Grace and peace to you, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ!  On the wall of my kitchen, there is a stenciled phrase from M.F.K. Fisher left from the previous owner of my house, Bonnie.  It reads, “First we eat, then we do everything else.”  So, honoring Bonnie, I would first like to remind everyone that we are going to be getting together this afternoon at 4:30 in Fisher Hall for fun and food, Bingo and Chili/Soup!  Thanks to Lisa Groo and Ruth Miller for organizing us (details in previous eVisitors)!  For those that are interested, you also may like to attend our own Gale Flax’s presentation at the library, on her walking the Camino in Spain last spring.  This begins at 3:00. 

We gather for worship in person tomorrow for the first time in three weeks!  I look forward to seeing everyone, whether in the sanctuary or online, when we hear about some of the deepest mysteries of our faith from Paul and also the deepest challenges from Jesus.  In our own demanding times, we can take heart that God’s promises are sure, even to the end of days, and we can support one another in the just and righteous living to which we are called.  Jesus helps us to answer the question, “how, then, shall we live?” 

Blessings and peace, Lisa 

Hello all! So another storm, another Zoom worship. I am looking forward to worshiping with you, and “seeing” some of you again.  Our scripture readings for this 6^th Sunday after Epiphany invite us to consider how we are called by God to live, in these times of uncertainty and turmoil. Do we live lives of blessing or lives of woe? Do we live as “shrubs in the desert, or” trees planted beside waters? ” Can we brings intention to our circumstances? There is a lot to explore in our worship as we watch the storm unfold.

May Blessings Abound! 

Pastor Deb Jenks

Grace and peace to you, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ! While I was comfortably able to drive from my home just two miles from church, I do not suggest that anyone else do so. The church parking lot is not yet plowed, and to ask our sexton-stand-in (and helpful parishioners) to shovel as the snow continues to come down feels a bit much. So, please know that we WILL worship together, but on Zoom. I likely will remain in my office here, which will allow me to greet anyone who arrives in-person, who may not see this email. So, I look forward to our gathering together virtually at 10:00 for a relatively brief service sharing our prayers, the Word, and our grateful response.

The Zoom Link is: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86112605110

Meeting ID: 861 1260 5110

Passcode: 903748

Blessings and peace, Lisa

P.S., If you feel you must be here in person, know that you are welcome in my office!

Grace and peace to you, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ!  Friends, the weather looks particularly iffy as we will gather for worship tomorrow morning.  Please do not try to drive in if there is any question of your safety!  We will, of course, be Zooming the service, and all are welcome to join us that way.  We may not have a choir, but we will sing our hymns just as gustily, whether at home or in the sanctuary.  
 
Our scripture readings this weekend invite us to a place of holy awe and to a very specific response to God’s effect on our lives.  How do we respond to our awe?  How do we respond to the holy?  In the first of the Gospel stories of Jesus’ calling the disciples to follow him, we may hear our own call to respond.  In a time in which we may be feeling as though we lack some agency, we know that Jesus calls us to act faithfully, with trust.  Those are two things, each strengthened by the other.  As we gather in worship, praising God for God’s gifts to us and closely regarding our own selves, our own souls, we may pray together that we are always moved to compassion and toward peace.
 
Blessings and peace, Lisa

Grace to you and peace, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ!  I remember what may have been among the most radical ideas I learned for the first time in seminary.  Prior to taking a course on the Christian liturgical year, I had not consciously thought of the passage of time through any lens but the western calendar, a passing of seconds, minutes, hours, and then elements of that fixed 365 days broken into weeks, months and years.  Decades passed as measurements of life’s passing, in individual or family mortal spans and in wider historical eras.  Among those measurements was the designation of Sunday, a day of Sabbath rest.  Enter the Christian liturgical year.  For such a times as ours, I hope that this particular Sunday’s value will be new.  Its significance to you before now may have been only the marking of mid-winter known by association to Punxatawny Phil the groundhog, but offers more certain hope in our Christian year.  We remember the presentation of Jesus by his parents at the temple in Jerusalem, a day called Candlemas in some Christian traditions.  This moment in the liturgical year falls between Christ’s birth Christmas and the resurrection we celebrate at Easter. 

So, as we gather tomorrow in celebration of the sacrament of Communion, a chief ritual in our religious practice, I invite us all to remember that we live in a time marked by hope, which looks back on God’s prior gifts with gratitude and forward to God’s promises with praise.  I invite us to celebrate that our time is not only marked by lives measured in bodily circumstances, but by deeply spiritual, holy times such as these.  

Blessings and peace, Lisa

Grace to you and peace, from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ!  Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Dillard wrote in Holy the Firm, “”There is no one but us. There is no one to send, not a clean hand or a pure heart on the face of the earth or in the earth—only us… unfit, not yet ready, having each of us chosen wrongly, made a false start, yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, weak, and uninvolved. But there is no one but us. There has never been.”  This idea of our own ability and, perhaps, to do what we are able to do in the face of challenges may be something to hold in the days ahead.  Perhaps a similar feeling is what motivated the apostle Paul and his Messiah, Jesus, as we hear from them this week. 

The story we hear of Jesus’ “inaugural address” to the people of Nazareth recalls to his listeners and to us that God has promised a year of Jubilee, when debts are forgiven and healing promised.  The response of the crowd and the connection to our purposes today may challenge us, and therefore bear reflection.  With Paul’s extended metaphor of the Body of Christ and God’s gifts to empower it, to empower us, we may begin to imagine how to help provide hope in a time of challenge.  

Accompanying our choir this week is George Emlen, who is now a regular part of our musical rotation.  Many thanks to George, and to Tina Dreisbach for coordinating our talented and changing lineup of musicians!

Blessings and peace, Lisa