Coffee Time begins 9:15 a.m.Adult Forum begins 9:30 a.m.
Worship begins 10:30 a.m.
All are welcome!
Adult Forum
Where Are You?
Focus Scripture: Job 23:1-9, 16-17
Additional Scripture: Psalm 22:1-15; Mark 10:17-31; and Hebrews 4:12-16.
Job appeals for justice in the search for God. The cries of our world voice the psalm’s lament of God’s seeming abandonment. Our questioning and protests presume God’s hearing. Our wondering with the disciples over who can be saved presumes salvation as possibility. To ask God “where are you?” presumes one who can and will answer.
Discussion Leader: Lura Bublitz
Worship 10:30 a.m.
Scriptures: Psalm 90 and Hebrews 4:13-16
Prayer for the Weekend as You Prepare for Worship: O God, you were with us when we took our first breath. Since our mothers gave us birth, you have been our God. Do not be far from us when trouble is near and there is no one to help. Stir our faith when we falter – and tune our spirits to resonate with your grace.
Preaching: Jerry Neale; Worship Leader: Greg Ledbetter; Head Usher: Brent Adams; Special Music: Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen); Logos Kids: Down by the River
If you started reading the book of Job last week, you may wish to continue doing so. If our only exposure to the book of Job were the texts provided by the lectionary for reading in worship, we would not have a very good idea of the full scope of the book. This week, while we’re not reading Job in worship (we are in Sunday school!), you may still wish to round out your experience of this beautiful, evocative book by reading Job 15:1 – 28:28.
Words for Meditation
Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
English, Victorian Poet & Jesuit Priest
English, Victorian Poet & Jesuit Priest
"We sense God's presence even, or especially, in "the dappled things"—things mottled as well as uniform, crooked as well as straight, sweet as well as sour, blemished as well as beautiful, surprising as well as predictable, and, yes, in things painful as well as pleasurable. God does act in our imperfect, irregular, dappled world and in our frail personal lives."
No comments:
Post a Comment