Announcements
Wednesday
Night Suppers—We
had a great start last night! Plan to join us each week for supper &
study!
East
Brainerd Elementary—Over
the last two weeks, your donations have provided food for 50 kids
over the weekend!! Thank you!
Pizza
& Ping-Pong—The
youth & their friends are invited to the Geerlings' house on Oct.
6 for an evening of pizza & ping-pong. Please RSVP to Janet.
Potluck—The
first fall potluck will be on October 7th.
We'll have another on the 21st!
New
Hope News
Sermon
Series—We
begin a new one, entitled Biblical
Lives.
We'll follow the life of Elijah over the next few months.
Sunday
School—We'll
explore Amos this Sunday @ 10.
Sunday
Evening Prayer Service—Join
us Sunday @ 6
Pray
for:
Lynn
Meyer
The
church, that we might be faithful to God's will
Joseph
Townley, who underwent surgery this morning to remove that pesky
appendix
Jo
Darby, who mourns the loss of two sons
Pray
for those who do not see the hand of God at work in their lives
Links
Book
Recommendation
If
you've not read Bruce Feiler's Walking
the Bible,
I cannot recommend it highly enough. (Used copies are plentiful and
start at $0.01, plus shipping) He follows the path of the Israelites
through the wilderness, visiting the sites mentioned in the Bible and
discussing what archeology has found. My mother gave it to me for my
21st
birthday, and I can say without hesitation that it changed my life.
It gave me a hunger for the Biblical text—it brought the stories to
life and helped fuel my own search for what God was doing in my life.
Random
Thoughts
I
drink a lot of tea. If I'm in the grocery store and it's on sale,
I'll buy 4 or 5 boxes without thinking twice. I like to buy the teas
that sound exotic (it gives me much needed excitement in my life.)
This morning I had green tea with superfruit in it—I don't know
which fruits in it were so super, but they had fancy names that were
hard to pronounce, so I'm sure they're very super.
The
amazing thing? I couldn't tell you what that cup of tea tasted like.
I have no idea. I absent-mindedly drank it while I did ten other
things, and next thing I know I was tipping the cup up, having just
finished it, with no idea what flavors it contained.
Now,
this isn't particularly sad—the fact that I drank a cup of tea
without paying attention to it is a minor detail in the face of life.
It doesn't matter much at all.
But
how many things in life because we're too caught up in the other ten
things we're doing?
How
many big things, important things, do we miss because we're
distracted? Is Caleb going to grow up before my eyes, yet I'll miss
it because I'm distracted by so many things? Is life going to slip
away, day by precious day, for some of us who are too busy to notice?
God
is at work in the world. God is at work in your life. But if we
don't slow down enough and focus on trying to discern where and how
he is working, we won't notice it. We'll miss the grace and love and
peace of God that surrounds us. We'll miss windows of opportunity
and mission because we're distracted.
Pay
attention. God is on the move. You don't want to miss this.
Text
for Sunday, September 30
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