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Psalm 34:8 – Eating Is More than Tasting September 8, 2024   Bill Crowder wrote in Our Daily Bread: “The beautiful bride, gripping her proud father’s arm, was poised to make her way to the altar. But not before the entrance of her thirteen-month-old nephew. Instead of carrying the more common ‘ring’—he was the ‘Bible bearer.’ In this way, the bride and groom, as committed believers in Jesus, wanted to testify to their love for Scripture. With minimal distraction, the toddler found his way to the front of the church. How illustrative it was that the toddler’s teeth marks were found on the leather cover of the Bible. What a picture of activity that’s fitting for believers in Christ or those who desire to know Him—to taste and take in Scripture.”   Jesus related to his followers, “Anyone who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day, because My flesh is real food and My blood is real drink. The one who eats My flesh and drinks My ...

The Sufficiency of the Insignificant Exodus 1:15-21 Pastor Lee Hemen, May 05, 2024 Have you ever heard of Henrietta Lacks? “Henrietta was a poor tobacco farmer from Virginia. Her death was remarked by no one except her children, her family, and her friends. However, Henrietta Lacks is the source of the HeLa cell line—her blood contained uniquely immortal cells that can live outside her body indefinitely. After the birth of her fifth child in 1951, Henrietta was admitted to Johns Hopkins University Hospital complaining of “a knot in her womb,” and doctors took a sample of tissue. It was soon noticed that, unlike normal cells, Henrietta’s cells did not die after a few days but rather continued to grow, doubling every 20 to 24 hours. Henrietta’s cells can be found in the trillions in laboratories around the world. They have been used by medical researchers studying not only cancer but also hemophilia, influenza, leukemia, and Parkinson’s disease. They were also used in developing the poli...

Stewards, Not Fearmongers! By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen July 3, 2023 Ecclesiastes paints kind of a depressing picture of humanity and an individual’s moroseness, however, it also teaches us a lot about ourselves, the world around us, and our God. In his musings the writer states that “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9 NIV84) The Bible Knowledge commentary states that “Solomon did not intend by this to deny human creativity but to deny the complete newness of people’s accomplishments.” However, “the constant repetition of previous accomplishments - is in essence true of the activity of people and is included in the observation that all things produce only indescribable weariness and lack of satisfaction…” Solomon was in a mental funk. I can relate. In this day and age, it is easy to become depressed. Sadly, there are those who use people’s tendency to be depressed to foster greater fear in things the...

Luke 1:26-38 – Listen! By Pastor Lee Hemen December 4, 2022 One of my least favorite Christmas songs is “Do You Hear What I Hear?” Sorry if it is one of your favorites, but I’ve never liked it that much except for the last verse when the King commands, “Listen to what I say! Pray for peace, people everywhere! Listen to what I say! The Child, the Child, sleeping in the night He will bring us goodness and light, He will bring us goodness and light.” Now don’t get me wrong the message of the song is great, the night wind whispering to a little lamb about a “star with a tail as big as a kite.” The lamb asking a shepherd boy if he can hear the same song he hears, and the shepherd boy asking the mighty king, “Do you know what I know?” Now if you listen closely at the words, you will notice that each phrase is contingent upon one thing: listening! In our day and age where everything demands our immediate attention it is often hard to get people to simply listen. In the verses we will look at ...

Ramblings from Retirement – Meditating On God’s Word By Pastor (Retired) Lee Hemen April 1, 2022 I was thinking about a notion that I have heard my entire Christian life, namely that we are better believers if we hide God’s Work in our hearts by memorizing it perfectly. Mainly this teaching comes from the words of the Psalmist who wrote, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you (Psalms 119:11 NIV84).” Except this is total balderdash. Now do not get me wrong because if you want to memorize the Bible verse by verse, go ahead and do so. It might be good for you to do so but this isn’t what the Psalmist meant. In fact, nowhere in the pages of our Bibles did the original authors want you to be able to quote a specific passage at any given time in order to be a better Believer in God. Certainly they encourage us to know the words of the Lord but what did they really mean? First and foremost we often forget in our haste to impose certain spiritual concepts that we...

The Joy of a Father’s Heart By Pastor Lee Hemen December 12, 2021 I will enter His gates with thanksgiving in my heart; I will enter His courts with praise! I will say this is the day the Lord has made; I will rejoice for He has made me glad! The JOY of the Lord is my strength; it has to be especially now. This is both the happiest day and the saddest day of my life! But as you can see, I think I will focus on the happier part! Oh Lord, my Yahweh thank You for being the Lord You are. Thank You for my daughter, Miriam and of course Yoseph! A father knows this day will come but he never realizes just how fast it does come. Your daughter is one day playing with your beard, learning to walk, learning the Psalms and singing them sweetly around the house, and the next… she has growing into a fine young woman! Can it be that she is fourteen now? They grow up so fast! This last year she has learned to cook, sew, keep a household, and to manage affairs well like a good Jewish woman should. Just...

