Sharing God's Love and Grace

Amazing Children of the Bible Series: Timothy

Meditation on 1 Timothy chapter 6 verses 6 through 16

Rev. Dr. Karen Crawford

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Sept. 20, 2026

Today, we have the joy of baptizing Valentina Bella McMaster-Castro. Valentina, daughter of Savannah McMaster and Jahn Castro, is my 21^st baptism here at First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown.

Twenty-one doesn’t seem like a large number for baptisms, if you consider the number of children baptized over our congregation’s 351-year history. Twenty-one doesn’t seem like a large number even if you consider those baptized in the 201-year history of our sanctuary. Still, 21 baptisms in 4 years, to me, is a sign of health and vitality. Many Presbyterian congregations, including those on Long Island, don’t have young families anymore. If I were serving in those congregations, I would mourn like a barren woman. The Lord knows this about me and prepared my heart to serve here long before I arrived in 2022. Dear Lord, let me always be faithful to my call and never take our precious children for granted.

Our Amazing Children of the Bible Series ends today with the story of Timothy. Looking back at the children who have inspired us—Miriam, Samuel, David, Solomon, Josiah, the Little Maid of Israel, Daniel, and the Boy who Shared His Loaves and Fish, I would have to say that Timothy stands out not because he did more amazing things but because he is the most ordinary of them all. Timothy, though he has been made a saint and is honored with feast days in the Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Episcopalian, and Lutheran churches, has never seemed larger than life—not like the legendary Daniel, who survived a fiery furnace and a lion’s den, or David, who slew Goliath with a slingshot and a few small stones.

Friends, let me assure you that we have overwhelming evidence that Timothy existed. New Testament books, such as Acts, and several of the letters of Paul, are full of clues about his life and family, his missionary journeys and ministry. Additionally, outside the New Testament, an apocrypha book called “The Acts of Timothy,” written in the 5^th century A.D. after the canon of the New Testament was complete, provides more information.

This is some of what we know of the one whose name appears as the co-author of Philippians, Corinthians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and Philemon and the one who has two New Testament epistles named for him—1 and 2 Timothy. We know that he was a close companion and messenger of Paul, who was his mentor and spiritual father. Paul called him his “dear and faithful child in the Lord.” But Timothy didn’t have Paul’s personality. He was reserved and shy. He was known, however, for his pastoral care. Paul said that he could be trusted above many others for his pastoral concern and his gentle tact in dealing with awkward situations. When in prison, Paul wrote to the Christian community at Philippi, “I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I may be cheered by news of you. I have no one like him, who will be genuinely anxious for your welfare. They all look after their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But Timothy’s worth you know, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel.” (Phil. 2:19-22)

When I think of how he struggled with confidence and had to work to gain the respect of the churches he served, Timothy seems very human to me. Paul says in 1 Timothy 4:12, sending the young man to the Corinthian church, embroiled in conflicts and divisions,^“Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” Paul again encourages his mentee in 2 Timothy 1:7-8, “for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline. Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God.” While Paul urged Timothy to step outside his comfort zone for the Lord’s sake, he also felt protective of him and worried how other churches would treat him. He warns the Corinthian church before the young man arrives, saying, “When Timothy comes, see that you put him at ease among you, for he is doing the work of the Lord, as I am.”

Timothy seems ever more human when Paul mentions the younger man’s health problems that must have made ministry a challenge but still did not keep him from the work. Paul tells him in 1 Timothy 5:23, “No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments.” Those who honor Timothy as a saint today invoke his name against stomach and intestinal disorders. Timothy’s faith journey, like many of ours, began at home. He grew up in Lystra in Lycaonia, now part of present-day Turkey. His mother, Eunice, and grandmother, Lois, were Jewish Christians. His father was Greek—a Gentile, but we know very little about him. He may have died when Timothy was young.

Paul came to Lystra on his second missionary journey and learned of Timothy’s faith and reputation. He was, as Acts 16:2 describes, “well-spoken of by the brothers at Lystra and Iconium.” Timothy was probably a late teenager at the time, when he agreed to accompany Paul. Before he could go, though, Paul had him circumcised. He was concerned that Jewish believers would not take him seriously if he were not. Also, before they left, prophecies were made about the youth (1 Timothy 1:18) and the council of elders (in 4:14) laid hands on him and prayed. Early Church Fathers, such as Augustine in the 4^th century, admired Timothy for his “zeal” and willingness to immediately forsake “his country, his house, and his parents, to follow the apostle and share in his poverty and sufferings.”[1] St John Chrysostom (in his Homilies on First and Second Timothy in the 4^th century) “praises Timothy’s extraordinary maturity and virtue, noting that his youth was never an obstacle to his spiritual leadership.”[2]

Timothy was with Paul during many important ministry moments. He was in Corinth “during the winter of AD 57–58 when Paul dispatched his Letter to the Romans (and he was with his mentor) in Macedonia just before Passover in AD 58; he left the city before Paul, going ahead of him to await (him) in Troas.[3] Then, Paul left Timothy to shepherd the church in Ephesus around AD 64.

Eusebius of Caesarea (in his Church History) records that Timothy was the first bishop appointed to the church of Ephesus by the Apostle Paul, a tradition echoed by other early writers such as Ignatius of Antioch. And as Timothy aged, he overcame his timidity. The writer of The Acts of Timothy describes his martyr’s death in AD 97, when he was about 80, attempting to stop the violence at a pagan festival. Ultimately, he lived as his mentor urged him to live, as a “man of God,” shunning the pursuit of riches, and pursuing instead “righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.” He fought “the good fight of the faith.” He took “hold of the eternal life.”

Today, we baptized Valentina Bella McMaster-Castro. Christ claimed her as his own. The Holy Spirit filled her with gifts that will grow and strengthen her to walk with God and be what the Lord wants her to be. And we promised, you and I, just like we promised for the other 19 children we have baptized since May 2022, that we would help her family raise her in the faith, hope, and love of Jesus Christ. How will we do this, dear friends? How will we encourage little Tina and her parents?

We will need to keep reaching out to them—when they are here and when they are not. They need their church family in this important work of raising up Tina, helping her learn to labor for the gospel and feel Christ’s loving presence with her. Just think, maybe someday, she will be like Timothy, Miriam, David or Daniel! The Little Maid of Israel. The Boy who shared his Loaves and Fish.

Sisters and brothers, may we be good examples to Tina and her family and be bold in our witness, like Paul urged Timothy long ago. May we always be faithful to our calling to ministry and never take our precious children for granted. Dear ones, let us be content, not comparing ourselves to our neighbors, never trying to keep up with the Jones, not always wanting more. May we keep from falling into the trap of pursuing riches and wander from the faith! May we, with God’s help, pursue “righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.” Fight the good fight! Take hold of the eternal life!

Let us pray.

Holy One, thank you for all the young families and young children in our congregation! What a blessing they are to us! Thank you for allowing us the privilege and joy of baptizing Valentina today! Help us to help her and her family walk with your Son all their days. Teach us to be bold and never timid or fearful in our witness. Strengthen us, like Paul urges Timothy, not to pursue riches, but instead to be content and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. May we always be faithful to our calling and never take our precious children for granted. Lead us to fight the good fight and take hold of the eternal life. In the name of Christ we pray. Amen.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Timothy

[2] https://bkv.unifr.ch/de/works/cpg-4436-1/versions/homilies-of-st-john-chrysostom-on-the-first-epistle-of-st-paul-the-apostle-to-timothy/divisions/2

[3] Raymond Brown (1997), An Introduction to the New Testament, New York: Doubleday, p. 655.

Amazing Children of the Bible Series: The Boy with Loaves and Fish

Meditation on John 6:1-14

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY

Rev. Dr. Karen Crawford

Sept. 13, 2026: Rally Day!

Kathy and her daughter, Jessica, left a present for me on my desk a week or so ago. I didn’t know why, at first, the Sunday School teachers gave me a plastic bag filled with rolled up papers. Looking more closely, I realized that they were the prayers their students wrote last fall. Those who couldn’t write, dictated them. They wrote on stationary printed with a Bible verse about prayer. They drew and colored pictures with them, rolled them up, and taped them shut, before including them in a bulletin board on prayer. I treated the prayers gingerly as I opened the sacred gift. I wonder, would you like to know the prayers of our children? As I unrolled and picked off tape, I prayed with them, beginning with a teacher’s “Please guide me in Sunday School.”

One child’s prayer had G-O-D sprawled at the top in capital letters, with a smiling-faced figure, draped in red, floating with a halo. Another was simple and sweet—a smiley face and a heart. Another was a circle with an old school clock face with numbers and hands. I was puzzled, and then I understood. The stationery was printed with I Thessalonians 5:16-18, “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances.” It’s about time, isn’t it? Every hour, every minute, every second of our lives should be filled with prayer. Two of the prayers contained colorful rainbows coming out of pencil clouds. Another was a winged creature with long, flowing hair, framed by a triangle of yellow light, surrounded by a blue sky. Two children carefully printed, “I Love God” and one added a child walking hand in hand with an adult through a grassy area with flowers. Another child prayed, “Dear God, we love you so much. You gave everyone a good life.” Another said, “Dear loving God, thank you for helping me have a great teacher.” Another wrote, “Deare God, thank you for the world and pls 4give me 4 asking 4 a sister.” Smiley face. Still another prayed, “Dear God, please keep Miss Kathy happy. Thank you, God.” The child added a self-portrait with his teacher and a flower, with the dictated words, “a tulip for Miss Kathy.”

The Amazing Children of the Bible series continues today with an anonymous boy with 5 loaves and 2 fish. Except that he may not be a boy. The Greek word translated boy really means child—girl or boy, but could also be a small child, teenager, or slave. I will try to explain. Four Greek words are translated child or slave in the gospel of John. Teknon (τέκνον) in John 1:12 emphasizes a family relationship, “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children (teknon) of God.” Teknion (τεκνίον) is the diminutive, affectionate form of teknon, meaning “little children” or “dear children,” but John doesn’t use the word to describe an actual child. Jesus addresses his disciples in John 13:33, saying, ^“Little children, I am with you only a little longer. … ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’”

The third word translated “child” is paidion (παιδίον), which means a young child, possibly an infant. The risen Christ uses this word when he calls from the shore to his grieving disciples in their boat in John 21:5, saying, “Children (παιδίον), which could also mean infants, “you have no fish, have you?” They answer him, “No.”

