Worship

The News Business! A Business We're All In Together!
Rev. Doug Beltzner

With the advent of a new publication like the Community Bulletin, it's time to celebrate. We celebrate because our hope is this newsletter will in some small way help build community, bring people together, as local news is shared. So congratulations and best wishes to Connie Castanera and Tim Harrison in the launching of this new publication!

I want to thank Connie Castanera and Tim Harrison for the opportunity to write for this first edition. As I began to think about what to write, I thought it was important to get some perspective on "the news." As we close the 20th century, how we define "the news" has got to be different than it was a generation ago, or is it?

What you find below are my thoughts intermingled with the thoughts of one of my favorite authors, Frederick Buechner, I share these thoughts with you in hope that you will be inspired to see yourself , those you love and those you meet for the very first time, as all in "the news business."

When you turn your channel to CNN or Headline NEWS you are joining millions of people all over the earth as together we discover, in a moment, what is going on throughout the world. One moment it 's about cloning human organs, then it's about impeaching President Clinton, and in a flash it's about bombing Baghdad. The truth is all this news is enough to make your head spin. We receive so much so fast! We try to make some sense of it all. Or at least try to come to some sort of terms with it, how it will effect us for good or ill.

There is also of course, the news that rarely if ever gets into the media at all, and that is the news of each particular day of each particular one of us. That is the news we're so busy making that we seldom get around to sitting down and thinking it over. If it takes some extraordinary turn, we might. However, the regular, commonplace events of each day, as they come along, we tend to let slip by almost unnoticed. That is, to put it mildly, a pity. What we are letting slip by almost unnoticed are the only lives on this planet we're ever going to get.

We're all caught up in our own small wars. We too have "crimes and misdemeanors," passions, failures and successes. We even make occasional breakthroughs. God knows we are searching for peace. It all happens so quietly and on such a small scale that we hardly realize it's happening. It's only a phone conversation. A tone of voice. A chance meeting at Graceton's or the post office. An unexpected lump in the throat. Laughing till we cry. But these things are what it's all about. These things are what we are all about.

Maybe there's nothing on earth more important for us to do than sit down every evening or so and think it over, try to figure it out if we can, at least try to come to terms with it. The news of our day. Where it is taking us. Where it is taking the people we love. It is, if nothing else, a way of saying our prayers.

Written by Rev. Doug Beltzner, Pastor of Stewartstown Presbyterian Church on RT 851 East (next door to the Community Center and playground). Contemporary Service at 8:30 a.m., Traditional Service at 10:45 a.m., Sunday School at 9:30 a.m. , Youth Group at 6 p.m.. For more information call the church at 993-6278, or visit their webpage at:

http://www.southernyorkcounty.com/churches/stpresby