Announcements
Cantata--
This
Sunday!
Service
of Healing & Wholeness--
For
all who struggle with any and all of Christmas, we hold this service
yearly as a place to come and let the hope of Christ and the love of
the community surround us. December 22 @ 6pm.
Candlelight
Christmas Eve Service of Lessons & Carols--
December 24, 7 pm.
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 on the
bookshelf.
Plastic
Forks, Knives, Spoons
Dinner
Napkins
Heavy
Duty Sectional Dinner Plates
Dessert
Plates
New
Hope News
Toy
Drop Thank You--
Thank
you for all your generosity for the toy drop! (The
guy from the Forgotten Child Fund came and picked up the toys today,
and he said we had way more toys than any other place he had visited.
Hope you are proud of the congregation's giving!)
Sunday
School—We
push forward into Matthew 8 this coming Sunday.
Pray
For:
Lynn
Meyer—please
pray for Roger and Lynn as the eternal life into which she was
baptized draws near. While death has been defeated and the veil
separating us from God has been torn in two, there is still much pain
and many tears as we grieve the wounds that death punches into our
hearts and minds.
Norma Capone—please pray for her this Friday as she undergoes treatment.
Norma Capone—please pray for her this Friday as she undergoes treatment.
Christine
Dyer
For
Jessica and so many others wrestling with cancer
For
each and every individual who waits in a hospital bed. Some wait
anxiously for doctors to bring back reports. Some wait longingly for
visitors. Some wait to leave, bored and confused as the days run
together. Some wait for death. In each and every room, there is a
child made in the image of God, born of two parents, filled with
hopes and dreams and joys and fears. Each and every one of them
matters to God.
Links
Keith's
Random Thoughts
Cancer
sucks.
Death
sucks.
Frankly,
we have too much of both. Sickness & death tear at the fabric of
our lives, tearing us in pieces and ripping us apart, bringing chaos
to the creation that God created, ordered and called 'Good'. It
wasn't supposed to be like this.
We
introduced this sin to the world. God called us to live a certain
way, and we selfishly chose disobedience, and the consequences of
that choice brought sickness, death and all sorts of brokenness into
the world. All of our sin has brought death to all of us. Humanity,
all of us, are broken.
What
we need, even more than physical healing, is a Savior. I always pray
for physical healing, for myself and for others. I pray that the
Great Physician would do a miracle in the body of the one that is
suffering, that disease and sickness might be conquered & health
might be restored. But even if we are physically healed, it only
delays the inevitable. We will get sick again. We all die.
What
we truly need is someone to deliver us from the bondage of sin and
death. What we need is someone who will break the shackles of death,
so that we will be restored to life, so that we will be in a state
where death and disease and chaos cannot touch us.
This
is exactly what Christ has done. Christ doesn't physically heal all
of us, just as he didn't heal everyone in the Gospels, but he offers
us something greater, something deeper—liberation, and the hope
that, one day, we will be free from death. One day, we will live in
a place where there is no thought of disease. Our resurrection
bodies will be good, and they will stay that way.
Forever.
So
death still sucks. But fortunately, we can place our trust in One
who delivers us through death into life.
Text
for this Sunday, December
15
Luke
1:26-38
(ESV)
26
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of
Galilee named Nazareth, 27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name
was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. 28
And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is
with you!” 29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried
to discern what sort of greeting this might be. 30 And the angel said
to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you
shall call his name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the
Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of
his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob
forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
34
And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a
virgin?”
35
And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the
child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. 36 And behold,
your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and
this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. 37 For
nothing will be impossible with God.” 38 And Mary said, “Behold,
I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your
word.” And the angel departed from her.
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& Devotionals
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