A fourth word that may be translated “child” is the affectionate, diminutive form of paidion. Andrew calls the child in this passage παιδάριον (paidarion). This form of the word is found only here and nowhere else in the New Testament. The child, one scholar says, could be the same young, female slave who will make a brief appearance in the passion narrative in John 18:17, “a servant girl–paidiskē (παιδίσκη)– at the door asks Peter, “You aren’t one of this man’s disciples too, are you?” and Peter replies, “I am not.” But really, we can’t know if this is true. Especially when other Greek words are commonly used for slave, such as when Mary calls herself δούλη (doule) as she sings her song of praise in Luke.

The only thing that can be known about the child is that they were probably quite young. Indeed, the child doesn’t speak here. He or she approaches Andrew, not Jesus, with his gift, and Andrew speaks for him. In any case, “the ‘child’ was old enough to carry the food for at least one family.”[1] I got to thinking yesterday… without this child in this place, at this moment, when everyone is hungry and there’s nothing to eat, would there be any miraculous feeding of a multitude? Everything hinges on the faithful act of a child, doesn’t it?

Jesus already knew the miracle he was going to do when he says to Philip, testing him, pushing his buttons, “Hmmmmm. Where shall we buy loaves so that these shall eat?” You can imagine the twinkle in his eyes. Philip answers like any good engineer. He does the math. “Two hundred denarii’s loaves are not enough for each of them to get even a little to eat.” Two hundred denarii are about 7 or 8 months’ worth of wages for an ancient laborer.

You and me, we know what’s going to happen as soon as Andrew, identified as Simon Peter’s (probably younger) brother, says, “There is a child here, παιδάριον (paidarion), who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?”

We know that this story is important to the ministry of Jesus because it is told in all four gospels; only in John is there mention of a child. His telling emphasizes how the Lord wants to use small, humble, insignificant people to do mighty things that the rich, powerful, and worldly cannot. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:26-28, ^“Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong…” Does God care about children in the ancient world, when others overlook them and their gifts? Yes. Once again, we see how the Lord historically uses children for God’s loving purposes. Does the Lord love our children today and hear, treasure, and respond to their prayers? Most certainly!

I am glad Kathy and Jessica saved the prayers for me! I will keep them! It is good to see that our young children trust in God’s power and love enough to ask for healing for their loved ones. Sometimes, we might worry that we aren’t doing enough to prepare our children and youth for all that they will face in this world. Will their faith be strong enough to weather the storms? But then we read how one prayed, “Watch over, help and cure Alison!” “Dear God,” prayed another, “Please watch over my family, friends, and especially my papa, who is struggling with Alzheimer’s.” Another, for a grandfather recovering from surgery. “Dear God,” says still another, “I really hope that you can let Uncle Jar live for a long time. Amen.” While all the prayers touched my heart and made me smile, especially as I read the names, some brought tears. I could see how one boy’s growing faith is helping him live out Christ’s call to love God and neighbor and defend the oppressed. He prayed, “Dear God, thank you for helping me and my friend help a kid that was being bullied.”

The child in this passage may have been the only one in the crowd with any food. That’s what we assume. But then again, what if they weren’t the only one with food? What if they were simply the only one to do the right thing? They placed their trust in Jesus and gave generously—all that they had, holding nothing back. Christ multiplied what seemed to be a tiny gift to feed thousands of people, with baskets of food left over! Just think, dear friends, what God can do with all the gifts that we could give the Lord! Can you imagine, sisters and brothers, the countless generations who have heard this story and come to believe because of the faithful act of one child? Now take a moment and consider all who may come to believe when they hear the story from you, in your own words. Imagine how it will be when they come to know and love the Messiah, Son of God, Living Bread, and prophet who has come into the world.

Let us pray. Gracious God, thank you for our Sunday School children and their teachers and families who are leading them to pray and grow in faith, hope, and love. We praise you for the way that you use what seems to be a tiny gift of one child to bless a multitude with abundance—baskets of bread left over. Thank you for this child’s example of generosity and trust. Help us to do the right thing, too. Teach us to rejoice, give thanks in every circumstance, and pray always. Move us to give of ourselves freely, generously, and gratefully, without holding back in fear that we won’t have enough. Stir us to share the stories of Jesus in our own words so that others will come to know and love your Son, the Messiah, Living Bread, and prophet who has come into the world. Amen.

[1]J. Ramsey Michaels, The Gospel of John in The New International Commentary of the New Testament series (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 346.

Amazing Children of the Bible Series: Daniel

Meditation on Daniel 1:1-17

Rev. Dr. Karen Crawford

World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation

Sept. 6, 2026

When Wendell Berry was 30, “he confronted in himself a deep need to return to his roots.” He moved “to an old two-room cabin on the Kentucky River at Port Royal, in Henry County, where his ancestors had lived since 1803.” “The cabin had been built in the 1920s by a great-uncle,” says a New York Times obituary, published Aug. 31. He called the cabin, ‘Long Legged House.’ “He had known the place all his life; … had visited it often as a boy and spent a summer there with his wife, Tanya.”[1] He had been raised on a tobacco farm in north-central Kentucky in a family who had farmed for 5 generations. He had gone to college, “studied English at the University of Kentucky and writing at Stanford.” A Gugenheim fellowship carried him to Italy and France in 1961. He landed in New York, intending to write and teach. He … had two children (with Tanya, whom he had married in 1957.) And he taught for two years at New York University” before going home to the land and agrarian life that was calling to him and would never let him go.

“Wendell Berry, a Kentucky farmer who plowed his fields behind Belgian draft horses and wrote lyrical poems, novels and essays — mostly in pencil and without electric light … died on Monday at his home in Port Royal, Ky. He was 92.” He considered himself a Christian and often cited the 4 gospels as his source for truth and inspiration for how he lived his life, including his sacred connection to the land and call to care for God’s creation. Returning to his home as a place to write for the rest of his life was a way to ensure, to himself, that he would always be bound by the truth, Wendell said in 2018. “It made a permanent connection between me and my native place, and with its landscape,’ he said. ‘The landscape was there to check me if I was wrong. I could never go away and make up stuff at cocktail parties about the backwoods of Kentucky. I worked with people here in all walks of life and learned from them.”

“He rebuilt the Long-Legged House and began writing there about sustainable agriculture and the culture of life on small farms and in farming towns.” He argued how “such places were vital to individual liberties and why they were rapidly disappearing from a landscape increasingly afflicted with topsoil erosion, polluted water and toxic chemicals.” In 1964, Wendell and Tanya “bought a 125-acre farm… and started raising sheep, corn and grain crops, and planted gardens for their own table.” He began teaching at the University of Kentucky in Lexington and for the next 50 plus years, he wrote with a pencil or pen on paper during daylight hours and refused to use electric lights at the Long-Legged House because “the power was supplied by strip-mined coal. His wife critiqued his work and typed his manuscripts on an old Royal standard. He refused to have a television set, or a computer after they came along.”

He first won national attention in 1977 with his essay, “The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture.” He wrote of the need to “save small farms from big business and a government bent on agricultural efficiencies that … were destroying the land and a way of life. The book launched the modern movement for sustainable farming and became a conservationist classic.” He would go on to write, in addition to his nonfiction, 9 novels, 58 short stories, and 30 volumes of poetry. He called many of the collections, “Sabbath Poems,” written for others to enjoy in nature, stirred by his habit of walking out onto the land on Sunday mornings.

He was an activist. He famously defended family farms in rural communities being replaced by industrial agriculture to the former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz in 1977. He engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience against the construction of a nuclear power plant and joined others blocking the gates to a coal-fired power plant in Washington, D.C. He participated in a rally in Louisville during an EPA hearing on how to manage coal ash. He said, “The EPA knows that coal ash is poison. We ask it only to believe in its own findings on this issue, and do its duty.”[2]

He and 14 other protesters spent the weekend of February 12, 2011, locked in the Kentucky governor’s office to demand an end to mountaintop removal coal mining.

He was criticized by politicians and academics. Dr. Charles Barnhart, a dean at the University of Kentucky’s college of agriculture, said in 1988, “What Wendell is talking about is a primitive agriculture. It’s a nice way of life if you have a rich father and you’re a tenured member of the faculty at a university. But I don’t see a great proportion of the American public returning to farms. And I don’t see it as an industry that would ever be capable of feeding 225 million people.”[3] He won numerous awards, including the National Humanities Medal in 2011, “citing his achievements as a poet, novelist, farmer, and conservationist.”

If we were to write a New York Times obituary for Daniel, we would talk about his surviving a den of lions and a fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. This was after he refused to stop praying to his God three times a day. Nor would he bow down to idols. We would talk about his prophetic visions and the book named for him that is the only “apocalypse” in the Old Testament. Do you know the apocalypse in the New Testament? Revelation. We might mention that Jesus names Daniel in Matthew 24:15 and Mark 13:14, which begin, “So when you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place…” His habit of calling himself the Son of Man may have come from Daniel 7:13-14, “As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being—coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One—and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.”

In his obituary, we would speak of Daniel serving in high government positions under Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius, and Cyrus. But what I am most interested in is the overlooked story in today’s passage of the young boy, one of the Jewish noble children taken and deported to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar in 605 BC.[4] As their 3-year education in all things Chaldean began, the four friends received new identities and were expected to abandon the beliefs and traditions of the faith learned from their people and home in Judah. Daniel, as a teenager, wasn’t about to do that. His first act of quiet defiance was to refuse to consume the king’s food and wine. The palace master, who had become Daniel’s friend, was worried that if he ate only vegetables and water, his health would suffer. The king would see him in poorer condition than the other young men chosen to serve because they were all “handsome and without defect.” Daniel, a great negotiator from his youth, said, “Let me try this for 10 days.”

