Passages Along the Journey in Faith

"When I thought of an art gallery…" he said, "…I imagined a world where life and death existed together. My hope is that the world might look a little different after entering and re-emerging from this space." --Lee Ufan, a Korean-born, Japan student, Europe worker, world artist whose museum in Naoshima opened this year and whose works can be seen in harmony with architecture and nature

 
 

Upon re-reading these words above quoted in an article I read from an inflight magazine en route to Seoul this summer, it occurs to me that I myself have been in a sense through a gallery of sorts in which life and death exist together and by which we are re-emerging in time and space with re-formed perspectives. My view of the world is looking different now than it ever has before. Words appropriated from Scripture come to mind: "Love is stronger than death!" and echoing from the first question and answer in the Heidelberg Catechism found in our Book of Confessions: "Our sole comfort in life and in death is that we belong wholly to the Lord our God." With Word and Spirit in, through and upon us, we persevere in prayer to the glory of God.

 
 

A number of folks in our congregation have endearingly asked, not just how I am doing these days following my father's and my wife's passing over the past year, but how my family's faring, and specifically, how are the children. For the most part, considering how much we've endured, my children are doing remarkably well, academically and otherwise. Each has moments when waves of emotion may come and go, though overall, we continue to feel and know God's grace carrying us through. We are thankful to have my mom (their "Lola") with us in the aftermath of our loss. The love and care we have experienced together as a family of faith in compassionate community has been very heartening for us, even especially now in hindsight of the last several months. It is with a deeply grateful heart that I write to you in these weeks leading up to the end of the church's liturgical year.

 
 

As I type, we approach the end of a fourteen hour flight from Chicago to Abu Dhabi en route to points of interest in India where I and eighteen other fellow pastors in the Wabash Pastoral Leadership Program are embarking on the culminating study tour of our inaugural fellowship sponsored by the Lilly Endowment. These are among the same ministers who have sojourned with us in the midst of a very challenging ordeal, providing gratis pulpit supply, prayers and much support during such trying times. Along with other clergy spouses during our voyage to Mexico a year ago, Melissa and I bonded with these treasured colleagues in ministry. While I was not entirely sure just a few months prior whether the Lord would have me go on this trip that had been planned over two years ago (given what my family has been going through in the nine months leading up to it), I believe that in honoring the covenant we made with one another in our fellowship, this will be yet another transformative experience for us, much like my family's pilgrimage to the Philippines this summer was spiritually. As such, in my absence, I am pleased to once again welcome to preach for our Sunday worship services at the end of this month the Rev. Dr. Bob Hunter and the Rev. Dr. Rose Niles through the generosity of Lilly Endowment, Inc.

 
 

The fact that I am led of the Lord to travel apart from my family at this time serves as indication concerning where we are in the journey of God's healing grace through the ongoing process of grief. Though we may have come far to this point, we have yet a ways to go. I have informed church leadership in recent months of a number of counseling opportunities afforded to me and my family in this season of ministry. We are currently on a waiting list with Brooke's Place in Indianapolis. This is an organization that provides grief support groups for families with children, free of charge. There is much high regard and good reports about the work of this organization. Their philosophy of care resonates with respect to carefully directed attention tailored especially for children. In addition, I have begun the first of six free sessions over the next six months with a licensed counselor as part of the benefits for ministers of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA). While this benefit is also available to my college-aged dependents, they also have counseling available to them on campus.

 
 

It is remarkable for me to try to comprehend what the Lord has done in our ministry together at First Presbyterian Church, New Castle, Indiana. I am experiencing now a greater freedom in the Lord to venture anew in fresh, renewing ways for the mission and ministry we have been called to accomplish together here. Please keep on keeping on praying more and more increasingly so for God's revelation and for the Lord's revival among us yet to be and already being manifested in our midst. I know this is not me, but the Holy Spirit working all things for good. May we all be lifted up in the Lord's presence to greater heights for God's glory.

 
 

In Christ,

Pastor Rex

A Debt of Gratitude in the Light of God’s Grace

When something or someone dear and precious is taken from us, especially with regard to a significant and abiding relationship, a deep and profound sense of loss can be experienced that influences and affects the lens through which we see, perceive or comprehend our current circumstances. We cannot help but to not have any situation we might encounter from that point on become somehow understood in the wake of such an event as seminal as that in our life's journey.

