsibilities as Christian parents. Baptismal promises kept.

As we worship on Sunday (9:45 service – 8:30 and 11:30 services will hear the Word proclaimed from Acts 17 – why not worship early or late but stay or come early to worship with the kids!), we will add our thanks for the many ways God has been so faithful to the students, their families, and the church. It’s going to be a good Sunday!

Among the announcements and notices stuffed into the worship bulletin will be an insert containing the faith statements written by each of the seven students.  They are a gift to us from the kids; a promise to themselves, to God, and to the church by the kids.

This past Tuesday evening, the seven confirmands read their faith statements to the elders gathered for a Session meeting. Then the conversation began, the elders required to satisfy themselves on behalf of the congregation of the students’ commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, their intention to follow Christ as his disciple.  The conversation was good and the vote to receive the seven as full members in the church was an enthusiastic unanimous.

When God’s people declare their faith they are telling themselves and the world who and whose they are.

“A wandering Aramean was my father. And he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, and there he became a nation…” (Deuteronomy 26:5)

“We have this mind among ourselves which is ours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant…” (Philippians 2:5-6)

“I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ our Lord…” (Apostles’ Creed)

“I belong—body and soul, in life and in death—not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ…” (Heidelberg Catechism)

The Confirmation students’ statements of faith vary in length and in poetry, but all are good and represent the students well. Together they are a collage of colors and reflections and things learned and experienced. They are beautiful.

One of the elders at Tuesday’s Session meeting encouraged the students to keep a copy of their faith statements and to return to them from time to time, like an Ebenezer, a reminder that “thus far has God has God helped us” (1 Samuel 7:12).

Sunday will not be the last time the seven Confirmation students will declare their faith. They will do so in what they say and how they live on Monday at school, Tuesday at home, Wednesday with friends, Thursday at Youth Group.  They will write new statements of faith as they prepare for mission trips and study grants.  Those new statements will use different words, reflect new experiences.  But each, in its own way, will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

See you Sunday

Please Note: We have a new address. Please change any bookmarks or favorites to billteague.online

Almost home.  I had made the Bear Tavern cut from Route 202 to Interstate 95 just across the Delaware River in New Jersey.  A quick trip down 95 into Pennsylvania and Route 1, and I’d be in Langhorne.  It had been a great Men’s Retreat at Tuscarora on the Delaware River not far from the Water Gap.  I had gone up and back on the New Jersey side.

As I approached I-95 from Bear Tavern Road, though, there was no I-95.  Oh, yeah. The big project.  Interchanges and overpasses further down the river and a new route – really, the right route – for 1-95 from Pennsylvania to New Jersey. Finally.  But that means that I-95 up near Bear Tavern Road in New Jersey and down to Route 1 in Pennsylvania – and more – is now or soon will be I-295.  They’ve already changed the signs in New Jersey.  And that’s the problem.

Oh, it’s not that I mind a name change. 295 works for me.  It’s the signs. They are really confusing.  As you leave Bear Tavern Road to head home in Langhorne, the sign pointing to the freeway entrance reads “Philadelphia, 295 North.” We locals know that Philadelphia is about 35 miles south of Bear Tavern Road in Ewing Township, New Jersey. It just seems wrong to be getting on I-295 North as you head south toward Philadelphia.

Not to be outdone by their colleagues in New Jersey, when the PennDot crews get around to changing the signs in Pennsylvania, I-295 North, traveling south through New Jersey, will become I-295 West traveling south through Pennsylvania.  South by any other name is south.

This article explains the whole thing as well as any I’ve read.  My suggestion is they call the road from Langhorne to Bear Tavern and beyond “I-295 Clockwise,” and from Bear Tavern and beyond to Langhorne “I-295 Counterclockwise.” I might be less confused.

Pity the poor road sign engineers who work for PennDot or the State of New Jersey.  They have rules they have to follow, and my guess is the rules wouldn’t allow for a clockwise and counterclockwise designation for an interstate highway. I still think it’s a good idea.

Of course, no matter what the road sign says, you’re headed south, not north, when you’re traveling from Bear Tavern Road to Philadelphia.

We live in a culture, a world, where the road crews are changing the signs all the time. Selfishness is rebadged self-reliance, revenge called justice, apathy renamed understanding, grace is luck and love is a lack of conviction.

The highway crews can put post new signs. They can’t move the North Star.  We can play with words, calling our weakness strength and our confusion compassion.  We can’t make love – self-giving, self-denying, long-suffering, always-trusting love – anything other than the still more excellent way to which God in Christ is calling us.

Next time you head towards Bear Tavern Road, don’t believe the signs.  You’re going north. Next time you’re confused or in doubt, have a decision to make or a wrong to confront, don’t take the advice of the pop priests of a shallow culture. Head straight toward the Bright Morning Star (2 Peter 1:3 and Revelation 22:16).

Last month while I was in California, my sister gave me a file folder stuffed full mostly of letters from the past 45 or more years.  It was my mother’s “Bill” folder – my sister has been the guardian of such things since my mother’s death two years ago.  It was a heavy-duty folder recycled from my father’s business. The last additions to the collection are mostly printed emails, but the early items are almost all hand written. They are my letters home. Or at least some of my letters home.  I am not sure of the criteria by which some letters were saved and others not. I suspect there were no criteria.  This letter was save and that one was not.

The oldest letter in the lot was written a week into the first quarter of my freshman year in college. It is among a couple dozen written during those four undergrad years. Continue reading →

The sign at the entrance to the Friends Cemetery near the Meeting House on Maple Avenue asks us to curb our dogs out of respect for those buried there. I appreciate the sentiment, but the dead don’t care.

Now, I think it’s best that we not allow our dogs to run among the graves, leap and catch Frisbees over the top of memorial stones, or do those other things dogs are prone to do when they’re running free.  Out of respect for the grieving who may have come to remember a loved one – out of respect for the memory of those buried in the graveyard – it’s best that we curb our dogs.  But the dead themselves?  They don’t care. Continue reading →

There’s a hole in the middle of the street, and I keep hitting it.  Of course, it is pothole season, but this is not so much a pothole as a mini sinkhole.  You may have hit it driving south on Bellevue half way between the Bella Tori and the church.  You can’t miss the thud.

So, I hit the sinkhole on the way to church, get to church and get busy, and not think about it until I hit it again the next time I am out. I don’t know how many thuds it took before I remembered to steer clear of the mini-sinkhole.  The car will probably need a frontend alignment pretty soon.

We hit potholes and sinkholes on our journeys through life, and sometimes it takes way too many thuds before we learn to steer clear of them. Continue reading →