Pastoral Letter 184
Dear Members of St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Friends and Adherents,
Grace and Peace to you all.
The cry for help is repeated Loud and Clear! Thousands of our Artsakh population have poured through the border into Armenia, being stranded for more than 24 hours on the road and the humanitarian crisis is escalating at a fast pace. The people of Artsakh are tired. After living for more than 9 months under a blockade, in the face of a clear demonstration of ethnic cleansing, their lives have been frighteningly turned upside down by a new axis of terror. Innocent lives have been unethically torn apart. Families have been separated, hundreds have been tortured and killed and still there are many who are unaccountable. On top of that, a big explosion at a petrol depot caused more than 50 deaths and hundreds of injuries. The incident occurred, when the government decided to release the reserved petrol to the people to fill their cars and cross the border.
While AMAA remains steadfast and on call 24/7 in providing both the physical and spiritual support to the evacuees arriving in Armenia, we need support. The situation is dire and the need immediate.
AMAA Centres in Aintap, Armavir, Artashat, Dilijan, Goris, Hankavan, Ijevan, Shirakamut, Sisian, Vanatzor and Yerevan are all occupied and providing temporary housing, distribution of food and hygiene parcels, infant formula, and medical care. Our Pastors are meeting with individuals and families to help them process their fear, anger and confusion. The difficult time and the influx is exuberant.
Sadly, we don’t have any news from the Demirchian family, whom we sponsored for two years. The AMAA Artsakh representative Viktor Karapetyan was asked by the AMMA to leave and take his young family to safety. They took the long journey and fortunately they made it to Yerevan. I talked with Viktor few times during the week. He is devastated. It was so hard for him to leave behind his ancestral homeland.
So, please pray for Artsakh and the suffering people. They need our prayers and support more than ever.
In couple of weeks, I will be again on leave for two weeks to attend the Armenian Missionary Association’s annual meeting in San Fransisco. Unfortunately, Liam will not be able to take the service on Sunday 15 October, so, after consulting with the Church Council office bearers, we are suggesting that we join Crows Nest Uniting Sunday Service on Sunday 15 October at 10:00 am. Bob Minton will take the Service on October 22. I express my thanks in advance to Bob.
If you are not able to join us tomorrow, please light a candle, have a small roll of bread and a cup of wine or juice for Communion and join us following the attached Order of Service.
Be safe and well, continue to pray, remembering those who need care, support and love; especially those who are suffering because of natural disasters, but mainly the 120,000 people of Artsakh, who leaving behind all they had, have been refugees in Armenia. Pray also for those leaders and their families who have been captured by Azeri authorities as prisoners.
Please let me know if you or anyone else has prayer points.
Here are some prayer points for this week:
- Pray for the people Artsakh who are trying to find refuge in Armenia.
- Pray for the poor, the sick, the struggling and the stressed.
- Pray for those who are facing natural disasters such as Earthquakes and floods.
- Pray for the Referendum to be held on 14 October and to cast the right vote.
- Pray for our church and our future plans as we seek God’s guidance.
Best Regards
Krikor
MESSAGE
God Will Provide!
Exodus 17:1-7
This story of the miraculous provision of water in the desert follows the story of the miraculous provision of food ‘Quail and Manna’. Both of them seem like something imaginary, but these are metaphors for a deeper message. One thing is certain that the Israelites survived the desert journey and entered into the Promised Land, and they reached their goal. Clearly, they needed to eat and drink during that forty-year period and clearly in a desert as usual there is limited water and food. However, it happened miraculously with the divine providence. God did His divine act of deliverance.
The story of the water from the rock may or may not be accurate in its details, but it tells us a truth, regardless of how that truth exactly played out. Because it is not merely a reporting of historical fact, it has an application for all times and circumstances. It says that “God will provide,” for those who trust in Him, pray to Him, and turn to Him and that He will provide even for those who do not. Moses turned to God and trusted Him. The people did not. Yet, God answered Moses’ prayer and the people benefited, despite their complaining and putting God to the test. No one deserves God’s grace, but these people went out of their way to annoy God. Yet, He graced them anyway.
In their thirst for water the people grumbled against Moses. The pattern of complaint is repeated here. Moses first asked the question, as a response to their complaint, “Why do you quarrel with me?” The people were more comfortable in slavery than they previously realised, did not want to pay the price for freedom, and wanted to go back to their former status. They preferred the physical comforts of slavery to the trials and discipline of freedom. They turned their temptation to do so into a test for God to prove Himself and a condemnation of Moses who is in the middle of it all.
So, Moses cried out to the Lord and said: “What am I to do with these people. They are almost ready to stone me”. Moses feared for his life and brought the problem to God. The people’s faith in God are under challenge and Moses recognised he needed God’s help. The Lord answered Moses: God’s solution is a most unlikely, one which would challenge and test human logic. He sent Moses to a rock, hardly the human solution to a problem with water!
Holding in his hand…the staff with which he had struck the water and the sea was opened: The same staff that was the visible means by which God parted the sea to protect the Israelites from the water now became the visible means by which God provided them with water from a rock at Horeb. It was not a magic wand, but a sacramental sign.
God said: “Strike the rock and the water will flow from it….” Moses obeyed God’s command and did what God asked him to do, but there is no mention that the water actually flowed and no spectacular description of it or of the people’s reaction. This took place at the beginning of the Exodus story. This was the Massah and Meribah story: “testing” and “quarrel”.
A similar story is told in Number 20:2-13 and took place at the “waters of Meribah.” The account in Numbers took place at the end of the journey. This second time the scriptures says: “Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank”.
Thus, Jewish tradition developed the view that this rock with its water supply followed the Israelites on their journey to the Promised Land. It is to this tradition that Paul refers in 1 Corinthians 10:4, where he says that our fathers “all drank the same supernatural drink…from the supernatural rock which followed them, and the rock was Christ.” In any event, it cannot be determined whether in two different places the same incident occurred or whether the place is the same but two different incidents in the two stories. But it is not important for the story’s meaning.
The important question that we should ask is: “Is the Lord in our midst or not?” The text does not specifically answer the question, the test. He leaves it open to the reader to answer it in his or her own life. As such it is no longer a question asked of God or of Moses, but a challenge or test, for us.
God provides. If there is anything His children really need, He will provide. Clearly, the Israelites needed water to live during their journey to the Promised Land. Even if they got lucky and happened upon an occasional oasis, they were travellers and would have to move on. Just how much water they were equipped to carry with them is unknown, but it could not have been enough to meet their long-term 40 year’s needs. It is truly a miracle of their survival. This story wants to teach us that they could not have done it without God’s intervention. It also wants to teach that we cannot survive the sufferings of our journey through life without that same providential grace. This story, told down through the centuries, has given Jews and Christians alike a specific example of God’s miraculous providence for them to remember and reflect upon in times of their own crises and needs.
The point of the story is that if God can and did provide water in the desert, He can and will provide for our own needs in the present. It was the prayerful trust of Moses, not the complaints of the people, which got God’s attention and got results. We should trust God because He provides our needs.
Do not complain to God about how big the storm is; tell the storm how great God is. While complaining is easy, it solves nothing.
We should value water much more highly, than we usually do; water, clear water, fresh water, “living” water, because it symbolises God’s grace. Every drink of water, every pot of water to cook vegetables in, every cup of coffee, every shower or bath, is an opportunity for us to recall the grace, the providential grace, of God and to praise and thank Him for it. As in these two stories of water from the Rock, from the beginning to the end of our journey to the promised Land, God provides all our needs, and water is a major means of God’s grace and graciousness. Let us appreciate it to make God pleased.
Amen!