Wednesday Sermon at Berean Seventh-day Adventist Church: Repost from homemadegospel.org

The Berean Community Service banquet. Elder Irene Bowden is the dark haired lady in red at far right.

The Wednesday night prayer meeting at Berean Seventh-day Adventist Church, Atlanta, featured guest speaker Pastor Darrell A. Palmes. In the course of his talk he briefly mentioned how much hard work is involved in being a pastor. My perception is that most do work hard, but Pastor Palmes probably works harder. Here is a link to a brief bio of the pastor. Pastor Humphreys described Pastor Palmes as being “all over the internet,” and I have found this to be quite true.
Wednesday nights usually cap a hard day’s work at the church food pantry, but it is closed until January 6 for the holidays. Instead of working, 35 Community Service volunteers commuted to the remote, but thriving, intersection of Barret Parkway and I-75 in order to compromise the profitability of a Golden Corral. Barret Parkway is incredibly built-up at this location. The road has it’s own Wikipedia article, which notes that the thriving thoroughfare remains under local, as opposed to state or federal control. It is named for the politician whose (surprise!) family land was partially sold for the road’s right of way. Corruption is today’s homemadegospel theme, as you may learn on the post previous to this one.

Elder Irene Bowden is about to step down as director of Berean’s Community Services. I think she told me that she was 87 years old, but her virtuous lifestyle seems to have forestalled any trace of this. She is a retired math teacher. My friend Ms. Barnes referred to her as “that Saint.” I am given to hyperbole, but Ms. Barnes is always strictly accurate in her statements. I callously commented on the saltiness of the bourbon chicken I had selected to Elder Bowden. I deeply regret this, for she was the hostess of today’s event. I took my camera on the lengthy commute. A convoy of two church buses ferried the group. Interstate 75 was the path to the restaurant, but we took scenic Route 41 back into Atlanta in order to avoid rush hour traffic. The dense development on these corridors was a thrill for me to observe, as it is rare when I venture beyond the pathways that MARTA serves. Below are two images of local significance.



I have been hearing about “The Big Chicken” ever since I moved to Atlanta about 8 years ago. 100,000 cars a day probably drive past it, so traffic reporters love to use it as a reference marker. This shot makes it look two-dimensional, but in plan it is really a triangle, like a lopped-off cousin to the “Trylon” at the 1939 World’s Fair. KFC has revamped most of their stores with a new look, but they probably have sense enough not to mess with this one.

The church bus drove by Dobbins Air Reserve Base, fabled for it’s long association with Martin Marietta (now called Lockheed Martin). B-29’s were produced here from 1943 until the end of the war, A B-29 was utilized to drop the first “big one.” My neighbor on the bus asked me if the picture I took of the B-29 they had on roadside display turned out OK. I replied that it would make for a lousy image, as it was ridiculously horizontal. The clouds today, however, were very nice.



As I was showing this image to my neighbor, some gigantic military transport plane swooped over the bus. She quickly scented this quarry, but, being generally inept at everything, I could not readjust the camera to take a picture until the plane was half a mile away. I must plaster the image here anyway, as it will give a pretext to digress in order to mention country performer Boxcar Willie, who was in the Air Force from 1949 until 1976, and served as a flight engineer on planes ranging from B-29’s to gigantic cargo planes like the one seen below. The C-130 “Hercules” transport was produced by Martin Marietta for 50 years. This kind of longevity is similar to that of the B-52, a plane not produced here. The musical group of that name is, however, a product of Georgia,



SOME TIMELY ADVICE FROM PASTOR PALMES

Projected song lyrics are rare on Wednesday nights, so it was a relief when the first hymn of the evening was one that was actually in the hymnal: “All Hail the Power of Jesus Name.” The lyrics I just looked up on Hymnary.org rhyme “all” with “fall” in three verses and with “call” in a fourth verse. This is some kind of update. The Adventist Hymnal, instead of using “call” as a fallback rhyme for “all,” uses the phrase “terrestrial ball.” This usage is so quaint and obsolete that I hope it never gets updated. It allows the singer to experience “time travel.”

