Wednesday, July 7, 2021

A mid-week message from our Pastor:

Robert G. Doherty writes this: "The realization of God's love for us comes as a life-changing, liberating moment. Jesus announced his ministry as one of setting persons free from the effects of sin and darkness to enjoy a life of complete freedom and full salvation. The 'inhabitants' of the dark recesses of our conscious and subconscious selves are often so fear- or guilt- producing that we go to almost any length to avoid admitting or confronting their existence. But once the realization of God's unconditional love is secure, we begin to look into the dark side of life's experiences in order to be led from that darkness into the light (Col. 1: 13-14). God's love for us means we need not stay as we are, for the Holy Spirit is with us to help us face ourselves and to go from where we are to where God wants us to be."

Have a blessed week,
Pastor John

Wednesday, June 30, 2021

A mid-week message from our Pastor:

Tilda Norberg writes this: "Growth is not always about getting through terrible pain. Most often it involves change, perhaps only a small shift in awareness or embracing a good part of you that got lost. Learning to love yourself and others more deeply, opening to the tender joy of pregnancy and birth, meeting the challenge of a new job, or being creative in retirement is most certainly growth, too. So is surrendering a grudge, making room for forgiveness to take root, or learning to pray from your heart."

Have a blessed week,
Pastor John

P.S. Many thanks to the person who left the gift card on my desk this past Sunday.

Wednesday, June 23, 2021

A mid-week message from our Pastor:

Robert Corin Morris writes this: " True delight in God's ways sometimes comes only after the discomfiting loss of various forms of ignorance, illusion, and innocence. Looked at this way, disillusionment can be seen as an event of purifying grace, an open door toward wisdom."

Have a blessed week,
Pastor John

Wednesday, June 16, 2021

A mid-week message from our Pastor:

Flora Slosson Wuellner writes this: "If we have given our whole heart to God and God's guidance and God's way of love, we have already become 'a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God' (Rom 12:1) in every small or great thing we do, whether in the home or out in the world. The ways of living this holy life are wide and varied. Sometimes the opened gate does mean a different job, a different way of life, a different set of responsibilities and relationships. But at other times the opened gate may lead to a different way of doing our usual work, a new way of responding to others, an alternative way of praying, a transformed attitude toward ourselves, a different way of relating to God."

Have a blessed week,
Pastor John

Wednesday, June 9, 2021

A mid-week message from our Pastor:

Reuben P. Job and Marjorie J. Thompson write this: "While the initiative and invitation to companionship are entirely God's, response lies with us. God gives us grace to respond to the awakening call of the Holy Spirit, but we can choose to turn away and refuse the invitation. Or we can choose, by the Spirit's help, to walk in faithfulness and harmony with God. By doing so we can claim our full and true inheritance as children of God. Choosing to open ourselves to grace means receiving life's greatest gift and walking the path of spiritual abundance."

Have a blessed week,
Pastor John

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

A mid-week message from our Pastor:

Reuben P. Job writes this: "Conversion is a journey. The Christian is saved and is being saved. Just as the child is not fully mature, so the Christian is not fully mature at the time of 'birth' in Christ. As the Christian grows, the Spirit reveals attitudes and behaviors that frustrate the search for wholeness. For this reason the Christian will be aware of the conflict between resistance and acceptance of the will of God, between darkness and light...This growth process is experienced as an interior struggle between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness. It is important in the struggle to experience God's unconditional love as freedom."

Have a blessed week,
Pastor John

Wednesday, May 19, 2021

A mid-week message from our Pastor:

Norman Shawchuck writes this: "When we seek to be like Christ we come to realize that we are facing an eternal paradox- the more we become like him the greater is our realization that we are not yet fully like him. This growing similarity makes us more conscious of the vast dissimilarity. But there is increased faith that he will never stop drawing us until we are fully formed in the image and likeness of God. He is ever moving toward us with transformation as the goal...Many persons are willing to have Christ as savior. Far fewer are willing to surrender everything they possess and desire to his lordship."

