A Blast of Winter; A Glimpse of Spring

Winter weather has not been the best friend of Ascension Church. You might recall, if you read my blog regularly, that the night before our broadening service on January 15, we were blasted with a dramatic drop in temperature together with snow and ice making it difficult for people to come to our worship service. This past week, New York City experienced its biggest blizzard in recorded history. A massive 26.9 inches was measured in Central Park by the time it was all over. Needless to say, not only was it dangerous for people to come to church; it was downright impossible.

On Friday afternoon, one weather prediction on TV had the storm missing us all together, but by Saturday evening everyone was calling for a "raging" snowstorm. There are two kinds of winter weather systems that we watch carefully here in New York. One is called an Alberta Clipper which is a Canadian air mass approaching out of the Northwest bringing unseasonably cold temperatures but only rarely snow accumulation. The other is a Nor'easter, a system typically moving North and East from the Gulf of Mexico often skirting the Atlantic coastline gathering moisture often resulting in rain or snow. This was a Nor'easter, and it brought us to screeching halt. These were some scenes around Forest Hills, Queens during the blizzard.

At least there was some sign of Spring this week as pitchers and catchers reported in Port St. Lucie, FL to open Spring Training for the New York Mets. I imagine they also reported elsewhere in Florida for the Devil's team in the Bronx, but I'm not sure.

Despite this week's weather, our ministries continue. Monday evening we had our second outreach dinner at Michael's house. Invitations were distributed throughout the neighborhood inviting people to dinner and discussion on the topic of Love. Even with the mounds of snow outside, dinner was well attended and healthy discussion was had. This Sunday evening, I am leading a group in the same discussion. Please pray for God's direction over this outreach opportunity.

I'll be preaching for the next two weeks. This week, Michael will hear me preach for the first time (all the other times I've preached here have been a direct result of his inability to be there). The following week, Michael will be on vacation. We've begun preaching through Philippians and I will be keeping the series in uninterrupted flow.

The singles ministry and our introduction of weekly Lord's Supper observances has been postponed (as I mentioned in earlier entries) until sometime in March. Pray for us to be patient and rely on God's grace and not on our "ideal," plans. That's all for this week.