As a guide through the Lenten season, we are reading Alicia Britt Chole's 40 Days Of Decrease as a congregation and allowing it to inform the teaching each Sunday morning.
Text: Matthew 6:1-8, 16-18
Takeaways:
Benediction:
May all that is unforgiven in you be released; may your fears yield their deep tranquilities; may all that is unlived in you blossom into a future graced with love.
As a guide through the Lenten season, we are reading Alicia Britt Chole's 40 Days Of Decrease as a congregation and allowing it to inform the teaching each Sunday morning.
Text: Luke 18:35-19:10
Takeaways:
Benediction:
May all that is unforgiven in you be released; may your fears yield their deep tranquilities; may all that is unlived in you blossom into a future graced with love.
As a guide through the Lenten season, we are reading Alicia Britt Chole's 40 Days Of Decrease as a congregation and allowing it to inform the teaching each Sunday morning.
Text: Acts 16:1-10
Takeaways:
Benediction:
May all that is unforgiven in you be released; may your fears yield their deep tranquilities; may all that is unlived in you blossom into a future graced with love.
As circumstances allow, we like to have the visual artist(s) for the current month take a few minutes to give us a word about their art and what goes into it. In February 2016, the portraits of the MULA (most urgent | least available) exhibit made their way onto the walls at 144 S Mason. Photographer Steve Stanton shares about letting the folks in these portraits know they are seen, and that we are all seen.
More information at donatemula.org
As a guide through the Lenten season, we are reading Alicia Britt Chole's 40 Days Of Decrease as a congregation and allowing it to inform the teaching each Sunday morning.
Text: John 12:12-19
Takeaways:
Benediction:
May all that is unforgiven in you be released; may your fears yield their deep tranquilities; may all that is unlived in you blossom into a future graced with love.
Text:
John 17:20-23
Takeaways:
Benediction:
May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.
Text:
Romans 12:1-16
Takeaways:
Benediction:
May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.
14ers is a 4-week series taking place across the Timberline organization, addressing the mountains we want to climb together.
Text:
Mark 9:1-13
Takeaways:
Benediction:
May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.
14ers is a 4-week series taking place across the Timberline organization, addressing the mountains we want to climb together.
Text:
Matthew 28:16-20
Takeaways:
14ers is a 4-week series taking place across the Timberline organization, addressing the mountains we want to climb together.
Text:
Matthew 28:16-20
Takeaways:
It is the first Sunday of 2016 and we are reminded again of our chance at Newness.
TEXT
Ecclesiastes 1:4-9; 3:1-22
2 days after Christmas there are moments of bells and moments of canons as we head into a new year. What will we hear? What will we do?
TEXT
Isaiah 9, Psalm 127
PRAYER
Occupy Our Calendars by Walter Brueggemann
Our times are in your hands:
But we count our times for us;
we count our days and fill them with us;
we count our weeks and fill them with our busyness;
we count our years and fill them with our fears.
And then caught up short with your claim,
Our times are in your hands!
Take our times, times of love and times of weariness,
Take them all, bless them and break them,
give them to us again,
slow paced and eager,
fixed in your readiness for neighbour.
Occupy our calendars,
Flood us with itsy-bitsy, daily kairoi,
in the name of your fleshed kairos. Amen
Advent Prayer:
In our dark nights, we cry to you
In our bright days, we forget what we longed for
May our cries echo
May our longing be immediate
In our sharp minds, we pray for your coming
In our wavering hearts, we can't decide if the road is open or closed
May you clear the decks
May we raise the gates on our tollbooths.
Here we gather as hopeful witnesses to revolutionary birth.
Going from here we encounter oppression in mind and action.
Disrupt us to new life
Advent us to your longing for your children.
Let not sorrow be ruler.
Clear the way for Joy as the undexpected King.
Amen.
Scripture:
Psalm 23
Advent Prayer:
In our dark nights, we cry to you
In our bright days, we forget what we longed for
May our cries echo
May our longing be immediate
In our sharp minds, we pray for your coming
In our wavering hearts, we can't decide if the road is open or closed
May you clear the decks
May we raise the gates on our tollbooths.
Here we gather as hopeful witnesses to revolutionary birth.
Going from here we encounter oppression in mind and action.
Disrupt us to new life
Advent us to your longing for your children.
Let not sorrow be ruler.
Clear the way for Joy as the undexpected King.
Amen.
Scripture:
Psalm 44
Advent Prayer:
In our dark nights, we cry to you
In our bright days, we forget what we longed for
May our cries echo
May our longing be immediate
In our sharp minds, we pray for your coming
In our wavering hearts, we can't decide if the road is open or closed
May you clear the decks
May we raise the gates on our tollbooths.
Here we gather as hopeful witnesses to revolutionary birth.
Going from here we encounter oppression in mind and action.
Disrupt us to new life
Advent us to your longing for your children.
Let not sorrow be ruler.
Clear the way for Joy as the undexpected King.
Amen.
Advent Prayer:
In our dark nights, we cry to you
In our bright days, we forget what we longed for
May our cries echo
May our longing be immediate
In our sharp minds, we pray for your coming
In our wavering hearts, we can't decide if the road is open or closed
May you clear the decks
May we raise the gates on our tollbooths.
Here we gather as hopeful witnesses to revolutionary birth.
Going from here we encounter oppression in mind and action.
Disrupt us to new life
Advent us to your longing for your children.
Let not sorrow be ruler.
Clear the way for Joy as the undexpected King.
Amen.
Scripture:
Psalm 30
Advent Benediction:
A Future Not Our Own by Archbishop Oscar Romero
It helps, now and then, to step back
and take the long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of
the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete,
which is another way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders,
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
Passage:
Psalm 107
Comtemplation:
Are we willing to clear the decks of our expectations of the ways Jesus will encounter us?
Are we willing to let the creator be creative in the ways he will manifest his Holy refrain?
Reflection:
Have I ever "known" something about God and changed my mind later?
Is there a place right now where I feel like Gamaliel - in the middle?
Passage:
Acts 4:32 - 5:11
Reflection:
Where am I seeing great fear & why?
Where am I seeing great grace?
Passage:
Acts 3:1-10
Reflection:
Would it surprise you if God did a miracle right in front of you?
Who or what do I need to start looking at?
Dick Foth helps out for the second week in a row to help us remember the unbelievable, unimaginable, and unstoppable.
Passage:
Luke 15:11-32
Reflection:
Our good friend Dick Foth steps in to pinch hit and speaks of joy & knowing who we are.
Passage:
Matthew 25:14-30
Reflection:
In what area do we desire to be more faithful with what we have been trusted with, and what does that faithfulness look like?