Announcements
PW
Birthday Celebration—This
Sunday! (There will be cake! Don't miss it!)
Community
Kitchen Spot
There are a lot of hungry and homeless children of God
and the community needs some help feeding them. If you would like to
help out, please bring the following items to church this Sunday &
put them in the grocery cart.
Plastic Spoons
Paper Napkins
8 oz. Styrofoam bowls
New
Hope News
Sunday
School—This Sunday, the adult class will study
Titus.
Potluck—NEXT
Sunday, May 19th.
Pray
For:
John
L. Wright
Syria.
Links
Keith's
Random Thoughts
Andy Sanislo and I play golf on Monday nights. One night, several
years ago, I hit the best combination of drive & 6 iron I've ever
hit on a par 5. The ball landed about 8 feet from the pin—it was a
tricky putt, but makeable. Well, makeable for someone else. What
could have been an eagle ended up as a birdie.
Let's say you go bowling and get 11 strikes in a row. Your score is
290 and you bowl the perfect ball, only one pin is left standing. A
299 rather than a 300.
In both of those cases, what happened is remarkable. But how does
the brain remember it? As what might have been. As 'almost'.
We think like this all the time. We probably do it most often in
relation to our health. When one thing goes wrong, we dwell on that
rather than revel in all the things that are going right. We forget
to be grateful for all our blessings and think about what might have
been or what should be.
I don't know why we think like this so often. The pain of a loss
seems to stand out to us much more than the joy of a victory. What
we don't have seems to elicit more emotion than what we do have.
(This is very common in affairs. Married people start focusing their
energy on someone other than their spouse. If all the energy
dedicated to the pursuit of someone new was instead focused on the
spouse, the marriage would be in a lot better shape.)
If we invest all of our time thinking about the negative, it will
soon infest our prayer life. Our prayers will become laments about
what didn't happen. We will be constantly asking God for something
new, for something else. We will be disappointed when what God gives
us isn't what we wanted, because we've formed such clear images in
our head. God becomes a sort of vending machine in the sky.
So here's a challenge—count your blessings. You're still alive to
read this, so you can't say you don't have any. God still loves you.
Christ still died on the cross for you, and the Holy Spirit is at
work within you, directing you into the future God has prepared for
you.
Count your blessings & give thanks for them. See if it doesn't
overwhelm you and change the way you think.
Text
for this Sunday
John
11:17-27
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the
tomb for four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles
away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console
them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming,
she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to
Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’
Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said to
him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the
last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the
life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and
everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe
this?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the
Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’
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