 Have a blessed week,
Pastor John

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

A mid-week message from our Pastor:

John Mogabgab writes this: "Holy ground is the stable place of clarity and confidence in a turbulent human landscape of shifting values, crumbling hopes, frayed trusts, uncertain commitments. Holy ground is the place of life-giving rootedness in something larger than our own lives, something deep enough and enduring enough to keep us anchored and oriented in the storm. Holy ground is the place at once attractive and fearsome, where God speaks and we listen; the place of empowerment, transformation, and sending forth to live victoriously in a world too often disfigured by the defeat of justice, peace, and human dignity; the place where the gracious rule of God is known and the new creation becomes visible; where faith can move mountains." Where is holy ground for you?

Have a blessed week,
Pastor John

Wednesday, May 5, 2021

A mid-week message from our Pastor:

Donald J. Shelby writes this: "Our commitment to Jesus Christ and our faith journey, while always personal, is never private...Remember how the prophet Micah underscored it: 'What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?' Personal piety is commended, but only when it leads to concern for the stranger and to moral righteousness and justice in society. To be alive in the Spirit and to follow Jesus is to put faith to work; it is to translate our love for God into caring concern for the least and the lost. Did not Jesus do that himself? His own moments of prayer and spiritual preparation were often followed by gestures of healing and help."

Have a blessed week,
Pastor John

Wednesday, April 28, 2021

A mid-week message from our Pastor:

A few people have requested a copy of John Workman’s list of ‘duties” for a Christian from last Sunday’s sermon. Here they are:

1.      To be a faithful people in an age when keeping faith is a seemingly impossible feat.

2.     To be proclaimers of hope in a time when even the saints despair.

3.     To be seers of beauty and joy in a world where wonder often is crushed by human greed.

4.     To be encouragers of one’s fellow human beings.

5.     To be strugglers towards love, pushers toward the way even though one may stumble awkwardly along the earth.

6.     To be, however frail and unfit, keepers of dreams and custodians of visions, and

7.     To be bringers of light, however small, into dark places, however large.

One of our members shared this:  There’s a name for the Blah you’re feeling – it’s called languishing.  To learn more, follow this link:

Feeling Blah During the Pandemic? It's Called Languishing - The New York Times

 Have a blessed week,
Pastor John

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

A mid-week message from our Pastor:

In his book Earth and Altar, Eugene Peterson writes this: “Prayer acts on the principle of the fulcrum, the small point where great leverage is exercised- awareness and intensification, expansion and deepening at the conjunction of heaven and earth, God and neighbor, self and society. Prayer is the action that integrates the inside and the outside of life, that correlates the personal and the public, and that addresses individual needs and national interest. No other thing that we do is as simultaneously beneficial to society and to the soul as the act of prayer.”

 Have a blessed week,
Pastor John

Wednesday, April 14, 2021

A mid-week message from our Pastor:

James C. Fenhagen writes this: “Holiness, in one strand of biblical understanding, is closely associated with Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of God. It is not concerned so much with accumulating desirable attributes that we call holy, as it is with the way we perceive reality and the way we act on these perceptions. Holiness, therefore, is a political word. A holy person is a person who sees the world, if only momentarily, through the eyes of Christ and is drawn to act in response to this vision.”

Have a blessed week,
Pastor John

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

A mid-week message from our Pastor:

John Wijngaards writes this: “Christian faith must constantly grow. It cannot remain static. Either it will slowly wither and die, or it will mature and bear ever more fruit. And as the stem grows higher and the branches heavier, it needs to strike deeper roots. Without deeper roots, there is little hope for survival.”

Have a blessed week,
Pastor John

Wednesday, March 31, 2021 - Wednesday of Holy Week

A mid-week message from our Pastor:

Edward J. Farrell writes this: “I find myself reflecting on the last supper of Jesus. We seldom recognize a final occasion when it is happening. Only in retrospect do we recognize that it was the last. Then we recall every moment, every gesture and try to draw from it what we will carry with us the rest of our lives. So easily we take for granted the meals of every day. They are so regular and common, so ordinary as long as they continue. But when it is the last one, all of the previous ones are drawn into it and it becomes a singularity, a once and never again. It becomes a rare, precious moment to be treasured forever.”