Are you wondering why Daniel wouldn’t eat and drink what was served in the palace? Well, the Babylonians ate foods not permitted by the dietary laws of his faith—pigs, shellfish, turtles, to name a few. And even if they brought him lamb or other meat that he was accustomed to eating with his family, the meat would not have been slaughtered and prepared in the way the laws required. Finally, the meat and wine of the palace would have been offered up as a sacrifice to the Babylonian gods. At the end of 10 days, Daniel and his three friends looked better and healthier than those consuming royal rations. God rewarded them for their faithfulness—giving them knowledge and skill in every aspect of literature and wisdom. Daniel had insight into all visions and dreams. That one act of turning away from evil—the rich palace food sacrificed to idols—and turning towards goodness set Daniel on the righteous path, walking with the Lord, living his convictions for the rest of his life.

I was sad to hear of the passing of Wendell Berry. He didn’t worry about book sales, criticism, or ridicule. He stayed true to his convictions all his 92 years of life. But I know that people will keep reading his writings and articles about him. They will watch recorded interviews and Laura Dunn’s two documentaries about the one whom NPR’s Dan Charles describes as “America’s foremost farmer philosopher.”[5] Dan says there has even been a small “Wendell Berry renaissance” in recent years. “He’s inspired a new generation of small, organic farmers.” Dan noticed “a quote from Wendell Berry — ‘Eating is an agricultural act’ — on the wall of a glitzy, trendy, food establishment in Manhattan.”

Laura Dunn tells Dan Charles how Wendell’s solution to the problem is with small acts of goodness done faithfully. “As Wendell Berry speaks (in The Seer), the film shows a pair of horses, an intact spider web, and a furniture-maker fitting together two pieces of wood. What he’s saying to me is there is no big solution. It’s broken! We’re all complicit in a broken system, in a broken world. The question isn’t how can I fix it all? But how can I, with my own two hands, do good work, every day? And I find that immensely hopeful!”[6]

Let us pray. Holy God, thank you for your beautiful creation, including human beings, so wonderfully made. Stir us to pray for and care for your creation, to be like Daniel and Wendell Berry, and live out the convictions of our faith. May we never give up. May our small voices join louder ones calling for us to live together in love and seek to bring healing and wholeness to our broken world. In Christ we pray. Amen.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/31/us/wendell-berry-dead.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Berry

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Berry

[4] John J. Collins, Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 2 (D-G) (New York: Doubleday), 29-37.

[5] Dan Charles, “The Gospel According to Wendell Berry, On Screen,” in Food for Thought on NPR, April 24, 2016, accessed Sept. 8, 2026, at https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/04/24/474092842/the-gospel-according-to-wendell-berry-on-screen.

[6] Dan Charles, “The Gospel According to Wendell Berry, On Screen,” at https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/04/24/474092842/the-gospel-according-to-wendell-berry-on-screen.

Amazing Children of the Bible Series: Little Maid of Israel

Meditation on 2 Kings 5:1-14

Reverend Dr. Karen Crawford

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Aug. 30, 2026

Has anyone seen hummingbirds this summer? Does anyone plant certain flowers known to attract and feed hummingbirds? Do you make your own sugar water? Who does both?

I was thinking this week as I washing out the hummingbird feeders and putting in new sugar water, “Why do we like hummingbirds so much?” They bring a sense of wonder and beauty, don’t they, whenever we see them? Even people who aren’t normally bird watchers like to see hummingbirds. Especially when these elusive creatures appear and disappear so quickly at your flowers or feeders, that you may blink your eyes and wonder if you were seeing things. Maybe it was just a big bee, right?

God has created them to be the smallest of all the birds, about the size of a large paperclip and weighing about the same as a penny.[1] They are the fastest of all birds. Their normal flight speed is 20 to 30 miles per hour, when they are moving between flowers and feeding sites.[2] But they can dive at speeds of up to 60 miles an hour during courtship displays. They are the only birds capable of flying forwards, backwards, up, down, and upside down, while also hovering in place. They are remarkably smart.[3] Their brains make up 4.2% of their body mass, compared to just 2% for humans.[4] They remember every flower and feeder they visit, along with the precise time it takes for specific plants to refill with nectar. They can recognize people and often approach and hover around those who regularly fill their feeders. They have been known to look in the windows at people who have fed them. That explains why we have caught one male hummingbird hovering and looking in our kitchen window while we are at the table![5]

In Native American cultures, the hummingbird is a sacred symbol ofjoy, healing, love, and resilience. Because of its incredible speed and boundless energy despite its tiny size, many tribes view the tiny bird as aspiritual messenger, a bringer of good luck, and a fierce protector.[6]

Today, we continue our Amazing Children of the Bible series with the story of the Little Maid of Israel. This is a passage that comes up in our 3-year lectionary cycle, but I have never actually heard a sermon on the Little Maid. Perhaps she, like the elusive hummingbird, is deemed too small and insignificant. When I tried to look up the Little Maid in my scholarly Anchor Bible Dictionary, the only place I could find her story was in the long entry on the powerful soldier Naaman, the commander-in-chief of the army of Aram-Damascus, who had achieved fame on the battlefield and was trusted by his king, Ben Hadad.[7]

The Little Maid, as she has become known, is the nameless girl from Northern Israel who serves Naaman’s wife, who also is not named. Both the Little Maid and the mistress play vital roles in this story of faith and healing, demonstrating how none of us are too small and insignificant to be used in mighty ways by our God. The Little Maid is an unlikely heroine because she is a slave, a female, and a child, probably under the age of 12—three conditions that would make her voiceless and powerless in her own society. She is even more vulnerable because she lives in enemy territory, far from her family, her home, and her community of faith.

Perhaps preachers don’t find enough to share about the Little Maid because she appears in only two verses in this passage and nowhere else in the Bible, while Naaman and his healing are even mentioned by Jesus, without mention of the Little Maid. In Luke 4:27, in his first sermon in his hometown, Jesus says, “And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.” Maybe preachers don’t want to linger long at these two verses about the Little Maid in 2 Kings 5:2-3,^“Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, ‘If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his skin disease.’”

That the little girl clings to the faith of her childhood is remarkable in an era when worship of foreign gods and idols is rampant in Northern Israel, under the leadership of King Ahab. We read in 1 Kings 16:30, “Ahab son of Omri did evil in the sight of the LORD, more than all who were before him. And as if it were a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, he married Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and then proceeded to serve and worship Baal. First, Ahab set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal that he had built in Samaria. Then he set up an Asherah pole. Thus Ahab did more to provoke the LORD, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel before him.” When the Little Maid is captured by the Syrians in a raid, this isn’t a one off. This is a time, the middle of the 9^th century BCE, when there are almost continual conflicts between Israel and Syria and only short intervals of peace.[8]

So, what can we know about the character of the Little Maid? First, as we mentioned, she is truly a child who worships the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Second, her faith stirs her to a compassion that goes beyond what she has been taught as a child when she seeks to care for the enemy of Israel. Remember when Jesus shocks his disciples and the Pharisees when he says to the crowd in Matthew 5:43-44, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” The Little Maid doesn’t appear to resent her servitude or bear hard feelings when she tells her mistress about the prophet Elisha, living in Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom, and his healing power that comes from God.

And third, what’s equally telling of her character is that she has earned the trust of her enemies, including her unnamed mistress and Naaman; they listen eagerly as she shares how Naaman, feeling quite desperate and hopeless because of a seemingly incurable skin disease, might be healed. Naaman then goes and tells the King of Aram what the girl from Israel has said, and he trusts her, as well, and sends Naaman to his enemy, King Ahab, with a pile of money and a letter asking for help from the prophet. Ten talents of silver, weighing 754 pounds, and six thousand shekels of gold, weighing 151 pounds, would have been a massive fortune. Oh, and he brings ten sets of garments fit for a king.

The whole scheme nearly backfires when King Ahab assumes that this gift and request are a ruse to start another war. Elisha intervenes and sends a message telling him to send Naaman to him. The general comes with horses and chariots (the power and machinery of war) and halts at Elisha’s home, only to be greeted by a messenger, telling him to go wash in the waters of the Jordan. Naaman is furious at the prophet’s refusal to meet him face to face. And why would he wash 7 times in Israel’s waters when the waters of his native Damascus are much better? It will be, once again, servants who persuade Naaman to do the right thing. For the high and mighty don’t know the will of God. It’s only the little people who know what Naaman must do.[9] And the God of Israel heals the great general through the sacred waters of the Jordan—the waters in which Israel crossed into the Land of the Promise after 40 years of wilderness wandering. The sacred waters where thousands of years later John will baptize Jesus Christ to show us the way. Naaman will be a changed man after his healing in the Jordan. He will bring home to Aram-Damascus some earth from Israel as a symbol of a newfound faith in Yahweh, the God of Israel.[10]

Dear friends, Jesus has claimed Karina James Sabella today for his own through the waters of Baptism. She has been healed of her sins—washed clean—and has left behind her old identity to take on the garment of Christ.

Her church family has welcomed her into Christ’s Body and vowed to help her parents raise up Karina in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. She has been filled with the gifts of the Spirit that she will need as she seeks to follow Jesus with her life. I hope that we will remember from this message how God often uses what the world deems insignificant, such as a nameless Israelite girl, taken captive by Syrians, to accomplish God’s loving purposes.

May we keep on treasuring God’s creatures great and small, especially the small, and the strength of the faith of a little child, such as Karina Sabella, beloved of God. May the hummingbird be for us, like they are in Native American cultures, a symbol ofjoy, healing, love, and resilience. And may the elusive sight of the tiny, intelligent, speedy creature be a reminder of God’s everlasting presence with us—that when God seems invisible, the Lord may just be moving faster than we can see.[11]

Will you pray with me?