Even, and maybe especially, events leading up to and prior to our experience of loss can be seen in a new light. It is as if blinders that we had not been aware of previously had been suddenly removed and the scales from one's eyes taken away. Not unlike Saul's experience on the road to Damascus in Acts 9, a "Come to Jesus" moment ensues upon us and we hear the Lord speaking to our heart and soul with renewed clarity and strength of conviction.

An opportunity for reflection and introspection occurs to us and, if welcomingly received, submitted and surrendered to, and taken advantage of by being given ample time to process through, can allow us to listen well to the voice of the spirit within us. Our interactions, focus and perspectives are then exposed to new light shed upon us in the Lord under the severe mercy and greater grace of a sovereign God.

Such has been my own experience over the past year. There has been at once a deeply profound remorse and regret at my own failings before the Lord and others such that at times in the recent past, I could not bear the weight of guilt, grief, shame, brokenness and sadness apart from sensing, knowing and experiencing the love, prayers, encouragement and support of many upholding us in the Spirit.

It is a terrible thing to face the Lord Who truly sees us and meets us in the presence of one another, speaking the truth in love, presenting an opportunity to fess up, be real, and come clean over and over again, and as the apostle Paul reminds us, to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling." It can be, as one of my late, well-loved and much appreciated seminary professors might say, "a deeply humbling, transforming moment."

All this is to share a perspective with you that from this moment on, I am pursuing the Lord and seeking to serve God's people in this time and place with a passion and purpose that I am not sure I have ever experienced before. If the enemy of our souls had thought that by taking away my most precious beloved we would be deterred from rising above our situation and beholding the Lord sustaining and lifting us up further for God's glory, he's got another thing coming. Out of these ashes, beauty will indeed most assuredly arise! Watch out as the Lion of Judah moves us with a fresh fire in the fervor of the Spirit of the Lord. As it says in the Scriptures, the zeal of the Lord of Hosts shall accomplish this!

Thank you to all of you who are embarking on the journey together with one another anew as evidenced by many who attended this past Rally Day Sunday's activities. It is with a deep sense of gratitude and awe that I pledge to serve alongside with you as the Lord equips us to serve one another in love. May the joy of the Lord be our strength as we seek in partnership to rebuild our community through Christ, renew our fellowship in the Spirit, and transform people by God's grace. To this end, I remain and continue

Prayerfully yours, and His

Pastor Rex

A Year in the Life: Recounted with Thanksgiving for God’s Faithfulness through Many

It has been a record year in the life of the Espiritu household at New Castle, Indiana. Much has gone on in our lives together as a family that is worthy of time spent for shared reflection in retrospect toward preparing and propelling us forward in faith with renewed zeal, fervor and vision for the glory of the Lord our God in Christ.

 

On 9/11, 2010 marked the passing of my father Mariano G. Espiritu. Six months later on March 13, following an intense bout with cancer, my wife Melissa would go on to be at home in eternity with the Lord. On what would have been Melissa's 50^th birthday weekend in July our family celebrated our youngest child Sara Joy's 7^th birthday near the Golden Gate Bridge in the San Francisco Bay area where Melissa and I had spent some wonderful times together early on in our marriage. And on the 23^rd anniversary of our wedding in August afterward, our six daughters and I remembered their mother upon our arrival in the capital of the Philippines where I was born. These are among the milestones and memory markers we have been enduring through our shared journeys of faith over the past year.

 

During our time this month in the land of my birth, we visited a museum honoring some recent martyrs for the cause of liberty and justice through peaceful democratic reforms opposing a previous dictatorial regime's human rights abuses. One of the names listed on the memorial stone wall there was that of my mother's older brother. My uncle Francisco, an outspoken leader for freedom in his township, had been tortured and killed when abducted by some henchmen of one of the Marcos regime's political cronies on the eve of the snap election(s) that had been apparently rigged in favor of the incumbent dictatorship a few decades ago. It was at this place of honored remembrance that we found another, for us, notable name recorded among the earlier vocal leaders speaking out against the then emerging dictator's crimes against humanity. At a time when other ecclesiastical leaders among the clergy in the Philippines were silent, the Rev. Cirilo A. Rigos voiced opposition against the oppression of what would later manifest as martial law.

