E   mmanuel from Pastor Kurt Busiek

There is an Info Class this Sunday, January 11th at 9.40 in the Pastor's study.  If you're interested in knowing more about Emmanuel, plan to attend.  These Info Classes are offered on the Sunday Sunday of every month.

John 3:16:  A new ten week class based on the book by Max Lucado of the same name begins this Sunday at 9:30.  Chad Smith will be facilitating.  The class will meet in the Hope House.

This Wednesday at 6 p.m. Pastor Kurt will be sharing about some basic, practical "common sense" financial principles from the book of Proverbs.  Join us at 5:15 p.m. for a great dinner prepared by Jewel Lusk.

We're on the radio every Sunday at 9:30 a.m. on 93FM.

Pray for:  Carrol Buckley-bad fall in NC/ in ICU, Phyllis Crone, families struggling through this difficult financial time,  Jim Weaver's mom- hospice has been called in.

Here are two longer devotions but I thought they were thought-provoking and challenging.  Have a great weekend.

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.  Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.   A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth 3 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:
If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?


"God, listen to me shout, bend an ear to my prayer. You've always given me breathing room, a place to get away from it all. Psalm 61:1 and 3

*** *** *** ***

A lot of people are on overload and headed for a crash. Consider these statistics:

. People now sleep 2½ fewer hours each night than people did a hundred years ago.

. The average work week is longer now than it was in the 1960s.

. The average office worker has 36 hours of work piled up on his or her desk. It takes us three hours a week just to sort through it and find what we need.

. We spend eight months of our lives opening junk mail, two years of our lives playing phone tag with people, and five years waiting for people who are late for meetings.

At least in the U.S., we're a piled-on, stretched-to-the limit society that is chronically rushed, chronically late, and chronically exhausted. Many of us feel like Job did when he said, "I have no peace! I have no quiet! I have no rest! And trouble keeps coming" (Job 3:26 GWT).

Overload comes when we have too much activity in our lives, too much change, too many choices, too much work, too much debt, too much media exposure.

We're stressed by information overload; we're stressed by accessibility overload - we're connected all the time. Simply put, we're stressed by the pace of life.

Is there a solution? Yes. The solution is to put some margin into your life. Margin is breathing room. It's keeping a little reserve that you're not using up. It's not going from one meeting to the next to the next with no space in between.

Margin is the space between your load and your limit. But most of us are far more overloaded than we can handle, and there is no margin for error in our lives.

Dr. Richard Swenson, MD says this: "The conditions of modern day living devour margin. If you're homeless we direct you to a shelter. If you're penniless we offer you food stamps. If you're breathless we connect you to oxygen. But if you're marginless we give you one more thing to do.

Marginless is being 30 minutes late to the doctor's office because you were 20 minutes late getting out of the hairdresser because you were 10 minutes late dropping the children off at school because the car ran out of gas two blocks from a gas station and you forgot your purse. That's marginless.

"Margin, on the other hand, is having breath at the top of the staircase, money at the end of the month, and sanity left over at the end of adolescence. Margin is grandma taking the baby for the afternoon. Margin is having a friend help carry the burden.

"Marginless is not having time to finish the book you're reading on stress. Margin is having the time to read it twice. Marginless is our culture. Margin is counter-culture, having some space in your life and schedule. Marginless is the disease of our decade and margin is the cure."

Jesus said, "Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened (overwhelmed with no margin), and I will give you rest."