Grace Baptist Church

There are so many people hurting in our country right now! Just this past week hurricane Laura hit Louisiana with record winds, major wild fires are raging in California, and in Kenosha, Wisconsin, protests, rioting, and deadly violence followed a police officer shooting Jacob Blake. All this is happening ad mists the backdrop of COVID-19, as people continue to get sick, social distancing still adds to the difficulties in our lives, and the economic fallout of the pandemic greatly adds to the stress that normally comes with life. One might ask, does God know what is going on right now? Does He care?

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2 Kings 6 describes how the king of Syria was warring against Israel, but God kept telling the prophet Elisha the battle plans of the Syrian army. Frustrated with this, the Syrian king sent a “great army” to seize the prophet, and during the night the army surrounded the city where Elisha was staying. When Elisha’s servant came out in the morning, he was shocked and horrified to see the great army surrounding them! But Elisha calmed his servant and asked the Lord to open the servant’s eyes to the unseen reality around them. Read More

God knows that we are frail and that we are weak. So God holds us up, he protects us, and he provides for us. This doesn't mean that we won't suffer, but it does mean that all our greatest needs will be taken care of. We think that we know what will make us happy, but what we want is often not what we truly need or what will truly satisfy us.  Read More

So much has changed in the last two weeks! The COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak in China, which for us was just a news headline a couple weeks ago, is now a pandemic which is directly affecting our lives in a big way. Daily, it seems, the Governor and/ or the President has released revised and increasing travel restrictions, and “social distancing has become a buzz word.” Everything from professional sports to spaghetti dinners have been cancelled. Education has all become home schooling, be it kindergarten or college. Signs of panic are seen in empty grocery store shelves from people hoarding, of all things, toilet paper! And with each passing day comes new reports of confirmed COVID-19 cases that are closer and closer to home. There is so much we don’t know about our future as we watch this pandemic overtake our communities, but does this mean that we have to live in fear? Read More

It was the coldest day yet this winter. As I headed to an emergency call in my veterinary truck, I glanced at the thermometer and it said -8 degrees Fahrenheit. My first call was a calving; a cow with a twisted uterus that could not deliver her calf. Upon arrival, we rolled the cow and delivered a live bull calf. Everything went perfectly –a textbook calving. I proceeded with my scheduled work that morning and then stopped at my parents’ house for a late lunch.

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This is a question that I think all kids at some point ask, and most parents dread to answer. Amidst fanciful tales of flying reindeer and abominable snow monsters (or elves that want to be dentists) I wanted to dig deeper to see if I could find any shreds of truth behind our culture’s favorite Christmas icon. Read More

I was running late for church one morning and couldn’t find the dress pants that went with the shirt I wanted to wear. Finally, I located them and went to the door to put on my shoes when I stepped in something wet. One of the cats had left a surprise by the door! The loose stool not only soaked my sock, but was smeared all over the leg of the pants I had worked so hard to find! I was furious! Read More

While vacationing in the Adirondacks this summer, my family and I had the opportunity to drive to the top of Whiteface Mountain, one of the tallest peaks in that region. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the visibility from the summit that day was over 50 miles. Before we reached the top though, we pulled off at a scenic overlook. There I happened to take a picture of my son Brendon standing on a large stone with the mountain in the back ground. At that point we still had around 1000 ft. of elevation to climb before we reached the peak. Looking back at my pictures from that afternoon though, it amuses me to see how from the angle of the picture, Brendon appears twice as tall as the mountain, and the stone he was standing on, as big as the mountain Read More

We hear the term “Fake News” a lot these days, typically in regards to some news report that makes one political group look worse than another. Wikipedia describes “Fake news” as “propaganda that consists of deliberate disinformation,” often “used to cast doubt upon legitimate news from an opposing political standpoint, …” Though the term “Fake News” may just recently have come in vogue in American culture, “Fake News” is not a new phenomenon. Read More

As our nations’ capital remains in gridlock, and many government employees face the fallout of a record long partial government shutdown, our dairy farmers are staggering amidst the fallout of four years of low milk prices. My job as a veterinarian brings me into the barns of dairy farmers all across western New York State, and it is nothing new for the conversation to land on the milk price. This is not surprising, since 2019 marks the fourth year in a row that many of the farms that I service have been losing money daily, and there is no indication that this trend will change anytime soon! 

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