The spirit of possession took over here, and the spirits manipulation and deceit. They coveted this neighborhood, and they coveted their neighbors’ houses, and they did not love their neighbors as themselves. What they did here was immoral, according to the standard of the laws of God. They overpowered the small things that were growing here. They used the power of empire over enterprise. They wanted not community but evidence of empire.
The Empire State Development Corporation had visions of empire. These spirits have had their power here.īut then people came back with love, and people came back here with hope, and people came here with faith, looking for each other, looking for new life on this land, a city on a human scale, of small shops and of local enterprise and ownership, a city of people for each other here…Īnd then others came looking for power and prestige and wealth and fame. And underneath it all a spirit of frustration, a spirit of bitterness and loss and unrequited grief, a simmering spirit of anger and resentment. Daniel Meeter: Guest PreacherAll music is. Requiescat in pace.Īnd then this city became despised and rejected, and it suffered the distresses of racism and poverty and violence, the long slow poisoning of the soil and the water and the air, the sadness of the buildings, the garbage on the ground, the evaporation of community, and the emptiness of love. Reverend Jason Elder: PastorJanice Grace: Organist and ChoirmasterLaura Lokey: Handbell Choir DirectorReverend Dr. We confess our complicity, and we ask forgiveness. The loss of the land was in our interest, and the grief of the ground for our prosperity. If not for that we could not have come here.
That’s what we did here, but we are the beneficiaries. Meeter sketches out why he believes the concept of hell and eternal torment is not Biblical and why such a belief is not necessary to orthodox Christian faith. The flowers and the fruits were gone, and the birds all fled. We paved the ground over to be hot in the summer and lifeless in the winter.
The railroad came and the streets were widened and we built our shops and factories and tenements. After some years we covered the ground with our houses and our streets, and the native animals were gone. We took the land and we felled the trees and spread our pastures and our sweet little farms on the sandy soil, and we used the labor of our slaves. Please join us in celebrating Pastor Meeter. For nearly two decades, Pastor Meeter has faithfully served both Old First and the greater Brooklyn community, helping to turn Old First into what it is today. What form their violence and violations took we do not know, but we know that they died from our diseases and we removed the few who did survive. This Sunday, June 28th, at 11:00 AM, is the final service from our Pastor, Daniel Meeter, before he retires. Once the native tribe of the Canarsees lived here. There were woods and meadows and animals.
0 kommentar(er)