Ramblings from Retirement - Do Not Fear By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen August 13, 2021 Are you fearful? Are you afraid? Some people like being scared or the feeling of fear. They will even do things in life to make themselves feel fear. Like bungee jumping from high places, climbing cliffs without any pinions or tie downs, or skydiving. Some will go to horror movies but then there are also those who keep themselves in a constant state of fear simply because they do not trust themselves, others, or Jesus to keep them. This is truly sad. Today is Friday the 13th and some folks are fearful of the date; kind of silly, if you ask me, but they are. Perhaps it is because they would rather live in a state of fear rather than peace. The news brings in to our lives a constant barrage of tragedy, horrors, and dismal happenings. My advice is to turn the news off and go read your Bible or listen to some good music. The world is full of fear and will not change until we go to our eternal rest or Jesus ...

 Ramblings from Retirement – Trust By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen June 2, 2021 Sometimes we can become so myopic in our daily lives that we forget the people around us or the Lord who made us. Jesus reminded his listeners that the two greatest commandments were to love God totally and others like you love yourself. Fussing or fretting about things you have no control over can lead to anxiety and frustration with your circumstances. Yet when we focus on loving God as we should and loving others as he commanded the things we have no control over seem to fade into the background where they belong. I used to fret about family members who did not know the Lord and I began to wonder if God was actually listening to me when I prayed about my concern for them. I was gently reminded by a brother in Christ that perhaps my prayers were not really for the benefit of those I was praying for but to satisfy my selfish needs. Of course at first I was offended that he would claim I was being selfish w...

Ramblings from Retirement – A Whole New OS By Pastor Lee Hemen June 1, 2021 I recently have been trying to load a new OS (operating system) to an old laptop I have. Doing things like this is enjoyable for me. I also just replaced a hard drive, reformatted it, and loaded the OS for an Xbox system. It is like when my father in law would find joy in his carpentry and a job well done. Doing computer or cell phone geek stuff and having it go right gives me enjoyment. However with trying to get this old laptop working with a different OS has proven a bit frustrating. I am sure the final outcome will be fine but the work and the constant failure for it to load properly is frustrating. Life can be that way for some of us when it seems like we are constantly rebooting ourselves and it seems as if nothing is working. Perhaps the answer is using a better OS for your life? I’ve learned that trying to do the same things the same way with the same results is foolish. Perhaps your life needs a reboot...

Ramblings from Retirement – Forget About It By Lee Hemen May 1, 2021 I shared before that I’ve been going through pictures and stuff my mother had for decades at my brother’s house. A huge trunk now converted to four medium sized cardboard boxes. She passed away several years ago at the age of 92 and lived a pretty full life. She only had a 7th grade education getting her education in a one room school, lived in a circus tent in the Wyoming wilderness, survived the Kelly Flood in 1927 in Wyoming when the Gros Ventre River broke through a natural earthen dam caused from a mud slide several years earlier, and she could ride, shoot, and roll her own cigarettes with one hand. Later she left home at the age of 15 or 16 and followed her sister to Alaska, another wilderness. She worked in the newly built Coca Cola bottling plant and there met my father who asked her to marry him several times refusing him every time but the last. All of that to say this that she lived quite a life. However wh...

Ramblings from Retirement – Better than a Lifetime Guarantee By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen April 3, 2021 If you have not learned the simple and hard lesson that there is nothing guaranteed in life you had better learn it fast. What the Jewish people understood was the fact that life was fleeting. Many hoped there would be an afterlife but most believed there was not and that you would just “sleep” in the bosom of Abraham forever. Jesus changed all of that though. Jesus related to Nicodemus, “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven--the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, bu...

 Ramblings from Retirement – Disagree with God? By Retired Pastor Lee Hemen March 30, 2021 Can you disagree with God? Some folks erroneously think that you can never disagree with God but this is simply not true. Why would I say such a thing? As I was sitting here watching two raccoons trundle by my living room window I starting thinking about how raccoons are often seen as rascals and this probably is more about their natural masks and antics than their actual inherent behavior. But it also got me to thinking about how we can be rascals with God and if we can disagree with Him. We first find Moses arguing with God in Exodus 4:1 when he begins to argue that he is not the man to be used by God to turn the Hebrews back to Him and lead them out of enslavement in Egypt. Moses whines that the people may not listen to him, that he doesn’t have any skills, and that he has no proof to show the people that God really did entrust him to lead them into freedom. God gives him answers for every...

