Happy New Year!

We are having a very relaxing vacation. Candy and I went to Trinity Presbyterian Church in Providence, RI yesterday. Pastor David Sherwood gave an excellent message on counting our days (recognizing the brevity and difficulty of this life) as a gateway to learning wisdom. I have been thinking about how Christ had this prefect heavenly perspective - knowing what will last (the Kingdom of God), and being willing to give himself entirely for it in a world where everything is passing away.

Doug Camp read a sermon from John Piper in Exeter encouraging meditation upon the Word of God in the year ahead. If you are looking for a more rigorous Bible reading plan for 2007, Matt Parks has developed one where you read through the Bible twice in one year. It is split into morning and evening readings that take you through six categories of Bible readings. In the morning: Law, History, and Wisdom. In the evening: Prophets, Gospel/Acts, and Epistles. If you don't already have a copy of this, start reading Genesis, Joshua, and Job in the morning, and Isaiah, Matthew, and Romans in the evening. You can pick up the handout at church next Sunday.

Pastor Doug Domin in Concord is encouraging the congregation there to read the Bible and to keep a journal. He is supplying the journals free for anyone in the congregation who will use them. He also promises to make a spaghetti dinner for everyone who will read through the Bible in the next year. A little fact from our Exeter heritage: The first collection we ever took for anything at all was an offering for First Presbyterian Church in Concord about eleven years ago ($350 or so - when we were a group of about twenty meeting in our old family room). Pray that God will bring great glory to His name through the Concord church in the year ahead. God bless you all!