From Pastor Marc – My Message for the Messenger, February 2017 Edition

February is when I start dreaming about other places. The clouds, the cold and the lack of sun make me long for warmer and brighter places. I close my eyes, and I’m sitting on a beach drinking a beverage out of a coconut. Even though the amount of daylight continues to grow each day, the early evenings drag on me. I want to escape to a place where the sun always shines and the clouds are far away.

This dream is probably one reason why I, along with countless others, enter the HGTV Dream House sweepstakes each and every morning. In 2016, HGTV was the 3rd most watched cable TV channel. People all over the country are watching people fix up their homes, decorate new ones and visit flea markets trying to turn a ping-pong table into an armchair. Two or three times a year, HGTV builds or renovates a home and offers it in a contest. All we need to do is enter our email address on a form twice a day. The homes are always well decorated and full of every kind of tech toy we could want. These homes seem to be free and they’re for us. We just need to be declared the winner among the millions and millions of entries cast.

These contests can limit the dreams we think are possible. We think the only dreams worth having are winning highly unlikely events and that this win is all we need to make our lives okay. But the story of Jesus Christ , when it comes to our relationship with God, is that we’ve already won. In our baptism, our name has been selected. We are the winner. We are part of God’s family. This family includes people with homes bigger than ours and homes that are smaller. This family is made up of mansions, apartment buildings, tin shacks and people with no homes at all. God did what we could not do and decided we were worth living and dying for. God wanted to be with you today, tomorrow and always.

So when it comes to Jesus, we’ve already won. So what kind of dreams can dream up with God today?