When we were living in McClellanville, SC and I was serving my first church, we were on our way to my mother’s house for Thanksgiving. We started out on the morning of Thanksgiving Day. It was about a three hour drive and about half way there the fan belt broke on our car. It was quite an ordeal to find a place to have it replaced on Thanksgiving. When we arrived back in McClellanville I was relating the story to one of my parishioners and he said, "Well, I always keep a spare fan belt with me under the seat of my car, don’t you?" Of course, I said "no". Someone told me later that everyone did this in the days that service stations were few and far between such was not the case even way back in the 70’s. This was before cell phones but even then there were plenty of service stations available, they were just not open on Thanksgiving Day.

Whereas care for our car is even more readily available today than it was all those years ago these days what seems to be few and far between is care for our spirits. We know what to do in case of a car crisis but we do not seem to know where to turn in a spiritual crisis.

It is for this reason that I am so excited about the invitation that Adam made to the congregation in his sermon on January 3^rd. We as staff of the church are inviting the congregation to read the entire bible in 2010. It’s not as hard as you might think. We have a plan, which is available through the church office, that suggests four passages a day for our readings. The amount of time required is 15-20 minutes a day. Really, wouldn’t you just love to be able to say I read the bible in 2010? If we do then when the spiritual crises come we don’t have to keep a copy of it under the seat of our car we can take it with us in our heads and hearts.

John