Ramblings from Retirement – Homelessness By Lee Hemen, Retired Pastor March 28, 2021 We have seen a huge rise in homelessness in our Nation. There are many reasons why from governmental policies, addiction, education, age, and mental issues. Many have tried over the decades to “solve” the problem but have in many cases made it far worse. Recently a teenage boy in California designed and put together a homeless cart that converts into a place to sleep, store things, and can be easily wheeled around for the homeless. While his intentions are truly great what he is doing is contributing to the problem. Each cart costs around $200 to make. There are those who have given money to those who beg with signs by the roadside thinking they are helping but again they are acerbating the problem. Like many ministries that try to help instead encourage people to remain homeless by handing out tents, blankets, clothing or jackets. Now I am not saying that all people desire to remain homeless, because ...

Ramblings from Retirement – Stand Firm By Lee Hemen, Retired Pastor March 26, 2021 I like watching the wild birds that come to our feeders in our yard. Their music is sweet to listen to as is their antics. Some are very protective of their feeding grounds and chase other birds away while other seem oblivious and just enjoy the fellowship of the other varieties of birds that show up to feed. Some seem extremely skittish and flit from here to there at any sound. In Peter’s letter he writes, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings. And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered ...

Ramblings from Retirement – Wisdom of the World By Pastor Lee Hemen March 24, 2021 Recently I learned that Canada is doing some truly horrendous and disastrous things with families and the law; all in the name of social justice. I learned from online news sources that: “The father and mother were not raising the child together, so it was only when his daughter was 13 that the father learned that the girl’s public school and his ex-wife had been working with the child to turn her into a boy. This included pushing the child to take hormones to mimic male sexual attributes such as facial hair and a deep voice. The father (who cannot be identified under Canadian law because doing so would also identify his daughter) went to court, saying that he needed to give parental consent before his child was permanently mutilated. Not only did a British Columbia court rule against him, saying the father’s consent wasn’t necessary, but the appellate judges also lectured him to understand gender dyspho...

Ramblings from Retirement – Why Struggle? By Lee Hemen, Retired Pastor March 23, 2021 Have you ever known someone who seems to constantly struggle in life? They struggled on the playground trying to find someone to play with, they struggled through Middle School and High School trying to fit in, and they struggled in college trying to find themselves. When they get a job they struggle with coworkers, bosses, and trying to get ahead. When they look for love they struggle trying to find the “right” one to love and they struggle raising their kids and being partnered in a marriage. And they certainly struggle with their relationship with God. Esau was this kind of a person who struggled all through his life from his birth to his inheritance. We could make excuses for Esau and say that his twin brother Jacob was a grasping deceiver but we forget that we all make choices in life and perhaps this is where many of our struggles come from? Esau was impulsive and knew he should have safeguarded...

Ramblings from Retirement – Reconnect! By Lee Hemen, Retired Pastor March 18, 2021 There was a popular folk song out when I was in High School by Joni Mitchell called The Big Yellow Taxi. It was supposed to be a statement concerning how the world was paving over everything and destroying it with insecticides. It was kind of a silly song but one line states “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone?” This is true whether it concerns green spaces or relationships but it can be true of things we begin to depend on in life without ever thinking about them. Here’s something for you to try for a week: Go without your Wi-Fi or cell phone. Few could make it a day let alone a week, but what if these things were taken away from you for good? What would you do and how would you cope? We lost our Wi-Fi for about 20 hours the other day and I realized just how much we as a family had come to rely on something we often took for granted. We can do the same thing in...

Ramblings from Retirement – Make God Known! By Lee Hemen, Retired Pastor March 17, 2021 How do you let future generations know about God? Reading your Bible and praying are good for you personally but doing these things even daily do not get you active in actually getting out and letting those around you know about God. Now do not get me wrong because I do believe in prayer and reading the Bible but if that is all you do you could actually be hindering others from knowing about God. The Psalmist declared, “I will sing of the LORD's great love forever; with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations. (Psalms 89:1 NIV)” He took a stand to verbally sing of God’s love. Now you may not want to sing in front of others and this is not the case I am making and others may not want you to sing to them, however as believers in God we are to about the business of letting the world around us know about the love of God. The Psalmist related that he would actually speak ...

Ramblings from Retirement - Focus By Lee Hemen March 16, 2021 When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you. Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Those who are far from you will perish; you destroy all who are unfaithful to you. But as for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge; I will tell of all your deeds. (Psalms 73:21-28 NIV) I was reminded this morning as I sat and did my devotion that what we focus on, whether in life or for the day, will impact how we live. Now I know this is not some great new truth but it reminded me to be more focused on what is important. These past several weeks several of my friends have lost family m...