Holy God, we thank you for loving the small, seemingly insignificant people of this world, such as the Little Maid of Israel, a slave, whose faith, hope, bravery, and compassion led to the healing of the Syrian general in the waters of the Jordan. Help us to love our neighbors and our enemies, as the Little Maid models for us. Grant us wisdom and guide us as we seek to nurture Karina Sabella and all the children in our church in the faith, hope, and love of your Son. And thank you for the small, amazing creatures, such as the hummingbird, that remind us of your everlasting presence with us, that when you seem to be invisible to us, you may be moving faster than we can see. In Christ we pray. Amen.

[1] https://oakdale.wbu.com/hummingbirds-fun-facts

[2] https://www.fws.gov/story/hummingbirds-north-america

[3] https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna11697039

[4] https://elemscience.jordandistrict.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/6.4.2.4.7-Five-Amazing-Facts-about-Hummingbirds.pdf

[5] https://www.birdsandblooms.com/birding/birding-basics/hummingbird-meaning/

[6] https://www.thegrandhacienda.com/post/hummingbirds

[7] T. R. Hobbs, “Naaman,” in Anchor Bible Dictionary, v. 4 (K-N)(NY: Doubleday, 1992), 967-968.

[8] Hobbs, “Naaman,” 968.

[9] Hobbs, “Naaman,” 968.

[10] Hobbs, “Naaman,” 968.

[11] https://www.christianitytoday.com/2021/03/hummingbird-wings-god-invisible/

Amazing Children of the Bible Series: Josiah

Meditation on 2 Kings 22 and 23, selected verses

Reverend Dr. Karen Crawford

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

August 23, 2026

How is your garden growing, with all this rain? I was away a few weeks and when I came back, my flowers had grown tall and toppled over.

I tried to do a little gardening this week, when the weather was cool and cloudy. That’s my favorite time to garden. Some of my perennial seedlings were outgrowing their pots and ready to get into the ground. I pulled out my garden tools, put on my work clothes, and was all set to plant when I realized that weeds had overtaken my flower beds.

If I wanted to plant, I needed to do some serious weeding, first. I don’t really like weeding. Do any of you like to weed? I like the way the garden looks after I weed. It’s a great feeling of accomplishment. But the process is sweaty, dirty, and tiring.

As I am weeding, I realize that by putting off the task, I have made it more difficult. The roots have had time to grow deep into the soil. Some that I pull break off at the stem and then it’s quite a job to get to the root. That happen to you?

The other thing I realize when I remove the large weeds is they have grown together with the flowers and have begun to rely on each other for stability, though they compete for sun, water, and space. Even when the flower stays in place, it might collapse without the weeds to lean on if I pull too late into the season. I know that I have to add new plants where some of the large weeds were growing or the weeds may return to fill the space.

As I sweat and strain and try not to touch poison ivy, I am reminded how sin can grow in our spiritual lives—and be sneaky like weeds. We don’t realize they have grown such deep roots until we are suddenly faced with a trial or crisis of faith, and they shoot up and threaten to strangle us like unruly grapevines, leaving us struggling with fear and worry, anger and unforgiveness, spiritual weariness and discontent, cynicism and doubt, or sadness and despair. When our spiritual lives are cluttered with and weakened by the weeds of sin, we are more tempted to worship contemporary idols, such as the idol of working and staying busy all day long for us to feel good about ourselves, and the status of achievement and ownership, and the idol of loving our money and possessions too much.

God’s people in ancient times were constantly tempted to adopt the idols of their neighbors especially when they were feeling more vulnerable or insecure, such as in times of fear and anxiety, war and scarcity, sickness and death, barrenness and famine. Powerful idols and gods were still being worshiped in Judah about 300 years after Solomon’s reign, when young Josiah in the 7^th century BC became the 16th king of Judah, the Southern Kingdom of Israel. He was 8 years old when his 24-year-old father, King Amon, was assassinated just two years into his reign by his own officials and servants in his palace. Amon is most remembered for his idolatrous practices; 2 Kings 21:18-26 says that Amon set up pagan images and “did that which was evil in the sight of Yahweh, as did Manasseh his father,” who rebuilt the high places that his father, the righteous King Hezekiah, had taken down, erecting altars for Baal, the Canaanite and Phoenician storm and fertility god, and his consort Asherah, a mother and fertility goddess. Asherah represented motherhood, creation, and the sea and was often symbolized by sacred trees or pillars. The people of Israel also worshiped the “starry hosts,” treating the sun, moon, planets, and stars as living gods, praying to the celestial bodies and building altars to them on rooftops, believing that they controlled fate, weather, and harvests.

Josiah’s reign spanned 31 years (from around 640 to 609 BC), during which time he expanded Judah’s borders and initiated major religious reforms—rebuilding and renovating Solomon’s temple, centralizing worship in Jerusalem, and eliminating the worship of foreign gods. This was not easily done, especially since his father’s and grandfather’s reigns had been filled with corruption and idolatry. Josiah was moved to do this after hearing the “Book of the Law,” found in the House of the Lord by the high priest Hilkiah during the renovation project.

Scholars believe that the “Book of the Law” or “Covenant” was probably Deuteronomy, the fifth and final book of the Torah, or at least the core legal parts of it from chapters 12 through 26. Others believe that Hilkiah found the entire Torah, the five books of Moses.

After he removed from the temple of the Lord all the articles made for Baal and Asherah and all the starry hosts and burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron Valley, he did away with the idolatrous priests appointed by the kings of Judah to burn incense on the high places of the towns of Judah and on those around Jerusalem. He took the Asherah pole from the temple of the Lord to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem and burned it there. He ground it to powder and scattered the dust. He pulled down the altars the kings of Judah had erected and smashed them to pieces and threw the rubble into the Kidron Valley. “The king also desecrated the high places that were east of Jerusalem on the south of the Hill of Corruption—the ones Solomon king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the vile goddess of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the vile god of Moab, and for Molek the detestable god of the people of Ammon.”

Then he ordered the people, “Celebrate the Passover to the Lord Your God, as it is written in the Book of the Covenant. Neither in the days of the judges who led Israel nor in the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah had any such Passover been observed. But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah, this Passover was celebrated to the Lord in Jerusalem. Furthermore, Josiah got rid of the mediums and spiritists, the household gods, the idols and all the other detestable things seen in Judah and Jerusalem… ²⁵Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did—with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses.”

After all that Josiah did to turn back to God and cleanse the temple and the hearts, minds, and religious traditions of God’s people, the Lord was faithful to forgive them! God is always merciful and gracious, dear friends! God is always ready to forgive us and set our feet on righteous paths. We have new mercies every morning! Great is thy faithfulness!

How is Josiah remembered? Sadly, he died from arrow wounds after fighting Pharaoh Necco II of Egypt in 609 BC in Northern Israel. He is mourned deeply by the people of Judah and the prophet Jeremiah. Second Chronicles 35:25 tells how Jeremiah composed a special funeral song or lament honoring the king’s devotion to God. He is remembered for following the Lord completely, with an undivided heart, like David and not like Josiah’s father, Amon, or grandfather, Manasseh. He is remembered for purging the temple and the land of its idolatry and setting in motion a reformation that included the public celebration of the Passover, which continues to be the most celebrated feast in the Jewish religion. His death marked the close of the final era of spiritual revival before the Babylonian Exile. Finally, he is remembered in the genealogy of Jesus Christ in the first chapter of the gospel of Matthew, where we read in verses 10 and 11, “Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Amon, Amon the father of Josiah, and Josiah the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon.”

This is my hope, dear sisters and brothers. May you feel stirred by the example of Josiah to study God’s word. May you discover new things about God and yourself through your reading. May you recall the power of the Spirit to cleanse us from sin and transform us through the hearing of God’s word, just as it did for Josiah and Judah many centuries ago.

I urge you this week to consider your spiritual gardens. Are there any sneaky weeds that need pulling? Anything that drains you of your joy and threatens to trip you up along your journey of faith? What good habits will you plant to feed you spiritually, not just this week, but your whole lives through?

I urge you to take a moment right now and be uplifted when you consider the young people in your life watching what you say and do, learning the faith from you! Who are the children, youth, and young adults for whom you are serving as a good spiritual role model? May this wonderful knowledge of your importance to your loved ones’ journeys of faith stir you to turn to the Lord, like Josiah, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses!

Let us pray.

Gracious God, thank you for your mercy for sinners and your faithfulness, always keeping your promises to us. Thank you for sending your Son, Jesus, when we couldn’t find our way back to you and were lost in sin. Stir us to know you more through your Word, with its power to transform hearts and minds. Thank you for King Josiah, who, as a teenager, listened to your Book of Law and was courageous enough to obey your voice, cleanse the temple, destroy the idols and altars, and share your Law with your people. Draw near to us, Lord, and make us more like your Son as we seek to be faithful role models to the young people you have placed in our lives. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.

Amazing Children of the Bible Series: Solomon

Meditation on 1 Kings 3:1-15

Reverend Dr. Karen Crawford

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

Aug. 16, 2026

“The Dream of Solomon”
Late 17th-century Baroque oil painting by Italian master Luca Giordano, housed in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

I have been away for two weeks on a cruise in the British Isles, ending our journey in Bergen, Norway. The tour took my mom and me to some places that I had visited briefly before—Dublin, Belfast, and Bergen, and to some new places—London, Liverpool, Beaumaris (in Wales), Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and the Orkney and Shetland Islands.

In addition to the castle, cathedral, city, and countryside tours, trips to Neolithic monuments, a puffin safari and Shetland pony experience, we listened to speakers on history and culture, talks on crowns and coronations, the Beatles, the Vikings, and the Loch Ness Monster. We enjoyed evening concerts, with songs from the symphony and the cinema, Broadway shows, and the music of the Beatles, Eric Clapton, ABBA, and more.

What I enjoyed most was the beauty of the sea and sky and the wildlife and landscapes so different from my home. I enjoyed the people that we met on shore and on board and the stories that were shared. I have the feeling that my world has grown a little larger—and that there’s so much more to see and know than I could ever see and know in my lifetime.