 

Before Melissa and I ever met, this Presbyterian pastor who ministered to my sister and me and our parents during my early childhood in Manila had also ministered with Melissa, her parents and sisters while having had his training in ministry at their childhood church in Rochester, New York. Upon reading of his justice work in the plight of the Filipino people, we so very much sensed the Lord's Providence in our lives together through the generations as God's will continues to be worked out for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

 

Not unlike I would imagine the greatest generation's remembrances of seminal events in the North Atlantic theater of World War II might be along the beaches of Normandy and elsewhere in Europe, our family spent significant times toward the end of our last week along the shores of Subic Bay and the island of Corregidor remembering the remarkable events of WWII in the theater of the South Pacific among the waters between Asia and Australia. After touring an old lighthouse and presiding over a brief memorial service at an old Spanish mission's island chapel, it was there by the dock at the end of the pier on the south side beach of Corregidor that we were blessed to share in solemn solitude the spreading of my father's ashes upon the wind over the waters at the mouth of Manila Bay near the South China Sea. It was more heartening for me than I had expected or could ever dream for us to experience honoring the memory of my father and his service during WWII in this way at this time and place. We were blessed with such good weather and people with us on that special day among all the days of our travels.

 

Thank you, Beloved, for your prayers and support of our family in the work of grief and faith this year. In the words of General Douglas MacArthur, not only "I shall return," but we are glad to have returned home. In God's Grace and Peace, with you and yours, together we continue

Pastor Rex

A Celebration of Women: an evening in honor of Melissa Espiritu | Facebook

A Celebration of Women: an evening in honor of Melissa Espiritu

Type:	Party - Dinner Party
Date:		Monday, May 10, 2010
Time:		5:00pm - 7:00pm
Location:		First Presbyterian Church
Street:		1202 Church St
City/Town:		New Castle, IN
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Description

A Celebration of Women

an evening dedicated to the life of

Melissa Espiritu

 
 

All mothers, daughters, sisters, friends

please join us!

 
 

First Presbyterian Church, New Castle, IN

Monday, May 10, 2010 at 5:00 p.m.

 
 

Salad pitch-in with chocolate fountain of goodies provided for dessert!

Music by John Lansinger

Speaker: Annette Goggin

 
 

For reservations, please contact the church

office@NewCastleFPC.org

              765.529.3703         765.529.3703

 
 

http://NewCastleFPC.org

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Order of Service of Witness to the Resurrection – Melissa Q. Espiritu

A Service of Witness to

Celebrate the Resurrection and the Life in memory of

Melissa Q. Espiritu

July 10, 1960 - March 13, 2010

 

 

 

 

Organ Prelude    Trumpet Voluntary    Jeremiah Clark

Andrea Hughes

 

Musical Offering    My Tribute/God is So Good

Ed Dimangondayao

His Eye is on the Sparrow

Sophie and Daniel Buchanon

 

Opening Words    Pastor Bob Maravalli

Prayer of Invocation

 

*Songs of Praise    Awesome God

Blessed Be Your Name

Amazing Grace/My Chains Are Gone

 

Old Testament Lesson    Psalm 118    Pastor Rose Niles

 

Personal Reflections    Carmen Cash

 

*Song of Thanksgiving    Great Is Thy Faithfulness

 

New Testament Lessons

John 14:1-6    Pastor Clark Hobbey

2 Corinthians 4:15-5:7        Pastor Jeff Gramza

*Hymn    It Is Well With My Soul

Romans 8:18-39

 

Musical Offering    With Hope    Steven Curtis Chapman

Levi Velasco    

Meditation    "Is There Life After Life?"    Pastor Bob

 

Prayer and The Lord's Prayer

 

Offering of Music    You Raise Me Up

Levi and Diane Velasco

Ed Dimangondayao

Andrea and Bryan Hughes

 

Charge

Benediction

 

*Song of Assurance    In Christ Alone

Keith Getty and Stuart Townsend

 

*Declaration of Victory over Death

 

*Postlude    Tocatta    Widor

 

 

* Please stand as you are able.

with hope….

 
 

This is not at all… how

We thought it was supposed to be

We had so many plans for you

We had so many dreams

And now you've gone away

And left us with the memories of your smile

And nothing we can say

And nothing we can do

Can take away the pain

The pain of losing you, but ...

