We remember how God has moved in our lives

Beloved of God,

    If you plan to join Carrie Blake and our Missions and Outreach team this Sunday, please use this link to RSVP. In addition to some time to eat and fellowship together, we’ll be hearing more about the good work Carrie and others are doing through the Remember Niger Coalition. I hope you’ll be able to join us.
    In my office on my bookshelf, I have a 4” square of stage planking from the old auditorium at Baylor University. It’s just spruce treated on one side with a black surfacing. There’s nothing about it that would catch your eye except for the seal of my old college club, stenciled on in white paint. What I know about that staging is that thousands of sermons have been given on it. I know it has held up feisty amateurs and studied professionals as they gave performances that folks still talk about. A lifetime’s worth of chapel services, and concerts, and special ceremonies happened on it. But you might not know that unless I bothered to tell you.     
Even extraordinary happenings have to be remembered and invoked if they are going to shape us at all. Our Scripture reading this week comes from a psalm designed to help God’s people do just that. The psalm in its entirety recounts Israel’s history; the good, bad, and ugly. But the psalm had to be sung anyway so that each succeeding generation might learn of God and not forget neither His power nor mercy.
Your own story of God’s provision, instruction, or grace only extends as far as those you share it with. It is always worthwhile to tell one another of the moments when God moved in our lives. That can be done within a Sunday service, but also in Sunday school. That story can be retold in families, but also in friendships. Knowing where God has moved and remembering it together is something that Psalm 78 can teach us to do well. Our discipleship to Jesus rests on the story of his life, death, and resurrection. But it also rests on the conviction that the Gospel story is our story. Let’s practice telling that story together. Practice especially telling about the parts nobody will know but you.

Please join me this week in praying for:

• Those among us who are sick or hurting.
  
• Those who will be traveling on this holiday weekend.
• Folks we know who are facing big changes or challenges. Pray God would give them courage, strength, and peace.
• Those who are overscheduled, overcommitted, overtired, and underappreciated.
• Our associate pastor search team.
• One whom God is already calling to come and serve among His people here.
• In thanksgiving for those who have served in rotating positions on the council and personnel committees. Pray that folks may sense a call to fill those open posts.
• Those who out of love of for neighbor and nation took up armed service. Pray especially for those who bear wounds from that service both visible and invisible. 
• Those in positions of public trust at the federal, state, and local levels. Pray especially for those who have just been called into this service for the first time. 
• Those who respond to emergencies on our roadways, in our wildlands, in our communities, and even in our homes. 
• Your enemies.
• 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 Cook