“LETTERS TO MY DEAR CHILDREN”

And

Your Cordial Invitation to Eavesdrop

Dear Friends,

I am embarking on a letter writing adventure!

I plan to write a series of letters to my own four children.  The Lord has wonderfully blessed me and my dear wife Lorraine through all the years of our marriage and I want to pass on to my own dear children a small part of the counsel our gracious Lord has given us over these years.  Our Risen Lord and Savior has enabled us to discover His grace over our years together.  Through His written word and by the power of his Holy Spirit He has been speaking the life of His gracious word into our hearts.

Now I am praying that the Risen One will empower my humble effort to “pass it on”.  I hope to strengthen our own beloved children in their ministries to their own children and grandchildren and to their fellow church members and friends wherever they may meet.   Our Savior-King has commissioned all of us with this Royal task of spreading life through His Word to any and all whom we may meet.

And you are cordially invited to eavesdrop!

I want to send these letters to anyone who might be interested, and I will also put them on my clay2glory.com   blog. Though the letters are first addressed to our own four children, they will be appropriate for members of our WIDER family to read.  That WIDER family especially includes all our dear brothers and sisters who served alongside us both at Westminster Presbyterian Church and at Westminster Christian Academy in Huntsville, Alabama.  You are especially dear to us because of those 43 years we spent among you.

Our WIDER family also includes our Ukrainian Christian brothers and sisters whom we dearly love.  You blesse us greatly while we were serving among you and hope these letters might be some blessing to you.  Then while I was Interim Pastor at North Hills in Huntsville and finally Assistant Pastor at Trinity in Union, Missouri, we were privileged to minister alongside some of God’s choice servants.   May our gracious Lord bless all of you and ANY others who may receive these “LETTERS TO MY DEAR CHILDREN”.

Below are two recent pictures [only in email version] of our children, grand-children and great-grand-children.  We hope you will join them in reading these letters.  We will not try to give you names which were printed in our Christmas letter.  I give you both pictures because we were not able to get everyone there at once.

What You May Expect in My Letters

 I believe it may be helpful to you if I divide my letters into two distinct parts for easier understanding:

FIRST, I will try to give you a “main thought” that will run through both sections.  In the first part I will develop that  ”main thought” in a popular style for easy reading  adapted to children and adults alike.  Hopefully this first section of each letter will be uncluttered by theological or other kinds of technical terminology.  It might even be read as a part of “family worship” because of its adaptability to all maturity levels.

SECOND, I will (usually if not always) add a section simply entitled: REFLEXIONS.  In this “reflexions” section I will try to lead you through the Biblical and Theological basis for what I have just said in the FIRST section.   This might be a bit technical so that it could be helpful to give quotes from other writers, even documented quotes so that you could pursue the sources on which I base my remarks.

Prepare for a Recurring Emphasis

My own pilgrimage through life and through the Bible has led me to deepening convictions on the importance of  the resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ.  This reflects my conviction that Peter, Paul and John had this emphasis in all their writing and preaching.   Not that they ever minimized the cross or the crucifixion.  They just saw the resurrection and ascension as illuminating the crucifixion and the whole gospel message.   This resurrection/ascension emphasis characterizes the entire New Testament, and it comes to a beautiful climax first in Acts 2 and then in the whole book of Revelation.

This emphasis has become an increasing joy to me as I have discovered it in scripture.  I hope it will help meet the needs of your heart and the hearts of those whom you may influence for Christ.

 And I want to invite your response.  You are welcome to correspond with me about these letters.  I will do my best to reply and might even do so by writing one of these letters so that everyone might benefit from your question.

But please pray for me in this new adventure in the ministry.  I sincerely want to be a blessing first to my own dear children, then to any and all who may read these “LETTERS”.

May our ever gracious Lord continue to bless our KINGDOM MINISTRIES while we wait with joyful anticipation for our great King to return for the perfection of His Kingdom in eternal glory.

For the glory of the Lion/Lamb

Pastor Paul Alexander

“Behold children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.” Psalm 127:3

The names below can be fitted to the main picture that we sent by email.  You may be able to match these if you go to the website noted in the first paragraph.  Happy  providence on that effort.  Other names are in the body of the letter.

Standing in back rows: Sisi, David holding Lydia Spanogle, Rachel and Greg, Heather and Jeff Spanogle, Ethan and Brian Yount, Adam Hancock; Seated adults: Junia Haas, Lorraine, Paul, DeAnn Yount; Seated children: Greg and Rachel’s five – Adrienne, Ben, Gabriele, Natalie holding Vivienne.  Happy Providence on names in other pictures.

