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Yearly Archives: 2022
I Just Want To Hug Somebody
This pandemic has put a hold on our ministry for two-and-a-half years. I miss being in your churches. I mostly miss the personal touch, I miss preaching to you, singing with you, and hugging you.
I realize why we had to stop hugging each other these past years, but I hope we never have to do it again in my lifetime. Being the Church is being in community, and being in community is a feeling you cannot have without the freedom of being together in worshipful dance, song, and touch.
Not only have we not hugged each other in church, we haven’t even held hands in a friendship circle. We haven’t been able to face each other without masks and joyfully lift our voices in song.
The scripture is true, “If we keep silent the stones will shout out” (Luke 19:40). I don’t believe for a minute this pandemic will stop the Church from being what she is called to be.
The Church is not a body that can be blown away by the winds of disease. We are built on a foundation of faith. We are filled with the Spirit of Christ that brings us together in a community of love, and nothing can stop us from hugging each other.
Agape, Kimball, S.E.
A Joyous Easter from the Coburn Family
We have experienced the joy of Easter in the city, the country, the desert, and the beach, but experiencing Easter in Mt. Baldy is one of our favorite memories. We lived there for eight years, and it quickly became a tradition for our five young grandchildren. They came up from the cities below and spent part of Holy Week with us preparing for Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter.
They helped Granddad build the cross from branches found on the forest floor our first year. They climbed the hill and planted it firmly. Stones were placed around it to keep it steady. Sometimes repairs were needed, but most of the time the cross seemed to withstand the forces of wind, rain, and snow.
Kimball draped the cross with a purple cloth. It stood humbly on the mountainside above his study that we called the Servant’s Quarters. The children would run up the hill and place fresh wildflowers that grew alongside the creek beneath the cross. We had our daily meditations during Holy Week in sight of the cross.
On Good Friday he removed that cloth and replaced it with a black one. The children’s flowers lay wilted and decaying ‘neath the cross, but when they joined us for this day of quiet, they surprisingly seemed to understand its significance.
On Easter morning just at daybreak, Kimball climbed the hill again and took the black cloth off the cross, and draped it with a white one. He buried the dead flowers and replaced them with Calla Lilies from our flower garden. Having done this, he began yelling to all of God’s creatures, “He’s alive! Christ Jesus has risen! He has risen indeed! Hallelujah! Thanks be to God!
Throughout the day our family would pause and look up to the cross and feel the love and sacrifice it represented. ~ May you, also feel the joy of Easter!
Agape, Pam Coburn
A Feeling I’ll Never Forget
It was 1968. I was sitting in the library of my college when I went into a dream state. I dreamed about the possibility of serving God in a way that would change the world. I felt it so deeply it brought a warm feeling of God’s presence in me. Tears welled up in my eyes and dropped on the page of a book on my desk. They startled me but I didn’t want to wake up and lose that feeling and the vision I was experiencing.
My tears were of sadness because we were losing 58,000 young men and women being killed in the Viet Nam War. Sadness because prejudice and discrimination were rampant throughout my southern homeland. They were also tears of joy that I could be a part of God’s plan to make a difference in our country and world. I had the privilege of preaching the confronting and challenging message of Christ in two little country churches on the border of Tennessee and Kentucky. They weren’t what you would label liberal, but they listened, and gradually over time, began to be changed by the teachings of Jesus.
That day was a feeling I’ll never forget. It was a feeling I don’t want to forget. It was a feeling I wanted to carry with me for the rest of my life. Those tears gave me the blessed assurance my decision to follow God’s call into ministry was my center and destiny.
My wish for you is to have a moment like mine when you feel God’s guidance to use your talents to change the world.
Agape, Kimball, S.E.
Kimball Boyd Coburn 