Today, we continue our Amazing Children of the Bible Series with Solomon. And like my trip overseas, the more I find out about Solomon, the more I realize how little I actually know of the man who is revered in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Solomon was either the tenth or the 17^th child born to King David, depending on which biblical account you read. He was the second son of Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam as 2 Samuel 11:3 tells us or the fourth son of Bathshua, daughter of Ammiel as 1 Chronicles 3:5 tells us. And Solomon wasn’t his only name. David named him Solomon in 2 Samuel 2:24, but Yahweh’s revelation through Nathan the prophet was that he would be called Jedidiah or “Beloved One of Yahweh.” Solomon is from the Hebrew root, salom or shalom. The promise in 1 Chronicles 22:9 is that “God will give shalom (peace) and quiet to Israel in his days.”[1]

His reign as king over Israel and Judah was about 40 years or the length of a generation (1 Kings 11:42). His reign began around 970 to 960 BC and ended around 930 to 920 BC, when he died and his son, Rehoboam, ascended to the throne at the age of 41. While we don’t know for sure, scholars estimate that Solomon was 15 when he became king (1 Kings 3:7).

How is Solomon remembered? Most of all, for his wisdom. Young Solomon asks God in a dream for wisdom or an “understanding mind” when he ascends to the throne., “And now, O Lord my God,” he says in 1 Kings 3, beginning at verse 7, “you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted.Give your servant, therefore, an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil, for who can govern this great people of yours?”

Solomon’s wise reputation has led to his being credited with some of the wisdom literature in the Bible—Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs, although he did not write them in the traditional sense. Other writings linked to him include 18 Psalms from the First Century BC that are not included in our Bibles,[2] “The Wisdom of Solomon,” written in Greek by a Hellenized Jew of Alexandria “after that city’s conquest by Rome in 30 BCE,”[3] and “Testament of Solomon,” which is a folktale written somewhere between the First and Sixth Century CE.

Perhaps the most well-known example of his wisdom is from 1 Kings 3:16-28, when two women come to Solomon to settle a dispute over a newborn child. Each claim that the living baby belongs to them and the one who died belongs to the other. The king says, “Bring me a sword…and divide the living boy in two; then give half to the one and half to the other.” The woman whose son is alive is moved by love and compassion for her child. She says, “Please, my lord, give her the living boy; certainly, do not kill him!” The king determines that the one who was prepared to give her son to another, rather than see him killed, is the boy’s true mother. “All Israel heard of the judgment that the king had rendered,” says 1 Kings 3:28, “and they stood in awe of the king because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him to execute justice.”

On another occasion, the Queen of Sheba visits Solomon hearing of his fame and brilliance and wanting to test him with riddles. When she arrives, “she discussed with him all that was on her mind” and was satisfied with his answers. (2 Chronicles 9:1) She gave him 120 talents of gold, and “a very great quantity of spices and precious stones; there were no spices such as those that the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.” (2 Chronicles 9:9)

Which brings us to something else that Solomon is remembered for: his wealth and the wealth of his United Kingdom, which experienced a kind of Golden Age under his leadership. In 1 Kings 10:14, we read how he collected in tribute in a single year 666 talents or 18,125 kilograms of gold. “He surrounded himself with all the luxuries and grandeur of an Eastern monarch, and his government prospered.”[4] Jesus and his audience were well acquainted with stories of his wealth and abundance of possessions, including fine clothing, as he asks them in Matthew 6:28-29, ^“And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin,yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.”

Along with his wealth, Solomon is remembered for building the First Temple, although the exact location is unknown. The place of worship, sacrifice, and learning stood until 586 BC, when it was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar II and the Ne0-Babylonian Empire in the siege of Jerusalem. God’s people were taken into captivity and exiled. The Second Temple would be built around 516 BC after the Persian conquest of Babylon and King Cyrus the Great’s authorization and encouragement of the displaced populations in the region to return to their homelands. The Temple would undergo renovations and expansion under King Herod in 18-20 BCE. One of the enhancements was the building of a colonnade called “Solomon’s Portico,” or “Solomon’s Porch.” The meeting place on the east side of the temple’s outer court was a favorite of Jesus and his disciples, and the early Jerusalem church also met there.

Finally, Solomon was a lover of women and is remembered for his many wives and concubines. Does anyone want to venture a guess at how many? “Among his wives were seven hundred princesses and three hundred concubines,” says 1 Kings 11:3. Unfortunately, the women whom Solomon loved, many of whom were from foreign lands, would be his eventual downfall. They are blamed for turning Solomon’s heart in his old age to the worship of idols. Solomon did not love the Lord completely, as his father David had done. God became angry with Solomon, leading to the prophecy that his unified kingdom would be torn apart during the reign of his son.

If you asked me what I learned from Solomon’s story was that even when you have everything or think you do—wealth, wisdom, power, and the adoration and admiration of many people—if you don’t love the Lord completely, you really don’t have anything. And you cannot be pleasing to God.

I am glad to be back from my trip across the Atlantic. There’s no place like home! I will have memories to cherish for years to come, but also the realization that the more I come to know in this world, the more I realize how little I really know at all. But all the experiences that we have and knowledge that we acquire in this world are not what matters for our lives of faith. What matters, dear friends, is not what’s in our minds, but what’s in our hearts—the love of God and neighbor, with God first and foremost.

As the Beatles used to sing, “Love is all you need.”

Let us pray.

God of Wisdom and Mercy, thank you for your steadfast love for your people, even when we fall into bad habits, desiring the things of this world too much, forgetting what’s important as a follower of your Son. Thank you for your many gifts and blessings to us, including the blessing of wisdom and knowing your will for our lives when we reach out to you in prayer and listen for your voice. Forgive us for failing to love you completely and being tempted by the idols of this world. Strengthen us to be faithful to you and Your people all the days of our life and seek to be pleasing to You. Amen.

[1] Tomoo Ishida, “Solomon” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary (Si-Z) (NY: Doubleday, 1992), 105-113.

[2] Joseph Trafton, “Psalms of Solomon” in the Anchor Bible Dictionary, 115-117.

[3] David Winston, “Wisdom of Solomon” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, 120-127.

[4] “Solomon” in Wikipedia, accessed Aug. 15, 2026 at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon.

Amazing Children of the Bible Series: David

Meditation on 1 Samuel 17:12-47

The Reverend Dr. Karen Crawford

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

July 26, 2026

I enjoyed my birthday week—having ice cream, going out to lunch, and going on a two-hour lighthouse cruise with Jim, leaving from Orient Point. I received emails, texts, Facebook messages, cards, and phone calls, including one from my brother. He called to wish me happy birthday and tell me that I am getting old. Does anyone have brothers that tell them stuff like that? Of course, I answered, “Not as old as you!” And he said of our sister, “And I’m not as old as Susan!”

I got to thinking this week that when you pass 60, it’s good to be the youngest in your family. We are actually quite close in age. Steve is about 18 months older than I am. Susan is about 2 and ¾ years older than I am. But because we were so different from one another in appearance and personality as children, I never had a teacher say to me, “Oh, you are Susan’s little sister. Or, oh, you are Steve’s little sister.”

This was not the case with David. Everyone knew him and his brothers and their father Jesse, who lived in Judah and was descended from the tribe of Judah. He was a farmer, a breeder and owner of sheep, a prominent resident in the town of Bethlehem, where David and many generations later, Jesus was born. Jesse was the son of Obed and the grandson of Ruth the Moabite and Boaz, a wealthy landowner in Bethlehem and relative of Ruth’s father-in-law, Elimelech.

David might have been 15 at the time of his battle with Goliath. His brothers (Eliab, Abinadab, and Shammah) were at least 20 and older as they fought under King Saul when 20 was the minimum age for enlistment. They also had sisters, Zeruiah and Abigail, (mentioned in 1 Chronicles 2:16) but they don’t show up in this passage.

The armies of Israel and Philistine were entirely made of men at the time. Some women fought for Israel in other battles, however. Deborah, whose story is in Judges 4 and 5, was the only female judge who adjudicated cases from her seat under a palm tree. She led the Israelite army to war against the Canaanites, behaving “like a general, ordering the commander Barak to attack the Canaanite general Sisera’s troops at Kadesh (Judges 4:6-7). Barak says he will only go to war if Deborah goes with him—and she does (Judges 4:9-10, Judges 5:15).[1]

During David’s time, “the kingdom of Philistia (is) a powerful confederation known as the Pentapolis—featuring the five city-states of Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, and Gath.”[2] The Philistines are an ancient people who settled along the southern coast of Canaan around 1050 BC, occupying part of the Judean Hill Country. They possessed superior arms and military organization, possibly because of their local monopoly on smithing iron (1 Samuel 13:19). Deuteronomy 2:23 and Jeremiah 47:4 say they came from the coasts of Caphtor, which may have been Crete.[3] They are one of the groups of “Sea Peoples” mentioned in Nolan’s film adaptation of The Odyssey.

David is ruddy and handsome, and although he isn’t old enough to enlist, he follows Saul, like his brothers who fight. He goes back and forth each day to Bethlehem from the battle at the Valley of Elah, about 20 miles from Jerusalem today, to feed and tend the sheep. When he is not there, he leaves a “keeper” in charge. His father sends him to check on his brothers and bring them bread to eat and cheese for the commander. His father, concerned about their safety, asks for some “token” of his sons when David comes back.

How do his brothers feel about David coming to check on them? They don’t want him around. His eldest brother Eliab hears him talking to the men about a reward for killing Goliath, and Eliab’s anger is kindled. Who is the eldest sibling in their family? What’s your job? Looking after your younger brothers and sisters. Eliab says, “Why have you come down? With whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your presumption and the evil of your heart, for you have come down just to see the battle.”

David’s answer is petulant. His, “What have I done now? It was only a question,” makes you think that he is often in trouble with his older brothers. Saul hears what David says about fighting Goliath, and he sends for him. The king says, “You’re just a boy.” Goliath has been training for battle since his youth.

But David tells Saul how he has defended his flock from wild animals. “Your servant has killed both lions and bears,” he says, “and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, since he has defied the armies of the living God.” David reveals his faith, then, to the one who was anointed Israel’s king by the prophet, priest, and judge, Samuel. “The Lord, who saved me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, will save me from the hand of this Philistine.” Saul says to David, “Go, and may the Lord be with you!”

