by Keith Bassham
The start of 2014 got here quickly. That is inelegant syntax, but it carries my thought well enough. And to mark the event on the calendar, I have a couple of things to say about calendars.
First, I have asked BBC President Mark Milioni to contribute something beyond his regular column to this issue. He has obliged by providing an edited version of a sermon preached when he was a pastor in Ohio. Here you will enjoy both the warmth of a pastor’s thinking as well as the results of research on an interesting subject. For instance, have you wondered why October and November, whose names imply the numerals 8 and 9, refer to the 10th and 11th months of the year? President Milioni explains that and much more in his article about the development of the calendar and how it relates to our view of Christ.
Second, the Tribune is introducing a new monthly feature in this issue — a prayer calendar featuring the missionaries and ministries of the Baptist Bible Fellowship. You will find the first appearance of the new feature inside the back cover, across from the “Afterwords” column. You can easily remove (or copy) the monthly calendar and place it somewhere as a reminder to pray for your representatives in the field.
And finally, this is the time of year for the annual February Tribune Offering. Pastors and other friends of the Tribune, that annual offering has become more important than ever before for the ongoing work of the magazine. We used to say it helped with the extras — these days it pays for the necessaries. When you receive your appeal, please do not let it get lost in the shuffle. I believe I can assent, with the exception of the date in the following paragraph, to everything our founding editor Noel Smith wrote at such a time as this 60 years ago:
Never before has the earth seen 1954; once it is gone, it will never return. We hope to live and work in every day of it as we shall wish on the last day of next December that we had done. And above everything else, we hope to honor and exalt our Lord Jesus Christ and advance His cause. Above everything else in this world, we want to be accepted by Him. When it pleases Him, we are ready, without murmur or complaint, to release our light grip on The Tribune and everything else in this world. Despite the plowing up of our spirit, we do believe that He is going to make everything come out right before He is through. We believe that God’s blessed providences are sustaining the continuity of all that is good and pure and just and right in the world, even to the smile on an infant’s face; and we believe that there is going to be a great climax. Through days of toil and pain, we believe we are able to say, “He doeth all things well.”