Monday, May 30, 2005
Sad News
Dear church family,
It is with great sadness that I report to you that Sam Klasing was killed in the crash of his small experimental plane yesterday - Sunday, May 29. Sam had built this plane from a kit and had flown it two or three times. Eyewitnesses said they saw the plane, which had been practicing take-offs and landings, suddenly fall out of the sky into a gravel pit, but no one saw the impact. Apparently Sam died instantly.
We don't yet know about services, but are guessing that they will be this weekend. I believe Tobias in Kettering will be handling the arrangements.
I know we will all support Nancy and the boys - Kevin and David - and Sam's brother Don, as they walk this sad road together.
David VanDenburgh
It is with great sadness that I report to you that Sam Klasing was killed in the crash of his small experimental plane yesterday - Sunday, May 29. Sam had built this plane from a kit and had flown it two or three times. Eyewitnesses said they saw the plane, which had been practicing take-offs and landings, suddenly fall out of the sky into a gravel pit, but no one saw the impact. Apparently Sam died instantly.
We don't yet know about services, but are guessing that they will be this weekend. I believe Tobias in Kettering will be handling the arrangements.
I know we will all support Nancy and the boys - Kevin and David - and Sam's brother Don, as they walk this sad road together.
David VanDenburgh
Thursday, May 05, 2005
My Talk for the National Day of Prayer Service 2005
National Day of Prayer 2005
Buildings are built on foundations. Lives – and nations – are built on values.
This nation was built on values – and the founders were not shy about telling the world what those values were on which they were building: “certain inalienable rights”, “life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness”, “all men created equal”, “domestic tranquility”,
They regarded all human beings as having been created by a Creator, from whom they received certain characteristics and qualities, and who gave them certain rights – the right to life, the right to liberty, and the right to pursue what made them happy.
They believed it was the role of government to recognize and protect these individual God-given rights. They designed a government that would do that and they designed protections that would prevent the government from infringing on those rights.
For example, they insured that every citizen had the right to be religious in whatever way he or she decided was right – even if that meant not being religious at all. They wanted no laws that would punish a person for not being religious in the way that other people – even the vast majority of people – thought he should. This was meant to encourage the expression of religion, whatever one’s religion was. Unfortunately, the descendants of the Founders have understood this constitutional guarantee as inhibiting rather than encouraging religion so they have used it to ban Nativity displays on public property, challenge “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, and suggest that “In God We Trust” should be removed from our currency. They have forgotten – or never understood – the value on which the law was built and which it was designed to protect.
Just last week I sat where you are sitting today and heard a distinguished surgeon, Dr. Ben Carson, remind our congregation that other nations before us have forgotten their bedrock values. He talked of ancient nations like Egypt and Greece and Rome (that believed themselves to be the superpowers of their worlds), that forgot about values and gave all their attention to pleasure, to sports, to entertainments, to lavish lifestyles, to pursuing whatever felt good, and so drifted away from their founding values into immorality, and laziness, and greed, and arrogance. They exchanged the values of justice and opportunity and hard-work and thrift and civility, for the pleasures of selfishness. And their nations decayed away and became ruins of civilization.
The National Day of Prayer is not an opportunity to force religion on those that don’t want it. It’s not an effort by Christians to impose Christianity on non-Christians. It’s not a chance for fundamentalists to advance their agenda.
The National Day of Prayer is a day for all people who believe that this nation was founded on bedrock values that derived their value from the Creator, to remember the Creator – and to ask him, humbly, with repentance and confession for our own failures to live by these values, to turn the hearts of the people of this nation toward Him from whom all blessings flow.
A building cannot survive the storms without a foundation. A nation cannot long survive without values that have ultimate value. The pursuit of pleasure, the right of might, the love of money, contempt for civility, knowledge without wisdom, technology without spirituality, freedom without responsibility, choices without consequences – these are not values that will sustain a nation for long. Unless this nation remembers the One who gives values value, it will soon take its place in the dust of history alongside Egypt, Greece, Rome and all the other “superpowers” that cut themselves loose from their core values and lost all sense of responsibility to One higher and holier than themselves
Today is a day for each of us to become personally and individually committed to living lives built on godly values.