The Lord wins the battle that day. The “boy” who isn’t big enough or strong enough for the armor and weapons is able to kill the giant with a slingshot and a few small stones, picked from the wadi, or dry riverbed. After the giant comes down, David will cut off his head as proof that he truly is a worthy warrior for Saul.

David is not only a warrior. The shepherd is a man after God’s own heart. He possesses musical gifts, playing a small harp called a lyre and writing many of the psalms.

But David is far from perfect! He is proud and impetuous and brash, arrogant as Israel’s king at 30 years old, 15 years after he kills Goliath. David sees beautiful Bathsheba one day, wants her, and takes her as his own. It doesn’t matter if she wants him—or that she is married. He is devious and deceitful. He attempts to trick her husband Uriah, a soldier in his army, into having sex with her to hide that she is pregnant with David’s child. And David is a murderer. When Uriah refuses, the king sends him to the front to be killed. David will later confess and repent of his sin when the prophet Nathan confronts him. It may have been this time when he writes Psalm 51, which begins, “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight.”

David will be remembered as the one who unites the 12 tribes of Israel. He captures Jerusalem, brings the ark of the covenant to it, and makes the city both the national and religious capital. In his reign of 40 years, he leads the military to victory over the Philistines, Moabites, and Syrians. He expands Israel’s borders and secures the nation’s sovereignty. While David will not build the Temple in Jerusalem, he drafts the first plans and amasses large quantities of materials needed for the project, including gold and silver. His son, Solomon, will be the one to build it. We will learn more about Solomon later.

I admire David’s courage, as a lad of 15. How was able to speak so confidently to his older brothers and so boldly to the king? But I also know that he did not find his strength in himself. He believed that The Lord, who saved him “from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear” saved him “from the hand of (the) Philistine.”

As the years pass and he struggles with parenting, as well as his responsibilities as king, he is humbled. Perhaps then he learns to trust the Lord even more. That has been the case for me. Age and life have a way of doing that for us.

Dear friends, may we, like David, learn to trust, more and more. May we feel the hand of God upon us. May we overcome our fears and do things that others may say we cannot. And may we encourage our sisters and brothers to take risks and try new things, knowing that we are not alone in a task that the Lord has called us to. Let us say to one another, as Saul says to young David with his slingshot, “Go, and may the Lord be with you!”

Let us pray with the words of my favorite psalm of David—Psalm 23.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Amen.

[1] Caryn-Tamber-Rosenau, “Women Warriors,”in The Shalvi Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women (June 23, 2021) accessed July 25, 2026 at https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/women-warriors#pid-15732.

[2] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Philistine-people, accessed July 25, 2026

[3] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Philistine-people, accessed July 25, 2026

Samuel

Amazing Children of the Bible Series

Meditation on 1 Samuel 3

Rev. Dr. Karen Crawford

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

July 19, 2026

Samuel Dedicated by Hannah at the Temple by Frank W.W. Topham

I was blessed to meet the Rev. Bill Hoffman this week and hear the story of his ministry. Bill is retiring from Montauk Community Church at the end of this month and moving to Wisconsin. He is from Long Island originally, born and raised in Hicksville.

Thirty years ago, before studying for the ministry at Louisville Seminary, he served as a forest ranger in Wisconsin, fighting wildfires for 15 years. In ministry, he served small congregations in upstate New York and Rochester, MN, and worked in prison ministry before returning to Long Island to accept a call to Montauk Community Church in August 2011.

He always had a love for small churches. And Montauk was a place that was near and dear to his heart before he became pastor of the only Protestant church on Montauk. He and his family used to vacation there when Montauk was primarily a fishing village, before the infusion of wealth that has made it a tourist destination. The glue that holds the community together today is still the fishing industry. Montauk is home to the largest commercial and recreational fishing fleet in the state.

Bill says his congregation, though affiliated with the PCUSA, draws people from a variety of religious backgrounds. They have seen themselves as a mission church since they were founded in 1928. Most people who attend are not Presbyterian. Bill has an ecumenical approach to ministry, which goes along with his call to serve small churches in small, tight-knit communities. “You don’t have to stop being what you are when you are here,” he says. You can still be Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist—whatever tradition in which you were raised. The congregation was named a “community” church in the beginning, before it became popular in the 1980s to include the word “community” in church names. The isolation—having to drive through 12 miles of “nothing” before reaching Montauk—helps to bring the community closer and nurture an island mentality, as does the ecumenical Easter sunrise service that he and a Catholic priest host on the beach and the Blessing of the Fleet that he, a priest, and a rabbi have done every June, which includes a memorial service to honor fishermen and women who have died in the previous year.

“Last year,” he said, “there were 22.”

What amazes me about Bill and his call to ministry is not the ecumenical spirit or the love of smaller congregations—which I totally get, because I am a small church pastor myself. What amazes me is that Bill continued his care for the community as a firefighter and EMT, even while serving as a full-time pastor. He says, “If you want to get to know the people of Montauk, go to the firehouse and the docks.”

Samuel had a unique calling to ministry, as well, although he was set apart for ministry before he was even born and never knew any other life except for serving the Lord. His mother, Hannah, had no children for many years. She had prayed for a child when she and her husband, Elkanah, and his other wife, Peninnah, who had many children, went every year to worship and sacrifice to the Lord at Shiloh. Eli and his two sons were priests there. One day, Eli sees Hannah, deeply distressed and moving her lips in a silent prayer, and accuses her of drunkenness. But Hannah says, “Do no regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time.” Then Eli says, automatically, “Go in peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him.” And she believes him—that God would give her a child. In due time, she gives birth, and names the boy Samuel, which means “God hears,” for she “asked him of the Lord.”

Hannah doesn’t go with Elkanah and the household the next year or the next when they go to Shiloh to offer the sacrifice. But she promises to bring the child there as soon as he is weaned, “that he may appear in the presence of the Lord and remain there forever.” She would offer him as a Nazirite; his hair would never be cut, and he would never consume anything from a grapevine. When she weans him, probably when he is 3, she brings their animal sacrifice and the child to Eli, saying the Lord answered her petition at Shiloh. “Therefore, I have lent him to the Lord. As long as he lives, he is given to the Lord.”

She sings a song that she composes, a song much like Mary’s in the New Testament, and they leave little Samuel and go home to Ramah. That must have been a hard thing to do! And they didn’t know that the sons of Eli were “scoundrels,” who treated the offerings of the Lord with contempt. They stole the raw meat brought for sacrifice to eat for themselves and threatened the servants to take it by force if they didn’t give it to them.

Meanwhile, little Samuel, wearing a priestly gown—a linen ephod that his mother would make for him and bring to him each year—would serve the Lord alongside Eli, ignoring the evil sons, and grow up in the presence of the Lord, as his mother had promised. The Lord “took note” of Hannah’s devotion and faithfulness, and she conceives and bears three more sons and two daughters. 1 Samuel 2:26 describes the growth of the boy much like Jesus is described in the New Testament: “Now the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the Lord and with the people.” Luke 2:52 says, “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and people.”

Then a man of God comes to Eli one day and tells him that because of his sons’ behavior, none shall live to old age. God would raise up a faithful priest, he said, who shall do according to what is in God’s heart and mind. That faithful priest is Samuel, who hears the voice of God calling to him at night while he is a boy, lying down near the ark of the Lord. The famous 1^st century Jewish historian Josephus says that Samuel is 12 years old at the time.

Samuel serves the Lord as a priest, a nationally recognized prophet or “Seer,” and as a judge, resolving everyday disputes and conflicts amongst the tribes. He is the spiritual leader, “a key figure in keeping the Israelites’ religious heritage and identity alive during Israel’s defeat and occupation by the Philistines.”[1] And he is a military leader, leading the Israelites to victory over the Philistines after 20 years of oppression.

When Samuel grows old and his sons don’t follow in his ways, the elders of Israel come to him and demand that he anoint a king to govern them, like other nations. Samuel warns them what would happen if they had a king to reign over them, but they won’t listen.

He anoints the first king—Saul—and then, two years later, David, when Saul fails to be a man after God’s own heart. More about David next week!

But when Samuel is a mere boy, hearing the voice of the Lord for the first time and not aware that it IS God until Eli tells him, it is a sign of great things to come. As little Samuel grows up, the Lord is with him and lets “none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba (know) that Samuel (is) a trustworthy prophet of the Lord.”

When I was talking to Bill on Thursday, he reminded me that our callings and fruitfulness in ministry are connected to one another. He credits the interim pastor, the Rev. Anne Stewart Miller, who served for 3 years before him, for doing the hard work of uniting what was a divided congregation. If it hadn’t been for Anne, he says, he would not have been able to pastor Montauk for 15 years.

Samuel would never have been the prophet, priest, judge, military leader, and anointer of Israel’s first kings if it hadn’t been for Eli and his mother, Hannah, who trusted God to grant her prayer for a child, though she had been unable to conceive for many years. Hannah is the one who prepared him for ministry from birth and did the hard work of loving and leaving him—the long, hoped-for child—when he was just 3 years old, to be raised and trained as a priest by Eli in the house of the Lord.

And I would not be who I am today if it weren’t for my family, especially my husband, and my teachers—and for the ministers who served the Smithtown congregation faithfully for hundreds of years before me. And, of course, for the work of the Spirit that continues in the Body of Christ, helping us to become the people God desires us to be.

Today, as we recall the life and ministry of Samuel, and as we recall other amazing children of the Bible in this series, may you be stirred to contemplate your own faith story and renew your commitment to serving Christ with your special gifts, talents, and skills. May you be inspired by others, such as Bill Hoffman, a firefighter, EMT, and small-church Presbyterian minister for 30 years, including 15 in the tight-knit fishing village and tourist destination of Montauk.

May you be inspired to help the children and youth of our community recognize God’s voice, like little Samuel at 12. And may the children and youth be blessed with the understanding that God has a wonderful plan for their lives and that their experiences and relationships nurtured within this congregation are preparing them for what is to come.

May we all remember and be empowered by the knowledge that we are precious and loved by God and God’s people.

