02/14/2021
A message from pastor Darcy Miller Borden
A Valentine’s Day Message for this Transfiguration Sunday – February 14, 2021
This Sunday for those of us Christians is known as Transfiguration Sunday. It is the day when we read of when Jesus going up on a mountaintop and was changed to be seen in a new way by his disciples. He changed in appearance to them to something most definitely ordained by God who was among them. In the gospel reading for this morning from the gospel of Mark 9: 2-9 we see several of Jesus’s disciples witnessing this, and even more seeing that He is joined by those ancestors of their faith who went before them; the prophets and teachers who were instrumental in sharing God’s purpose long ago, for their mothers and fathers and their own forebears. Those ancestors that joined Jesus on the mountain that the disciples like Peter saw on this poignant day, were Moses and Elijah. It would be like if one of you went up a mountaintop and were joined by those in your family tree who made it possible for you and those before you to have a life and a future and a legacy that is now yours to honor and remember and maybe even live out.
Believing in God can move us, like it did Peter that day watching his teacher on the mountaintop, conversing with Elijah and Moses. It might make us want to live different, find ways to live out the faith we have received and what it asks of us. It in some way, if we truly believe in God, and wish to be in a true and honest relationship with him, sets out a new path for us to follow and live our life on.
Today is February 14, the day where according to calendars is Valentines Day. It is as day we show the love, we have for someone, (whether it be for a husband or wife or child) or are maybe be bold enough to share how we truly feel about someone special to us. (If we have developed deep and loving and caring feeling for someone, like a “crush.”) Loving someone deeply, changes us, it moves us beyond just ourselves to a more encompassing love and care for someone. Loving someone, caring for someone, moves us from loving just ourselves or you or I, but now to loving we and us. Coming to know God, to let God into our lives, move us from just ourselves to the wider definition and application of love taught and commissioned and shared to us through Jesus.
I leave you with this train of thought as I conclude this message you, dear people of First Presbyterian Church of Watford City, if you have ever experienced a love, or felt a love, or wanted to love beyond yourself, and were willing to see where your life could go with it in your life, this in terms of faith could be an idea of what it would be to invite in the love of God into your life, and wanting to experience and live out God’s love and teachings. If you do, you will find a love that not only loves you completely and wholly as you are, but will open your idea of love and how it is not just for you, but one that should be seen and experienced by all in your life and in our world. That is a transfiguration our world needs, and what we each need to experience and embody. And thank you for reading this message. +AMEN
