☀️New Year Sun

Friday, January 5 - 2024 Week 1

Jan 05, 2024

Happy first week of 2024, Marysville! Are you attacking the new year, or is it attacking you?

This actually happened a couple days ago.

☀️Stakeholders and What’s At Stake

The Marysville Sun is not for everyone.

Anyone can read it, and everyone is invited to read it. But it won't appeal to all people, and it's not supposed to. So who is the target audience? What does the Sun offer them?

I've been publishing this newsletter with the same sentiment all along, but here it is in one statement:

The Marysville Sun provides news and perspective—with a little bit of fun—for Marysville's stakeholders about what's at stake.

A stakeholder is someone who is invested in or affected by something. Originally a stake was a stick or post driven into the ground to mark a boundary of possession, and metaphorically became a term that represented the amount of money/valuables at risk. So a stakeholder is a person with skin in the game, a person who stands to gain or lose depending on the outcome. There are four traits to the sort of stakeholder I have in mind.

The stakeholder lives here. Marysville is his city, his home. As the city thrives, so does the stakeholder. For sure, if Marysville was awesome, it would matter to our neighboring cities, to our county, even to the I-5 corridor and the northern part of Western Washington. And it is great to have former residents who subscribe, or readers who want the same sort of blessing for their city. But typically, the stakeholders stake is planted here.

The stakeholder loves the Lord. While there is no religious test to read the Sun, it's written by Christians for Christians with the understanding that Christ cares about what we do with our days where we live. Maybe there’s a class of reader who doesn't pay much attention to the Bible, and maybe the Lord has started opening his eyes to see how secularism has bupkis to offer. We welcome the frustrated, even if they’re not exactly sure why it’s so bad.

Because a stakeholder lives in Marysville and is a Christian, I figure a stakeholder is tempted to lose heart. This is characteristic 2.b, or maybe a pre-3. He's praying the Lord's Prayer, for Christ’s Kingdom to come, but the the stakeholder sees more and more clearly the alternative/rebellious kingdom that’s creating a culture of crap connoisseurs. And I get that not everyone is easily discouraged, not everyone is an Eeyore citizen soldier. But the Lord will test our faith, and He will prepare us for glory by trials. The temptation to lose heart is for our good, but it doesn't feel good. Confronting the brutal realities but with indefatigable faith keeps this Sun running its course.

The third trait of the stakeholder is that he takes responsibility. He does stuff, and more than complain or troll the Health District (as gratifying as those may feel any given minute). The reason he is tempted to lose heart above is because he can see that it could be better, that it should be better. And so he says, "Here I am, Lord, use me."

Finally, the stakeholder thinks generationally. He knows that he doesn't know when the Lord will return, and that it may be a long time from now. He also knows that the Lord blesses those who fear Him with children, and seeing his children's children is a great grace. For whatever reason, many of our fathers sat it out, and we're reaping their passivity sown. Also, great, that means we got some lessons of what not to do. We redeem the time because the days will be even more evil for our grandkids if we sit idly by.

That relates to what's at stake. What’s at stake is just everything. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but we desire Christ’s blessings to flow far as the curse is found. We work and pray for our daily bread and toward our eternal rest, and everything in between. We obey the command to love our neighbor, and these days that means knowing something about economics, viruses, and gender. We need to know what’s happening, we need some common categories, and probably most of all, we need some encouragement.

For all this the Sun seeks to provide news and perspective. It's not "opinion" per se, certainly not like the working definition so many people have about opinion. There is a distinct perspective, but that doesn't make it relative, as in, just one among many truths. Such a claim could sound prejudiced. Yes. To fail to distinguish is to be dead sooner than later. Everyone must measure according to some standard, and the Sun's standard is the Lordship of Jesus Christ, especially as found in His Word, the Bible. We don't have an infallible interpretation, but the only way we know that is when we hold it up to the light of Scripture.

The meek will inherit the earth. We can see it's current condition, and we have thoughts about it. But it's Christian property. “Oh yeah, that is mine.” We have a stake in this.

As for the little bit of fun part, I mean, the joy of the Lord is our strength, and memes are one of His gifts, even if a common grace. There is no true laughter in hell, and that's part of the reason why the Left can't meme. They don't even win in a way that looks fun, let alone lose with horse laughs. It's possible to seek escape through the distractions of the frivolous, but it's also necessary to see the hilarity, because even God laughs at those who try to live without Him.

The Marysville Sun provides news and perspective—with a little bit of fun—for Marysville's stakeholders about what's at stake. Be more than a subscriber, be a stakeholder.

☀️Around Town

Marysville’s City Scene Newsletter for January is available, see this link.

The Herald reports on the swearing in of Susanna Johnson as Snohomish County Sheriff.

Six initiatives required 325,000 signatures in order to get (dumb/ridiculous/crazy) laws written by the State Legislature on the ballot. Here’s the number of signatures gathered.