Dear Family and Friends,

The annual Christmas picture above does not include everyone.  Some arrived later; so I am also sending you a web-site: https://goo.gl/photos/BgHoYZruef644qt26.  This will have a variety of shots including nearly all family members for 4 generations.  Our gracious Lord continues to bless our growing tribe.  I will mention just a few things about each family to help you pray for us as we do for you.  You have blessed us with many pictures and special greetings in your Christmas cards and we hope that our letter to you will lift you up in praise to our dear Savior.

David and Junia Haas continue their service to our Lord through their ministries in our Spring Hills Presbyterian church where Junia is Music Director and David is a Ruling elder and teaches an adult Sunday school class.  David is in his 35^th year of teaching math at Westminster Christian Academy in St. Louis.  Boarding with them to attend WCA this year is “Sisi” from mainland China and Kris (not in picture) from Korea. Junia also remains active in teaching piano to children and youth.

Charysse Alexander continues to serve as executive director in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Atlanta, Georgia where she is also active in All Souls Fellowship church, now part of the EPC. Along with her office duties in Atlanta, she frequently travels to give lectures to fellow lawyers on various aspects of the law.  Runing is her key hobby these days.  She has run both the New York and Boston marathons, a number of half-marathons and runs in other events that keep her challenged and in shape. Her nieces and nephews greatly enjoy her periodic visit to their home cities.

Brian and DeAnn Yount live nearby and are active in Trinity Presbyterian church with us in Union, Missouri.  Brian continues his labors as an architect, though he has now completed his Master’s degree in a field that qualifies him to work in government intelligence.  DeAnn teaches counselling at UMSL and does part time family and child counselling in public schools.  Son Ethan just turned 16 and is enrolled with his 13 year old brother Jacob at Heritage Christian school.  Jacob has been suffering from undiagnosed health problems that have kept him out of school this year.  Please pray for him.

Greg and Rachel Alexander are still living in Sugarland, Texas, a suburb of Houston, where Greg is employed in the senior management of engineering firm, CDI.  His job demands are enormous, demanding much more travel than he likes.  Though the family was all active in a PCA church, they are now considering a move to another congregation where they see opportunities for fuller involvement.   The three older girls are now enrolled in public school and Gabrielle works part time as a hostess in a nearby restaurant.   The girls are all superb swimmers and I was privileged to watch them competing in events when I visited there last June.

A glimpse at David and Junia’s family: Heather (Haas) Spanogle and her husband Jeff now live in Wheaton, Illinois, where Jeff is working to get his Th.D. in Old Testament at Trinity Seminary.  Heather works at ESL, teaching English to foreign nationals and helping them get citizenship.  Joanna (Haas) Hancock and her husband Adam, live a few miles from us in St. Louis, where Joanna works as a nurse in a clinic.  Adam was recently elected a Deacon in their small PCA congregation and has an interesting job as a “bullet salesman” (don’t ask me to explain that).  Sarah Haas continues to work in films, a job that keeps her travelling to interesting places like Utah and nearby Colombia, Missouri.  She is promising to publish that documentary film on my last trip to Ukraine and we are waiting with baited breath.  Since his recent graduation from college, Philip Haas travelled for a year with a Sony contracted Christian music group that performed for churches, camps and conferences.  He tells us that changes are coming for him and we are enjoying watching where his “percussionist” career will take him.

Lorraine and I are also busy.  We stay fully engaged in the lives of our children and grandchildren who live near the Louis area.  It seemed wise to me to resign as Assistant Pastor at Trinity church, though we remain fully involved in that congregation.  I am now more free to write and blog and pursue a fascinating reading regimen.  I frequently teach Sunday school classes and supply the pulpit both at Trinity and at other nearby churches.   Lorraine’s back remains a problem but that hardly ever keeps her from participating both in church activities and family events – birthday parties, holiday dinners, school musicals etc.

The current election campaigns remind me of a great Christmas text from Isaiah 9:7: “Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end.” This grand text is telling us that we are not limited to whatever these campaigners promise us. When Jesus came at Christmas, He came both to die for our sins, and to “increase His government and peace” throughout this sinful world.  Mysterious and almost unbelievable as this seems to us in our current historical circumstances, scripture authorizes us to believe that our “wonderful counsellor (Is. 9:6)” is at this very moment “governing”  this whole historical process toward His own ultimate Triumph and our ultimate Joy.

JOY TO THE WORLD, THE LORD HAS COME!

For the glory of the Lion/Lamb,

Paul and Lorraine Alexander