'I am the LORD,...my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to graven images.”

The story is told of a remote Methodist congregation somewhere in a forgotten corner of North Dakota. One week, they had a terrible blizzard. Everything was snowed under. All the roads were blocked. They got not a piece of mail the whole week. This meant that the Methodist church received no mailings from the conference office in Bismarck. For the first time in its life the little congregation knew not whether the second Sunday in January had been designated as “United Nations Sunday,” “World Brotherhood Sunday,” or “Festival of the Christian Home Sunday.” They had no bulletin inserts to hand out. The preacher had no snappy sermon starter suggestions. They were in a horrible state for Methodists -- no cause to c…