Let us pray.

Holy One, thank you for your love, a love that is everlasting and unconditional. Thank you for the ministries of Samuel—priest, prophet, judge, military leader, and anointer of kings—and Bill Hoffman, forest ranger, fire fighter, EMT and small church, ecumenical pastor—and for our ministry here at First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown for 351 years. Thank you that you continue to speak to us and encourage us as we seek to love and serve you and our neighbors. Help us to remember with joy our faith stories and the gifts you have given us to use for your purposes. Strengthen us to nurture our next generation of prophets and evangelists to carry the gospel to this community and beyond. And bless Bill with good health and joy as he makes this transition from full time ministry on Montauk to full time family man in Wisconsin. Bless him and his wife, Valerie, for their love for your people and their faithfulness to your call. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.

[1] Birch, Bruce C. (2000). “Samuel” in Freedman, David Noel; Myers, Allen C. (eds.). Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible. Amsterdam University Press.

Miriam

Amazing Children of the Bible Series

Meditation on Exodus 1:8-2:10

Rev. Dr. Karen Crawford

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

July 12, 2026

It hasn’t yet been two weeks since I returned from our denomination’s 227^th General Assembly in Milwaukee. I am still processing much of what happened there. But today, I would like to share about the delightful tribute to Margaret Towner at G.A.

Margaret, who turned 101 in March, was born in Columbia, Missouri, in 1925, and grew up in the Presbyterian Church. Her father was the Rev. Dr. Milton Carsley Towner, who would become a prominent American educator, psychologist, and religious scholar. Her mother was active in the church and supportive of her daughter’s dreams. In Carleton College, Marg majored in pre-med and graduated with a B.A. in 1948. She had been into photography since a young girl as a hobby but was trained in college by a fellow student who had served as a photographer in the Army. After college, she would work as a medical photographer for the Mayo Clinic until she moved back to Syracuse where her mother was living. There, she used her skills as a photographer with Presbyterian churches. As she became more involved with churches, people began to ask her, “Marg, why don’t you explore ministry?”

So she did. She attended Union Theological Seminary in New York, earning a Bachelor of Divinity Degree in 1954. But women were not permitted to serve in full ministry roles until a 1955 decision of General Assembly, which went into effect in 1956. This paved the way for Margaret’s ordination on October 24 of that year by Cayuga-Syracuse Presbytery. That day was far from smooth or routine for her and the church. There was confusion, and her mother fielded a flurry of phone calls from the media asking, “Is she going to be the first?”

Eugene Carson Blake, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly at the time, then canvased all the other presbyteries in the U.S. Sure enough, Margaret Towner would be the first woman ordained to the ministry of Word and Sacrament. When the media found out, Life Magazine sent one of most famous photographers in the country, Alfred Eisenstaedt, to cover her ordination. The Allentown church usually gave a black robe to those being ordained as ministers. But they didn’t give Margaret a robe. They gave her a set of encyclopedias. Not having a robe to wear, her mother borrowed one for her from Forster Freeman, probably the shortest minister in the presbytery, Margaret says. It still didn’t fit. The wife of the Allentown pastor and one of the choir members sat down and hemmed it up so she could be dressed and ready for the 8 p.m. ordination service.

The two pastors Margaret had worked with in Allentown did not approve of women’s ordination. She decided to invite them to participate in the service. One was to deliver the sermon and the other to do the prayer before the service when all the elders and ministers gathered. It was there that one of the clergy, Bill McConaughy, gave her a beautiful cross from Iona that she wears to this day.

Those early years as she started out in ministry were difficult. In Allentown, she was permitted in the pulpit only when she gave the benediction at her own service of ordination. She was allowed to pantomime the service during Communion in the overflow auditorium. Meanwhile, she received letters from wives of ministers telling her that the Bible forbids women from preaching and accusing her of taking away the jobs of their husbands.

The persecution went on in other ways when we she was serving First Presbyterian Church of Kalamazoo, Michigan. People would call the church office to ask who was preaching on Sunday. If the secretary said Margaret, they weren’t going to come. “They just didn’t have any idea,” Margaret says, “of what a female can do.”

Today, we began our series of amazing children of the Bible with Miriam. Did you happen notice that she isn’t named in our passage in Exodus when she, with guidance from her mother, saves the life of her baby brother Moses? This isn’t unusual for women and girls in the Bible. They are often mentioned through their relationship with an important male character. In this case, her brother Moses. But she will be named later.

Miriam is probably 7 years old[1] when she is watching over her brother in the Nile, floating in the basket her mother has carefully made and waterproofed. The princess, moved with compassion by the baby’s cries and beauty, and persuaded by Miriam to pay his own Hebrew mother to nurse him, isn’t named, either. She never will be. But then again, her father, the Pharoah who didn’t know how Joseph had saved Egypt and hated and feared his descendants because they were growing too strong and numerous, isn’t named, as well. Most scholars agree that he is not named because he does not need to be remembered.

Miriam’s mother, another important female character, isn’t named in this passage. We do know her priestly family line, as Exodus begins the story describing Moses’ parents, “Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman.” The Levites were an Israelite tribe descended from Levi, the third son of Jacob and Leah, and half-brother to Joseph. They were selected to serve God in the Holy Temple and were different from the other tribes in that they received no land inheritance; they were supported by the tithes of the people. Exodus 6:20 tells us that the mother’s name is Jochebed, and her husband is Amran—and is also her nephew.

You may not realize that Miriam is the first woman to be explicitly called a prophet in the Bible. Not only that. She is the first person to be called a “prophet” in the Bible, too. [2] She is introduced in Exodus 15:20 as “Miriam the prophet, Aaron’s sister” before she famously leads the Israelite women in song and dance to celebrate the crossing of the Red Sea. She picks up her tambourine and sings her “Song of Miriam”:

“Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously,
horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.” (Exodus 15:21)

Like all the people of the Bible, including her brothers, Miriam is very human. All three struggle in their faith and complain to God throughout the wilderness trials. But she remains supportive of Moses until many years have passed—and the land of the promise is nowhere in sight. The straw that breaks the camel’s back is when Moses divorces his longtime wife, Zipporah, and marries a Cushite woman, not a Hebrew. We read in Numbers 12:1-2, “While they were at Hazeroth, Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married (for he had indeed married a Cushite woman); and they said, ‘Has the Lord spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?’ And the Lord heard it.” Miriam is struck with leprosy, and Aaron cries out to God on her behalf. She is healed in 7 days but, like her brothers, will die before reaching the Land of the Promise. Still, she will be remembered by later prophets to be as important in the mission to save Israel as her two brothers. The Lord speaks through Micah 6:4,

“I brought you up out of Egypt
and redeemed you from the land of slavery.
I sent Moses to lead you,
also Aaron and Miriam.”

Today, as we baptize Luke Andrew, I urge you to remember that it may be a few years before all of Luke’s spiritual gifts are evident. And that he will be very human and won’t have the ability to sit still and remain quiet for some time, yet. But as we nurture him in the faith, teach him about the love and grace of Jesus Christ, and support his family, the Lord will use him to fulfill God’s wonderful plans, perhaps while he is still young like Miriam at age 7. The important thing is to encourage him in all his dreams and never forget that with God, all things are possible.

Margaret’s parents had no idea when their daughter was a teenager, obsessed with photography, that she would become a minister. Margaret herself had no inkling when she was studying pre-med that God had planned a future that included her serving in ordained ministry. How could they when women’s gifts for ministry were not even recognized by the Church until 1955 when she was 30 years old?

Looking back, Marg remembers one thing that she said years ago that she has often regretted saying. Trying to placate those in the church who were against the ordination of women, she told “Presbyterian Life that ordained women would likely serve as associate pastors, in roles subordinate to men, rather than alone. She faced pushback from the upcoming generation of women to follow in her footsteps.” The statement has come back to haunt her, she says, as the article is still read by students who have sent many unhappy letters, saying, “Hey, look I want to pastor on my own. Maybe that’s not your bag.”[3]

While Marg did start in pastoral roles that were subordinate to men, she was a strong advocate for women receiving equal pay and opportunity. Eventually, her pay equaled that of her two male co-pastors with whom she served a parish of 6 churches in the last 17 years of her ministry. Marg would go on to serve as a role model for women with her leadership roles in the national church, chairing such committees as the Language of God, the Holy Spirit, and Worship and Theology. She would go on to become in 1981 the Vice Moderator of the 193^rd General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.

When asked how she will be remembered, she prays that others won’t just remember her mistakes, but that they will graciously remember “some of the fun things,” she says with a smile, that “we did together in ministry.” She has become a big believer in the Holy Spirit to lead the Church in ways that the leaders “feel called to go, in whatever ministry they feel called to. And to persevere. Hang in there.”

As we clapped in standing ovation after the tribute, Co-Moderator Tony Larsen at GA in Milwaukee said, “Margaret, we do remember your contributions in ministry. We remember your faithfulness, your courage, your boldness.”

Let us pray.

Holy One, thank you for your Spirit that continues to the lead the Church in surprising ways. Thank you for all the women and girls, such as Miriam and Margaret, who are models for women and men in ministry today. Forgive us for our mistakes, dear Lord, and stir us to have grace for one another and ourselves. Help us to inspire and encourage our next generation, including little Luke Andrew, to be courageous like Miriam and Margaret. To be faithful. To be bold. To believe that with God, all things are possible. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.

[1] Nissan Mandel, “The Story of Miriam in the Bible” (Viewed on July 11, 2026) at https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/112396/jewish/The-Story-of-Miriam-in-the-Bible.htm

[2] Phyllis Trible, “Miriam: Bible” in Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. 20 March 2009. Jewish Women’s Archive. Viewed on July 11, 2026 at https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/miriam-bible.

[3] Ed Wicklein, “Margaret Towners Reflects.” Presbyterian Historical Society Blog (1978) Accessed on July 11, 2026 at https://pcusa.org/news-storytelling/blogs/historical-society-blog/margaret-towner-reflects

Celebrating Our Country’s 250th Anniversary

Reverend Dr. Karen Crawford

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown

July 5, 2026

You are not going to hear the story of Miriam today! Lord willing, you will hear all about Miriam next Sunday as I begin my series on Amazing Children of the Bible. On this weekend, as we celebrate the 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I have been inspired to share a different message with my flock. I hope that’s OK!