Have a blessed holy week,
Pastor John

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

A mid-week message from our Pastor:

Edward J. Farrell writes this: “Reverence has something to do with holiness and wholeness. It is a word ordinarily ascribed to God alone. When we speak about reverence in regard to ourselves we speak of the holiness of our relationship with God. This wholeness, this holiness, is given to us not because we are without sin, but in spite of our sin. We have to believe that God loves us so much that even though we are sinners we are holy. And we are holy in a way that we give holiness to others. We have been loved so much that there is enough left over to give to others… This inner stream of God’s love, like running water, always refreshes us so that we might offer a cup to others.”

Have a blessed week,
Pastor John

Wednesday, March 17, 2021 - Happy St. Patrick's Day

A mid-week message from our Pastor:

John Carmody writes this: “The only time that is fully real is the present. Yesterday is old news and tomorrow is full of maybes. This is obvious enough, when one reflects on it, but it takes most of us many years to realize its full implications. So most of us spend a great deal of our time daydreaming about the past or worrying about the future. Not realizing the value of the real bird we have in hand, we leave the present to go rooting in past or future bushes. As a result, the personal business that should stand highest on our agenda often never gets done. What is this personal business? Finding peace of mind, and so happiness, right here and now. Learning to live so that we savor each day, waste none of the precious moments God has given us.”

Have a blessed week,
Pastor John

Wednesday, March 10, 2021

A mid-week message from our Pastor:

James C. Fenhagen writes this: “The call to a holy life is extended to everyone whose life has been touched by the reality of God. Holiness is not the fruit of specialness, but of faithfulness. For to be faithful in a relationship is to honor it by the way we live. The call to holiness in our day, as it always has been, is a call to live in the world as a sign of the Kingdom. It is a call to participate in those things that contribute to human solidarity, forgiveness and compassion, righteousness and justice, and ultimately global peace (shalom!).”

Have a blessed week,
Pastor John

Wednesday, March 3, 2021

A mid-week message from our Pastor:

Joan Puls writes this: “The amazing truth of the kingdom is its availability. The kingdom is not for buying. It is not exclusive. It can’t be hoarded. It succumbs, not to power, not to birthright, or even to the magnitude and sparkle of one’s achievements. It is available to those born of the Spirit, those imbued with a simple faith. It requires one possession, freedom. The freedom to recognize kingdom-events and to follow a kingdom-course.”

Have a blessed week,
Pastor John

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

A mid-week message from our Pastor:

The book Living Simply offers this advice: “Simplicity, then, is the gift to live a holy life. It is the gift to live in the deeper awareness of connectedness to others and to all creation. It is the gift to travel lightly because accumulation of things, people, and experiences are unnecessary for our joy. In Christ all things are ours, and we belong to them. When St. Francis called the sun and moon, water and fire his sisters and brothers, he was being not so much a romantic as he was witnessing to the wholeness of life. Since we do not have to accumulate things for our survival, we are able to care for all of life rather than use it up. We are able to live freely with compassion because we do not have to be minding our possessions.”

Have a blessed week,
Pastor John

Wednesday, February 17, 2021 - Ash Wednesday

A mid-week message from our Pastor:

Richard J. Foster writes this: “Our ambivalence about power is resolved in the vow of service. Jesus picked up a basin and a towel and, in doing so, redefined the meaning and function of power. ‘If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do what I have done to you.’ In the everlasting kingdom of Christ, low is high, down is up, weak is strong, service is power. Do you sincerely want to engage in the ministry of power? Do you want to be a leader who is a blessing to people? Do you honestly want to be used of God to heal human hurts? Then learn to become a servant of all.”

Have a blessed week and stay warm,
Pastor John