wfn.org | Re: [Ga212reports] Commentary

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ecunet.org>]

Note #23 from PCUSA NEWS to GA 212 REPORTS:

This is David Steele musing about the 212th General Assembly from my home in
Sun City, AZ.
 
My take on this assembly is that here were good people with a fine moderator
who pushed all the hard stuff ahead.  They were following the instructions
of the last assembly who said in affect. "lets not beat each other up about
sex for two years."  So they forwarded issues to the next assembly and with
the one they had to tackle..they laid it on the Presbyteries to determine
whether we want to keep pastors and churches out of the same sex union
business.

I see this as the interim assembly.  I suspect we are gonna have a bang up
gathering in Louisville next year as the assembly there picks up all the
balls thrown to them..  So rather than comment further I’d like to quote a
poem I think is a masterpiece.  It is about one of the most difficult,
cantankerous Christians ever to darken the door of Christendom.  He was so
hard to live with that his superiors put him in a cave by himself and told
him to translate the Bible.

His result:  The Vulgate..the Bible in the language of the people which
spurred the evangelization of Europe.  Here is THE THUNDERER by Phyllis
McGinley.

THE THUNDERER
Phyllis McGinley

God’s angry man, His crotchety scholar
Was Saint Jerome,
The great name-caller
Who cared not a dime
For the laws of Libel
And in his spare time 
Translated the Bible.
Quick to disparage
All joys but learning
Jerome thought marriage
Better than burning;
But didn’t like woman’s
Painted cheeks;
Didn’t like Romans,
Didn’t like Greeks,
Hated Pagans
For their Pagan ways,
Yet doted on Cicero all of his days.

A born reformer, cross and gifted,
He scolded mankind
Sterner than Swift did;
Worked to save
The world from the heathen;
Fled to a cave
For peace to breathe in,
Promptly wherewith
For miles around
He filled the air with
Fury and sound.
In a mighty prose
For Almighty ends,
He thrust at his foes,
Quarreled with his friends,
And served his Master,
Though with complaint.
He wasn’t a plaster sort of a saint.

But he swelled men’s minds
With a Christian leaven.
It takes all kinds
To make a heaven.

The last phrase has provide me great comfort in my ministry.  Whenever I
meet a particularly obnoxious elder or pastor..I think of that line.  "It
takes all kinds to make a heaven!" I suspect that idea will do us well as we
go at it in the coming year.

This is David Steele…Thanks for Listening ... Shalom Friends ...Give ‘em
heaven!

_______________________________________________
GA212reports mailing list
GA212reports@pcusa.org
http://pcusa01.pcusa.org/mailman/listinfo/ga212reports