Pastor Del and Mary Keilman

WhiTe Horse

Contemporary Christian Music

Ministry from Pastor Del
Text Box: Martin Rinkert wrote the hymn, Now Thank We All Our God in 1636 during the Thirty Years War. As I related in a recent Sunday sermon, it was the worst of times, with disasters and deaths through war, epidemics and economic depression. In one year, 1636, Martin Rinkert conducted five thousand funerals for his parish – about fourteen a day. Yet in the midst of that darkness he wrote one of the great hymns of the church. “Now thank we all our God, With hearts and hands and voice. Who wondrous things have done, In whom His word rejoices…” This month we celebrate Thanksgiving. We have been blessed by God in so many ways, as individuals, as a nation, and as a church. Yet I sometimes find myself wondering, am I, are we, truly aware and thankful for those blessings. Matthew Henry, the great commentator of an earlier day, told of an encounter in which he was robbed. A friend later questioned him about how he could separate this sad ordeal with Henry’s preaching that said we are to be thankful in all things. Henry responded by saying, “First let me be thankful that I have never been robbed before; second, that though they took my purse, they did not take my life; third, that though they took everything, it wasn’t much; and fourth, that it was I who was robbed and not I who robbed. Gratitude, thanksgiving, may well depend on our point of view. I listened to a news broadcast during one of the recent hurricanes in which a woman had “lost everything” as they say – house, car, furniture, clothing and keepsakes. The interviewer attempted to empathize with her in her loss asking, “How are you coping with the loss of everything you owned?.” The woman looking directly at the newscaster and said, “One thing I’ve learned. It’s not right to save everything. I lost a lot of stuff. Most of my material possessions that I had been accumulating were lost. But here I am and my family is still with me.. Lets just say that God has powerfully reminded me of what’s valuable and what’s not.. I write this month’s Outside My Window by looking out from the kitchen windows of our cottage at the wonders of Gods’ great and colorful creation on this a warm late October afternoon. But it is more than the splendor of the season. You see, it doesn’t matter where we are or what we are doing, in all things, and at all times, may we pause to give God thanks for His blessings upon our life. And so I end by thanking God for His love for me, for my family, and each one of you, and for our life together serving Him. In Christ’s love, Pastor Del

Pastor Del & Mary

Keilman

Outside My Window

NOVEMBER - 2008