A Piece of Junk Mail?!?!? A Report to My Commission

There are times when I am so taken aback by circumstances that I have no words, even coherent thoughts.   Something that happened a week ago still has me flummoxed.

I work late on Wednesdays and go straight to bed when I get home.  When I hauled myself out of bed on Thursday morning, Evelyn showed me an envelope from the previous day's mail and said, "Do you want to see what was in the Certified Letter from the Conference that you didn't accept?"

I took it from her.

It was a plain, business size, white envelope with my name hand printed in blue ink. There was no return address but a Harrisburg post mark and, ironically--and I love this irony--a "Forever" stamp.

Most importantly to me, there was no return address.

I never, ever answer a phone call if I don't recognize the number of the caller.  I figure that if the person really wants to talk to me they can leave a message and, if the message is important to me, I'll return it.

It's the same with junk mail.  I never open it.

Any piece of mail with no return address on it is classified as junk, if it is addressed to me.  It goes through the shredder.

(By the way, there has been no other contact from the Conference regarding the status of my credentials.)

Having said that, I guess I shouldn't be surprised to be sent a piece of junk mail which anyone with half a brain would strongly suspect was from the Conference concerning something as, uh, trivial? as my defrockment.

At this point, my brain is still frozen about this, but two basic questions do come to mind. One is the question of how stupid the ERC mountaintoppers think we are.

The other is: How far will the ERC go in disobeying Jesus in dealing with someone it believes has sinned?  Jesus is crystal clear about that.  And, isn't His goal forgiveness and reconciliation, not condemnation?

The answer for me, at this point, to the how far in disobedience they will go is that ERC leaders will go much farther than even I could have imagined.

Is it any wonder that the Lord is withholding His blessing from us?

YIKES, fellas!