Today is a day for each of us to become personally committed to praying for those in positions of decision-making power in our nation that they will seek wisdom from above as they make those decisions, and that they will have the courage to decide by what is right rather than by what is popular.
Today is a day for each of us to commit ourselves to pray – not just today but every day – that God will bless this nation – not with prosperity or power or even with peace – but with the courage to hold certain truths as “self-evident” and certain rights as “inalienable” and “endowed by their Creator”, and to do the Right as God gives us grace to see what is right.
Today is a day for each of us to become a prayer-team of one, to humbly ask the almighty God to shed his grace upon all the peoples of the earth, that all people might know the Truth that will truly set them free.
Buildings are built on foundations. Lives – and nations – are built on values.
This nation was built on values – and the founders were not shy about telling the world what those values were on which they were building: “certain inalienable rights”, “life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness”, “all men created equal”, “domestic tranquility”,
They regarded all human beings as having been created by a Creator, from whom they received certain characteristics and qualities, and who gave them certain rights – the right to life, the right to liberty, and the right to pursue what made them happy.
They believed it was the role of government to recognize and protect these individual God-given rights. They designed a government that would do that and they designed protections that would prevent the government from infringing on those rights.
For example, they insured that every citizen had the right to be religious in whatever way he or she decided was right – even if that meant not being religious at all. They wanted no laws that would punish a person for not being religious in the way that other people – even the vast majority of people – thought he should. This was meant to encourage the expression of religion, whatever one’s religion was. Unfortunately, the descendants of the Founders have understood this constitutional guarantee as inhibiting rather than encouraging religion so they have used it to ban Nativity displays on public property, challenge “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, and suggest that “In God We Trust” should be removed from our currency. They have forgotten – or never understood – the value on which the law was built and which it was designed to protect.
Just last week I sat where you are sitting today and heard a distinguished surgeon, Dr. Ben Carson, remind our congregation that other nations before us have forgotten their bedrock values. He talked of ancient nations like Egypt and Greece and Rome (that believed themselves to be the superpowers of their worlds), that forgot about values and gave all their attention to pleasure, to sports, to entertainments, to lavish lifestyles, to pursuing whatever felt good, and so drifted away from their founding values into immorality, and laziness, and greed, and arrogance. They exchanged the values of justice and opportunity and hard-work and thrift and civility, for the pleasures of selfishness. And their nations decayed away and became ruins of civilization.
The National Day of Prayer is not an opportunity to force religion on those that don’t want it. It’s not an effort by Christians to impose Christianity on non-Christians. It’s not a chance for fundamentalists to advance their agenda.
The National Day of Prayer is a day for all people who believe that this nation was founded on bedrock values that derived their value from the Creator, to remember the Creator – and to ask him, humbly, with repentance and confession for our own failures to live by these values, to turn the hearts of the people of this nation toward Him from whom all blessings flow.
A building cannot survive the storms without a foundation. A nation cannot long survive without values that have ultimate value. The pursuit of pleasure, the right of might, the love of money, contempt for civility, knowledge without wisdom, technology without spirituality, freedom without responsibility, choices without consequences – these are not values that will sustain a nation for long. Unless this nation remembers the One who gives values value, it will soon take its place in the dust of history alongside Egypt, Greece, Rome and all the other “superpowers” that cut themselves loose from their core values and lost all sense of responsibility to One higher and holier than themselves
Today is a day for each of us to become personally and individually committed to living lives built on godly values.
Today is a day for each of us to become personally committed to praying for those in positions of decision-making power in our nation that they will seek wisdom from above as they make those decisions, and that they will have the courage to decide by what is right rather than by what is popular.
Today is a day for each of us to commit ourselves to pray – not just today but every day – that God will bless this nation – not with prosperity or power or even with peace – but with the courage to hold certain truths as “self-evident” and certain rights as “inalienable” and “endowed by their Creator”, and to do the Right as God gives us grace to see what is right.
Today is a day for each of us to become a prayer-team of one, to humbly ask the almighty God to shed his grace upon all the peoples of the earth, that all people might know the Truth that will truly set them free.