It all started when I was on a bus headed to Milwaukee airport on Thursday, having finished my work as a commissioner to the General Assembly. I received a text message from Dawn at the church office. Nicole, one of the organizers of Smithtown’s July 4^th celebration at Town Hall, had contacted the church. I was recommended by the mayor and town historian, Richard Smith, to lead the opening and closing prayers. She said the ceremony would last about 20 minutes and that I would also be welcome to speak about the history of our church and the role of faith in the founding of our country.

I said yes.

It was last minute. I wouldn’t have much time to prepare. I was a little tired from my trip. And I knew it was going to be hot standing outside Town Hall. But it was the right thing to do. They didn’t have other clergy for the event, and I knew that praying for peace and unity for our country would be important to fit in on the day of parades, flags, and family barbecues. And I looked forward to telling the story of our patriot pastor, the Reverend Joshua Hartt.

He was born on a farm in Dix Hills in 1738. At 32, he was ordained a minister, and at 36, in 1774, he came to serve the Presbyterian Church in Smithtown. Joshua soon earned a reputation for preaching “fiery sermons against British rule, calling on parishioners to take up arms in the patriot cause.”[1] He said, “He who hath no sword let him sell his garment and buy one.” And “Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning shears into spears and let the weak say I am strong.”[2]

One Sunday, he stepped into the pulpit and was fired upon by two British soldiers. Either the soldier was a poor shot or Hartt, an imposing figure of 300 pounds, simply ducked in the nick of time.[3] Hartt was uninjured, but bullet holes were left in the church as a reminder of the danger of speaking out against an unjust government. Hartt would be arrested on several occasions because of his inflammatory preaching, including once when he was placed in chains, thrown in a wagon, and hauled to Provost Prison in New York City. During his imprisonment from May 27 to October 25 in 1777, the 39-year-old “came near to dying from an illness and want of food. A fellow prisoner was the celebrated Colonel Ethan Allen, who had captured Fort Ticonderoga in the early days of the war. Allen attended the ailing Rev. Hartt and by his lively manner and cheerful conversation did much to make his sickness and confinement endurable. One day Ethan Allen knelt at Rev. Hartt’s bedside and prayed for his recovery. Soon after, Rev. Hartt, through the assistance of a Tory friend, was paroled from the prison.”[4]

Hartt wasn’t the only one preaching fiery sermons in Presbyterian churches during the Revolutionary War years. The most famous Presbyterian leading the opposition to the British at the time was the Rev. John Witherspoon, the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. The prominent Scottish American Presbyterian minister had emigrated in 1768 to serve as president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University).[5] He was a fiercely outspoken leader in the Patriot cause that King George III dismissed as a “Presbyterian rebellion.”[6]

George III wasn’t alone in his assessment of the situation. Horace Walpole, earl and youngest son of the first British prime minister, upon hearing that the American colonial possessions of Great Britain had written their Declaration of Independence, he wrote in a letter to a friend, “One has griefs enough of one’s own, without fretting because cousin America has eloped with a Presbyterian parson.”[7] That Presbyterian parson was John Witherspoon.

As Dissenters from the established Church of England, Presbyterians mistrusted British colonial power—and were not afraid to assert a right to religious freedom when it was threatened. Presbyterian influence in the colonies grew in the mid 1700s, shaped by the Great Awakening and an influx of Scottish and Scots Irish immigrants, most of whom were Presbyterian. With words and actions—and sometimes with violence—these religious dissenters challenged colonial rule and felt moved to defy the status quo in the name of God.[8]

Ambrose Serle, secretary to British General Howe in New York City, wrote to the British Secretary of State in 1776 telling him that the American Revolution was ultimately “a religious war.” He said that “the revolt would not and could not be sustained were it not for the Presbyterian ministers who bred it. He lamented the fact that almost every minister in America seemed to double as a politician.”[9]

Many Americans today aren’t aware that the majority of the 56 delegates from the 13 colonies who gathered in Philadelphia in the hot summer of 1776 for the Second Continental Congress were people of faith. Their families came here from Europe for a fresh start, new opportunities, a better life, and, most of all, freedom to live out their faith without fear of persecution. The signers of the Declaration were Deists and Unitarians. They were Roman Catholics. The majority of those who helped shape and then voted for Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence were Anglicans, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians.[10]

The 12 Presbyterians who signed the document were physician Benjamin Rush, James Smith, George Taylor, lawyers James Wilson and Thomas McKean, William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, John Hart, Abraham Clark, and Matthew Thornton, although not all of them made it into John Trumball’s famous painting of the presentation of the Declaration to Congress in 1776.[11] “George Duffield of Philadelphia’s Third Presbyterian Church (today’s Old Pine Church, next door to the Presbyterian Historical Society) served as chaplain to the Continental Congress, and patriot pastors (such as Joshua Hartt) supported the war effort from their pulpits in every state. Everyday Presbyterians felt the war’s impact in their communities and houses of worship. British troops occupied Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and Savannah. From New England to the Carolinas, Presbyterian churches were seized to quarter troops or damaged by forces loyal to the Crown.”[12]

The Declaration, amended in committee and presented to Congress on July 4, 1776, asserts that all human beings are created equal and endowed by God with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It also asserts that just governments derive their authority and powers from the “consent of the governed.” And that people have the right to change the government when it becomes destructive to these ends and does not provide for their safety and happiness. The document includes references to God the Creator, Provider, and Judge, the source of nature and nature’s laws.[13]

It felt strange to be the only minister at Smithtown’s 4^th of July celebration. It felt strange that the local and state leaders sitting on either side of me had not been given permission to speak more than 90 seconds each. I was the guest speaker, the one to share a message after one of Richard Smith’s relatives read the Preamble to the Declaration. Well, it turned out that he read not just the Preamble, but the entire Declaration. People, wilting in the heat and tired of standing, began to disperse.

At the podium, I looked out and saw members of my church, red faced and perspiring in the heat with me, but smiling as they stood on Town Hall’s lawn. Some had found a little patch of shade under a small tree. I felt a surge of confidence and joy. “Today, my friends,” I said, “I am grateful. Grateful for my family and my flock here in Smithtown, with its long history of ministry in this community through times of plenty and times of need and uncertainty. I am grateful to Reverend Hartt and all the brave patriots willing to speak up and act out, though it might mean arrest and imprisonment, injury or loss of life. I am grateful for our town and country that has weathered struggles from within and without.”

By the grace of God, we continue in hope for our future as the United States of America, enjoying our lives and liberties, including our freedom of speech and freedom to live out our faith as God leads us to do. We continue in hope in our pursuit of happiness, dwelling in a land of purple mountains majesties and fruited plains. I encourage all of you, my siblings in Christ, to pray for your nation, just 250 years young, a country larger and more diverse than those who first envisioned our system of government ever imagined. We embrace our freedoms, earned at a cost of those who gave their lives in the American Revolution, the Civil War about a century later, and many more wars and conflicts of the 20^th and 21^st centuries so far. We are still struggling to find unity amid our differences and diversity of cultures, languages, ethnicities, and religions.

We are Deists and Unitarians. Roman Catholics. Anglicans, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and many other varieties of Protestant faiths. We are also Jewish, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims. We are people not affiliated with any religion at all.

We are ALL children of a God who urges us to love one another and live together in peace.

Will you pray with me?

Holy One, thank you for your grace and the Spirit that continues to dwell with us in this nation that we call home, the United States of America. Thank you for those who labored and struggled and continue to labor and struggle to figure out what it means to live with this new kind of government—250 years young—in a land much larger and more diverse than Richard Smith ever imagined. Strengthen us to pursue peace and unity with one another and neighbors around the globe. Help us to reflect your grace, generosity, and gentleness and walk in the way of righteousness and justice. Heal our divisions. Make us whole. Amen.

[1] “Reverend Joshua Hartt (1738-1829),” Northport Historical Society Museum, accessed July 4, 2026, at https://www.huntingtonny.gov/filestorage/13747/99540/16499/Reverend_Joshua_Hartt.pdf

[2] Richard Mehalick, Church and Community (1675-1975) The Story of The First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, New York, (2010), 65.

[3] J. Richard Mehalick, Church and Community (1675-1975), 66.

[4] J. Richard Mehalick, Church and Community (1675-1975), 66-67.

[5] James Smylie, A Brief History of the Presbyterians (Louisville: Geneva Press, 1996), 57-58.

[6] A Presbyterian Rebellion,” Presbyterian Church, USA (March 15, 2019) accessed on July 4, 2026 at https://pcusa.org/a-presbyterian-rebellion

[7] Glenn A. Moots, “Early America’s Political Pulpit” in Law and Liberty, Dec. 28, 2021, accessed July 4, 2026 at https://lawliberty.org/classic/early-americas-political-pulpit/.

[8] “Presbyterians and the American Revolution” (Louisville:PresbyterianHistorical Society, 2026) accessed July 4, 2026, at https://pcusa.org/historical-society/exhibits/presbyterians-and-american-revolution#1

[9] George Grant, “The Presbyterian Rebellion” (July 2, 2026) accessed on July 4, 2026, at https://learn.ligonier.org/articles/the-presbyterian-rebellion.

[10] Kevin DeYoung, “The Presbyterian Signers of the Declaration of Independence” in Clearly Reformed (May 12, 2026) accessed July 4, 2026 at https://clearlyreformed.org/the-presbyterian-signers-of-the-declaration-of-independence/

[11]James Smylie, American Presbyterians: A Pictorial History, (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Historical Society, 1985), 39.

[12] “Presbyterians and the American Revolution” (Louisville:PresbyterianHistorical Society, 2026) accessed July 4, 2026 at https://pcusa.org/historical-society/exhibits/presbyterians-and-american-revolution#1.

[13] James Smylie, American Presbyterians, 60.