 
 

We can cry with hope

We can say goodbye with hope

'Cause we know our goodbye is not the end, oh no

And we can grieve with hope

'Cause we believe with hope

There's a place where we'll see your face again

We'll see your face again

 
 

And never have I known

Anything so hard to understand

And never have I questioned more

The wisdom of God's plan

But through the cloud of tears

I see the Father's smile and say well done

And I imagine you

Where you wanted most to be

Seeing all your dreams come true

'Cause now you're home

And now you're free, and ...

 
 

We can cry with hope

We can say goodbye with hope

'Cause we know our goodbye is not the end, oh no

And we can grieve with hope

'Cause we believe with hope

There's a place where we'll see your face again

We'll see your face again

We'll see your face again

 
 

We have this hope as an anchor

'Cause we believe that everything

God promised us is true, so ...

 
 

We can cry with hope

We can say goodbye with hope

'Cause we know our goodbye is not the end, oh no

And we can grieve with hope

'Cause we believe with hope

There's a place by God's grace

There's a place where we'll see your face again

We'll see your face again

 
 

We can cry with hope, say goodbye with hope

 
 

We wait with hope

And we ache with hope

We hold on with hope

We let go with hope

 
 

(by Steven Curtis Chapman)

 
 

1 Thessalonians 4:13-14 / Hebrews 6:9, 10:23

 
 

The Courier Times - New Castle, IN | Melissa Q. Espiritu

Monday, March 15, 2010     Melissa Q. Espiritu     Monday, March 15, 2010         Melissa Q. Espiritu, 49, of New Castle, went on to be with the Lord on Saturday, March 13, 2010. She was born July 10, 1960 in Rochester, NY, a daughter of Hiram and Donna (Hamilton) Quine.      Born and raised in New York state, Melissa attended James Madison High School in Rochester, NY, graduating as class valedictorian in 1978. She also graduated from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo, with a Bachelor's of Science Degree in Physical Therapy in 1982. As a young physical therapist, she served and ministered care for the health and wholeness of patients at Mount Vernon Hospital, New York and Westchester County Medical Center, Valhalla, NY in the oncology and trauma units. An avid swimmer, she loved to cheer for swimming and other sports teams very enthusiastically.      Melissa was an ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church (USA), was a living example of faith, dedicated wife and mother, loved her husband into wholeness and prayed him into power for ministry. She was involved in the children's ministry at PCUSA churches in Pittsburgh, PA, Medford, NJ, and at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in partnership with First Presbyterian Church in New Castle, where she was also a VBS leader and nurturer. Melissa was a mentor to young mothers as she had been mentored as a young mom. Whether at the grocery store or the library, she befriended many, praying for their well-being. With the joy of the Lord as her strength, she imparted a heart for worship and missions to others with the compassion and love of Jesus Christ. She loved lighthouses, bed & breakfasts, and walking alongside the ocean.       She leaves to cherish her memory, her husband, the Reverend Rex Espiritu, pastor of First Presbyterian Church of New Castle, whom she married at Mt. Vernon First Presbyterian Church on August 1, 1987; six daughters, Christina, a student at Huntington University, Hannah, L. Grace, Tabitha, Priscilla, and Sara Espiritu, all at home; her parents, Hiram and Donna Quine, who both reside in the Rochester Presbyterian Home in Rochester, NY; a sister, Marcia Snoberger of Fort Ashby, West Virginia; her mother-in-law, Natividad Espiritu of New Castle; nieces and nephews including, Uriah, Aaron, and Hayley Snoberger, Sarah Love, Rachel and Adam Kohlmeier; several aunts, uncles and cousins.      She was preceded in death by a sister, Tracey Kohlmeier, and her father-in-law, Mariano G. Espiritu.      A Service of Witness to the Resurrection in Celebration of the life of Melissa will be at 2:00 p.m. Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at the First Presbyterian Church in New Castle officiated by the Reverend Dr. Robert Maravalli, Pastor of Congregational Life Ministries at Mt. Lebanon United Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, PA. Friends may call from 6-9 p.m. Monday, March 15, 2010 and 9-11 a.m. Tuesday at Hinsey-Brown Funeral Service in New Castle. Memorial contributions may be given to Compassion International, Colordo Springs, CO 80997, or United Marriage Encounter, P.O. Box 209, Muscatine, IA 52761-0209, with envelopes available at the funeral home. Online condolences may be expressed at www.hinsey-brown.com.      March 13, 2010
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