My art in the New Year

My new computer has this cool app, Art of Touch.  It's a welcome break from so many letters.

My first piece:

 Signed:

 I am thankful for this day.  Epiphany marks the formal end of Christmas and celebrates the revelation of God the Son as a human being in Jesus Christ.  This is not just something we say and move on to other things in the world.  God the Son...a human being.  That's a lot to take.  I'm trying to wrap my mind around bright light.  A light bright enough to lead the way, make straight a path in the darkness.

This Sunday marks the first baptism for the Tobacco Trail Church.  When we participate in baptism we are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ's own forever. Millions of baptisms have come before this one.  Many, I presume, will come after.  And yet even with so many before and after, I expect to experience a kind of apocalyptic joy like I always do at baptisms.  A kind of in-breaking of the Kingdom that leaves me standing in awe.  One definition of apocalyptic is that it prophetically forecasts the ultimate destiny of the world.  In the Christian world, contrary to what you might have thought or heard, Apocalypse is when God sets everything right.  That happened in large part at the Cross of Christ.  That will happen again at that Omega time or End time.

 One of the prayers we will chant to make ready for the newly baptized:

There is one Body and one Spirit;

There is one hope in God's call to us;

One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism:

One God and Father of all

 That sounds like getting it right.

Come and see.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

10 o'clock in the morning 

 New Hope Camp and Conference Center 

4805 Highway 86 Chapel Hill, NC 27514