A theologian pondered how we can draw near to the throne of grace and what role prayer plays in this. He thought of a boat that was attached to the shore with a long rope. Once that boat was far out into the sea, the crew began to pull on the line. As the distance closed between land and boat, the sailors might have been tempted to think that they were drawing the land toward themselves. But, of course, the land did not move one inch. Rather, it was the boat that moved as it was steadily pulled toward the land. And just like that, we are to attach our desires to God’s throne with prayer. 

Last week I spent an unexpectedly long time in small-town Alaska—in a town that revolves around commercial fishing. If you’ve seen shows like Deadliest Catch, you’ve seen Amaknak Island which forms part of the sprawling Aleutian chain. You’ve seen the town of Unalaska and its harbor, Dutch Harbor. You’ve seen the fleet that heads into the dangerous Bering Sea to fish for crab. You’ve seen the outsized characters who captain these boats and who man them.
We had the interesting experience of spending a couple of afternoons on one of these boats to see how crab is hauled up from the depths (and, later, how it is cleaned, cut, cooked, and devoured). The owners of the boat, a delightful Christian couple, were eager to show us their trade and to answer all of our questions. On Sunday we worshipped with their church as part of our Worship Round the World project. On Monday morning we prepared to head home. And then everything started to get strange.
As morning broke we saw that a deep, low fog had settled in and we learned that every flight to the mainland had been canceled. No ferries run this time of year and there is no other way off the island except to fly, so we would need to wait it out. The fog remained on Tuesday and flights were canceled again. On Wednesday a volcano that had erupted in Russia blew volcanic ash east over the Aleutians and flights were grounded for that reason. On Thursday a volcano in western Alaska erupted and spewed ash west over the Aleutians, once again grounding flights. How the same wind can blow ash both east and west I’ll never know! On Friday the bad weather returned, until finally Saturday was clear enough that planes could once again come and go.
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If we are going to make the effort of organizing a day of food and games, why not be creative to think of ways of inviting the wider community to take part in the fun? We need to remember that much of our salt and light is the shared life that we enjoy together. The more we can get ourselves out of the building and out into the wider community, the more the basket will be lifted and our light seen.

Here is a question that I hope everyone cares about: How can we do more mission together as a congregation?
Now, there are two ways to answer the question. The first and more obvious answer is simply to do more stuff. More activities equal more mission. Therefore, if we want more mission, we just need to add events to the calendar. The logic is clear here – but so is the cost. Doing more requires asking more of people. If this method is effective, it is also taxing. A church that is intent to always do more will be a church whose members are often flagging.
Fortunately, there is a second way of answering the question. This is not to do more, but rather to do better. Here the objective is to take what is already happening and to continually improve it. Often, this might mean not adding new missional events to the calendar, but adding a missional element to something already scheduled. For example, a youth event can simply be an in-house event for teenagers already attending HEC, or a banner can be printed and a wider invitation offered so that the scheduled event becomes a missional outreach.
The great benefits of this second method are ease and simplicity. By focusing on doing better (instead of doing more) we conserve the limited time and energy of our members. We ensure that people are not so tied up with church activities that they lose their freedom for the other frontlines that God has given them i.e. work, family, friends, and additional service opportunities.
Keeping the latter model in mind, we will soon be adding a missional element to two regular events that happen in the life of HEC.
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The Proverbs speak often about honest work and the importance of guarding against laziness and sloth (Prov. 12:24, 27; 15:19; 18:9; 19:24, 21:25; 22:13, 24:30; 26:13–15, KJV). And this is the type of sloth that most people think of when they think of sloth. Where the theologically slothful are misapplying doctrine, the proverbially slothful are choosing sinful foolishness over God’s way of godly wisdom. A man who doesn’t even work to take care of his basic needs is foolish and slothful. 

When was the last time you used the term sloth? It doesn’t count if you talked to one of your children about a minor character in Ice Age or Zootopia. A quick Google Ngram search, which allows users to chart the frequency of words and phrases in literature, shows that the use of the word sloth peaked in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and nineteenth centuries. Now, let’s go one step further. When was the last time you repented of sloth as a sin? Maybe never. Should sloth even be a sin on your radar as something for which Jesus died, something for which we should repent?
What Is Sloth?
Sloth is one of the seven deadly sins in Dante’s famous work The Divine Comedy, and Dante considers sloth from the perspective of love. He puts three of the seven deadly sins under the theme of love distorted: pride, envy, and anger. He puts another three sins under the theme of love excessive: avarice, gluttony, and lust. In between the first three and the last three, Dante places a single sin, sloth, calling it “love defective.”1
With this theme of sloth as “love defective,” Dante comes close to a biblical definition of sloth. Sloth isn’t just laziness. There is a deeper inner motivation to sin that, at its core, is a defective love. Biblically speaking, sloth is laziness that comes from carelessness about the commands and priorities of God, a lack of love for God and His ways that undermines a biblical doctrine of vocation (Judg. 18:9; Eccl. 10:18; Matt. 25:26, KJV). For a working model of sloth, we can consider two different types of sloth—theological and proverbial.
Theological Sloth
The Christians at Thessalonica had what we might call an over-realized eschatology. It seems that someone had sent a Pauline forgery to the church at Thessalonica, teaching that the day of the Lord had already come (2 Thess. 2:2). And in the soil of false theology, sinful idleness had sprung up (2 Thess. 3:6).
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