Pastor Palmes mentioned that the Berean pastoral staff had just been on retreat in Rome, Georgia, presumably at the WinShape Retreat. This was founded in 1982 by S. Truett Cathy, the father of Chick-fil-a. He was a Christian for sure, but many would claim that his chain is closed on the wrong day (the first, not the seventh).

Pastor’s sermon, “There’s Still Time,” commenced with a citation of Proverbs chapter 6, verses 9-11, as stated in the NIV. My much more poetic King James begins these verses as follows: “How long will thou sleep, O sluggard?” Verse 6 was used by myself as the basis of the song “Go to the Ant,” one I like, but apparently  very few others do. One person downloaded an mp3 from SoundCloud, maybe a wife who intended to play it to her lazy husband. Pastor Palmes’s references were about making the best use of the time God grants you.

The pastor accused us of “slacking off the accelerator” during the holiday season. Instead of working out, we plan on eating, a plan that starts with Halloween candy, drives through Thanksgiving turkey, and ends in Yuletide excess. We hope that at 11:59 on December 31, everything will become miraculously better. But this is no way to look at it, for the right time to get something done is right now (my citation: II Corinthians 6:2: “…now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”) God may be waiting for you to make a move, before He jumps in with an assist.

Something really weird overcame this Wikimedia image while scaling it down, but I find the transformation interesting.

The pastor made three points about the wise uses of time. If these points seem indistinct, the writer is at fault, and not the preacher.

• YOU ARE CALLED TO SOMETHING GREATER. God is not waiting on the new year to bless you. He wants to bless you today. It is therefore urgent that you discover your “calling” ASAP! He has one for you, and it is already planned out. Pastor Palmes quoted  Jeremiah 1:5: “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee.”
• YOU CANNOT PRESS SOME SPIRITUAL “RESET” BUTTON. You cannot go on sinning, thinking that at some future point things will instantly aright themselves. (This reminded me of some overlords from the early Christian era, usually Germanic, usually Arians, who would put off baptism until they were on their deathbed. They were great sinners. St. Augustine had something to say about this phenomenon as well.) You may hate the way that things are at present, but not make any move toward improvement. The pastor provided two quotes. 1: “The Lord helps those who help themselves,” a piece of folk wisdom not found in the Bible. 2: “Faith without works is dead,” definitely found in the Bible, but not entirely to Martin Luther’s liking. To summarize this point- another non scriptural citation by myself: “carpe diem!”
• YOU DON”T KNOW WHAT TOMORROW WILL BRING. The pastor here restated the necessity to change now, and not later. Know your “calling,” and get to know Jesus. He will “enlarge your territory.” (This citation always reminds me of the “Prayer of Jabez” craze, which I regarded as focused on material, as opposed to spiritual enlargement. The pastor may be too young to have such associations poisoning his mind.)

The remarks were nearly concluded. My slangy, Message Bible style distillation of the talk would be “Get off the Stick and Do Something!” The pastor suggested that we get on YouTube and learn how to play the piano. This “struck a chord” with me, but I fear my learning curve vis a vis the piano peaked when I was 12 years old. Pastor Palmes ended the sermon with three appeals. They were directed to the following individuals:

• THOSE WHO SEEK TO DISCOVER THEIR “CALLING”
• THOSE WHO KNOW THEIR CALLING  BUT NEED MOTIVATION.
• THOSE WHO ARE STRUGGLING WITH SOMETHING. The pastor informed us that we were currently in a “judgement free zone.”

The service ended with a rendition of one of absent Lead Pastor Fredrick Russell’s favorite songs, “Anointing Fall On Me.”

My Berean Community Service Family, shown in an image so teensy nobody can be identified.