Pen of the Pastor

Hello. This is my penultimate newsletter article.
OK, you wonder what that word means? “Penultimate”? It is the next to last. Merriam Webster says this; The word ultimate itself comes from the Latin word for “last, final, or farthest.” The pen- part of penultimate is simply the Latin prefix that means “almost,” so the word literally means “almost last.” So the last newsletter article from me to you is September. It is the ultimate one (better be a good one!). The August newsletter article is next to the last. It is the penultimate one. It doesn’t mean this is article is one notch poorer than the last one, it just means this is next to the last one.
So, what does that mean? It means things are shutting down. Hmmm. Things are shutting down. That doesn’t sound particularly energizing. It sounds a little sad. We don’t like it when thing are shutting down. We like it when things are accelerating, “revving up” and moving forward.
We don’t like decrease in income. We certainly don’t like decrease in health! We don’t like the end of things. We like hope, optimism, and continuous growth. Our trouble is with reality. What we like, may not happen. What we don’t like, may well happen.
What shall we do? I think we need to get religion. To put it another way, I think we need to attach ourselves to something more permanent than the experience of “things are shutting down”. St. Paul says it well in Romans chapter 6: Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
Paul is talking about decrease and loss, and Paul welcomes it. Paul welcomes the decrease of death because it results in a glorious increase and gain. God takes death and makes life from it. A very good thing for us to bear in mind when we suffer our various losses and decreases. In our every experience of decrease and loss, we might wonder, and pray, what will God make out of this?
Paul ways it well again in his letter to the Romans. For I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do… Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
The Grace of God does not abandon us to loss and evil, but rescues us to a life of Christ. God is in action again, rescuing us from the loss of death to be blessed. This is the ultimate of God for you and for me. Rescue. Life. Right now we know these gifts of God are coming our way. Our present experience is penultimate to God’s ultimate. The ultimate is grace and this grace is coming to you.
‘Till’ next month,
Pastor Tom