Grace to you and peace, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ! Reading the Bible can be a challenging experience, and particularly when there are stories that feel at odds with what we know of God’s love and believe of God’s mercy. This is especially true of this and next week’s lessons from Genesis. So, I invite you to listen to familiar stories with a new lens and to bring your own questions. With Abraham’s “servant Hagar” and their son Ishmael, we especially have a different lens for understanding one of the great religious divides in the world even today. How might we come to a place of wide welcome and greater mercy ourselves with some closer reading? Our burgeoning summer choir is something wonderful to hear, as well! Blessings and peace, Lisa
Grace to you and peace, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ! Readying to head out to our Pride celebration this morning and reading various articles that recall injustices that continue against people of color in our nation (part of media attention to Monday’s Juneteenth holiday), I am struck. There are ways in which our texts for tomorrow morning are simply celebratory of God’s gracious love. What must it be, though, to maintain patience in waiting to feel security? Some of us are privileged not to have to consider this at all consciously. Others can teach us something about waiting and working for justice to arrive. We will sing “Amazing Grace” in worship tomorrow and will consider how we help to be part of making grace manifest for ourselves and for others. We begin to do that as we celebrate Pride today.
Again, following worship, those of us who are participating in this summer’s Peaceable Kin-dom for school aged children will check briefly (more briefly) in the Fisher Hall. Deacons will meet after that in the Dolly Fisher room.
Chipmunks and harbors and us, oh my! After several years on hiatus, the Congregational Church of Blue Hill is again offering its summer Peaceable Kin-dom program. On June 27-29 from 9:00 – 12:00 a.m., school-age children are invited to participate in a program including stories, games, songs, arts and crafts, and snacks celebrating our unity with all of nature and creation. Children are invited to participate for any or all three days, with no charge. You may contact the church office to register, either by emailing info@bluehillcongregational.org or calling (207)374-2891. Let us know how many of your children or grandchildren will participate, their ages and any allergies, as well as contact information for their parent or guardian, and listen to the stories and songs come home each day! Registration forms will be available from 8:45 each of the three mornings.
Grace to you and peace, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ! I am grateful for many conversations this week around the subject of faith, trust, and belief, sometimes noting differences among them and sometimes simply naming how difficult it can be to live into any of them. To read the scripture lessons from Genesis and Matthew as our lectionary text for this Sunday feels no mere coincidence as a result. How do we lean into or build our faith and our trust in God? I look forward to sharing together in community, which always has the effect of bolstering my own faith. I hope you’ll join us!
Following worship, I hope that many of you will stay for coffee and fellowship and that everyone interested in supporting our children’s programming will join in conversation to further plan this summer’s Peaceable Kin-dom for school aged children. Tell all your friends about its return on June 27-29th, when we will be celebrating Nature and Creation!
Grace to you and peace, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ! On this first Sunday of June, we celebrate Communion together. So, those of you who are worshipping from home may want to prepare for yourself a portion of bread and cup so that you may share with us. We will also be celebrating together the mystery of the Trinity, God in three persons as we understand God’s presence in our lives as creator, redeemer and sustainer. We will answer together the question of how we perceive God and pray together that the beautiful dance that is the Trinity might be a model for our living together in unity, as well. Children are welcome to participate in the service in every way, with separate children’s programming beginning again soon.
Grace to you and peace, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ! We are blessed with a glorious weekend, one on which we honor the many who have died in armed conflict through the years. This Sunday also is Pentecost, when we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church. It is a tradition in the Church worldwide to wear red on Pentecost, symbolizing the Spirit! Imagine the array we will have in the sanctuary when you do so on Sunday!
Our focus texts tomorrow inspire us to conceive of church in hopeful ways, and you are invited to come dream dreams together. We are a congregation, a church that has been mightily blessed by the examples of our forebears. We worship in a building preserved through the financial gifts of generations, with tradition that has developed through millennia. We also serve the community well because of the gifts of current and past members. With the sale of the parsonage, we have been provided the means to continue the work of this church for even longer. How we do so is up to us, and we are committed to sharing with the community the blessing of this particular gift of a century ago. Where housing was provided through the parsonage, many of us have been discussing the housing shortage in our area and how we might be part of alleviating the struggle for so many. In the months ahead, in conversation with different community organizations who are also committed to vibrancy for all on the Blue Hill peninsula, we look forward to creatively supporting our neighbors. Come and be part of the conversation! Come worship together the One who has given us all good things!
