Beloved of God,

I want to remind you that next week (9/3-9/6) we will be on a church retreat at Glorietta through the weekend. This means that I will not be present to preach and that the worship team will not be present to serve in person. However, I’m working on something for you for Sunday that I hope will still be an opportunity for meaningful and careful engagement with God’s word. Please consider coming up to the building and spending that time with others if you like.
Our semi-regular newsletter, The Rock, is going to press within the next two weeks. If you know of special things happening within our church body, please submit them to Vanessa for publication by 9/1. Photographs of any of our recent events are especially helpful.

Our Scripture reading for this week is Psalm 15. I’m reminded of the way someone wiser than I suggested that we read the wisdom Psalms. Many of them are written with the intent of having them wash over you, over and over, until you become the sort of person that fits them. And I think this is one all of us could read more than once.
These are behaviors that one would expect in a righteous person. They are matters of the heart, matters of the tongue, and matters of the pocket book. They are also strikingly everyday things. Did you seek to walk in righteousness today? Did you tell the truth? Did you speak plainly and generously about your neighbors and not succumb to slander? Did you deal honestly with your money?
We could do a lot worse than to lay our lives against something like this at the end of everyday to take the measure of what sort of person we are. But flagellating ourselves over what we did poorly or congratulating ourselves for what we did well isn’t the point. We read and reread something like this because it tells us how to respond in love to a God who has already saved us from our sins. We want to be these sorts of folks because it is a way to love God. Let’s seek to love God by living honorably this week.

Please join me in praying for:

• An end to this pandemic.
  
• Doctors, nurses, PA’s, paramedics, and others working to keep us all well.
• Those who are facing difficult personal, professional, and physical circumstances because of the pandemic.
• Students, teachers, administrators, and staff seeking to do the good work of education, and facing challenges early in the year.
• Those who are lonely, afraid, or tired in ways they have never been.
• Those of us worrying over family who are ill or injured.
• Wisdom as we seek to be faithful and be good neighbors.
• In praise for those who are have sensed a call to serve in our ministries this fall, and for strength and joy as they do.
  
• Each other! (Please email [email protected] if you’d like to be added to our prayer list.)
  

You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world,
Marshall

Beloved of God,


    We have a unique moment in the life of the church coming up on Sunday, May 16. For the first time (ever ?) our children will be leading us in worship as we sing, pray, and read Scripture together. I hope you will be praying for them as they do for a few reasons:

1. If it is truly worship, and not merely entertaining, a moment like this may give a child a much deeper sense of who God is. The moment may impress upon them a deep desire to follow Christ in baptism and to begin living a life of discipleship to Him.
2. It is often in serving in worship like this that a child may begin to develop a sense of call or claim on their life. A call to preaching, mission, chaplaincy, or children’s ministry may very well go to seed in a moment of authentic service like this.
3. Even if this opportunity doesn’t lead to a sense of call to vocational ministry, a child might begin to recognize their own gifts, and perhaps concurrently recognize what those gifts are for.

Be praying that these kids will come to know something new about God as they prepare to serve the congregation in leading worship. I expect those of us who they will be leading may learn something as well. 

This Sunday our Scripture reading will be from the last part of Acts 10, but the verses before that, (Acts 10:1-34) have been jumping out at me lately. We get a picture of a perfectly obedient gentile, who does exactly as he’s commanded. We find Peter, having a series of visions that don’t make sense to him until he himself has also been obedient. We have Peter arriving at a home only to ask what they want with him, and the people he is meeting expecting that he will have something to say.
This is a passage where the Holy Spirit is out in front of everyone involved, preparing the moment for the gospel to be shared if only Peter and Cornelius and others will be obedient. The Holy Spirit does this sort of thing. It is wild, and unpredictable. And yet the Spirit is also faithful, and for us. As we’re called to be God’s people in this place, I hope we will learn to look for the places the Holy Spirit is going ahead of us, because those places are where our ministry to our community and to each other will lie, and nowhere else. 

Please join me this week in praying for:
An end to this pandemic.

• In praise for the ways God has preserved and defended this nation, and in hope that we would be a people whose civic life is marked by justice, peace, and security.
• In praise for the women who have taught us, cared for us, defended us, and loved us through the holy work of mothering.
• Those among us in the midst of a big transition.
• Those among us who are hurt or ill in mind, body, or spirit.
• Guidance for our congregation as opportunities to gather together become more available.
• All those who the Holy Spirit is working even now to place in our path.
• Those in positions of public trust at the federal, state, and local level.
• Doctors, nurses, paramedics, PA’s and others working hard to keep us all well.
• Each other (please email [email protected] if you’d like to be added to our prayer ministry).

You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world,

Marshall

Beloved of God,

Sunday is All Saints Day. I know that many of us may not come out of a tradition where we celebrate this day. I certainly didn’t. But as I’ve grown older, and had more and more saints pass out of my life and into the arms of Christ, I’ve come to think that it might not be such a bad thing to stop and remember those folks. We’ve all known saints who have impacted our lives and faith in ways that were deeply important. I think habitually around this time of year about people like my Grandmother, or my friend Ben who helped mentor me early in my work as a teacher. I think about the curmudgeonly old deacon I sat with at church when Mama was in the Choir. I think about people I didn’t know well, but who left a long shadow. I think of Brigid of Ireland who was the greatest indigenous missionary of her era. I think of a 4th century pastor in southern Anatolia, Nicholas, who would walk up to the cliffside each day and pray for his people, most of them fishermen, as their boats sailed out of the bay. I think of Clarence Jordan, who ran a farm in south Georgia in a time when white folk and black folk weren’t supposed to be sharing their table, their work, their prayers and their lives. But he did it anyway because that’s what the Kingdom of God looks like and what it demands.
    Especially in a year when death and disease has seemed so close to so many of us, I think it is helpful to remember these people by name. But in remembering them, it is important to recognize the truth that all of our older brothers and sisters in the faith who have finished their race are now alive in Christ. We are indeed surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. And in living our faith through a time like this, we are drawing on the wisdom, the practices, and the faithful stewardship of those folks who have already passed this way and have made it safely home. One of God’s greatest gifts is the gift of brothers and sisters in Christ who love us, care for us, and guide us. And the most wonderful thing about that gift is that in Christ, even those that we lose along the way will be found someday, with us, in Him.

Please join me this week in praying for:

• God’s wisdom, guidance, and peace for all those participating in our electoral process.
• Those standing for election to the office of president, and other candidates at the federal, state, and local level.
• Doctors, Nurses, Paramedics, Hospital staff and others working for the health and safety of us all in this pandemic.
• In praise for snowfall in a dry land.
• For the students, teachers, and administrators in our community.
• For those who are hopeless, afraid, lonely, or desperate.
• In thanksgiving for the lives of faithful saints who have guided us deeper into the Kingdom of God.
• For those who have known the loss of a loved one this year.
• For those who will someday follow us in faith; that we will have left behind a worthy witness.
• For each other (please email [email protected] if you would like to be added to our prayer list).

You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world,

Marshall