Look Through It- Like a Window

We held virtual worship on Sunday, May 2, 2021 at 10:00AM! You may watch a recording on Facebook Live by clicking here, or you may watch below.

Quote for Reflection:

This might be the most difficult task for us in postmodern life:
not to look away from what is actually happening.
To put down the iPod and the e-mail and the phone. T
o look long enough so that we can look through it—like a window.
Marie Howe

“Ethiopian Eunuch” by Wayne Forte https://wayneforte.com

CALL TO WORSHIP

Mothering God-
may your love be the centre of our lives
Fathering God-
heal the hurts and wounds, the scars that form within and without
Atoning God-
may we know forgiveness and being forgiven
Liberating God-
free our hearts and minds, our faith and our thought
Restoring God-
rebuild what is broken; make us whole
God beyond names, we come in worship.

OPENING TO GOD Steve Garnaas-Holmes

We bathe in the river of your love.
It washes away all fear
of being judged, inadequate or punished.
We let your river flow through us,
not our love but yours,
flowing to all the world, even the unlovable.
In your love we am not afraid
to love, to risk,
to be carried away by the river.
In love we will coerce no one
or make them afraid,
but only set them free.
Give us wisdom to notice
when we am afraid
and to choose love instead.
In your perfect love we am not afraid.
We am grateful.
We are free. Amen.

YOUNG PEOPLE’S MESSAGE The Sturgeon family

EPISTLE LESSON 1 John 4:7-12 Laurie Klinedinst

Beloved, let us love one another,
because love is of God;
everyone who loves is a child of God and has knowledge of God.

Those who do not love have known nothing of God, for God is love.

God’s love was revealed in our midst in this way:
by sending the Only Begotten into the world,
that we might have faith through the Anointed One.

Love then, consists in this: not that we have loved God
but that God has loved us and has sent the Only Begotten
to be an offering for our sins.

Beloved, if God has loved us so, we must have the same love for one another.
No one has ever seen God; yet if we love one another,
God dwells in us, and God’s love is brought to perfection in us.

ACTS LESSON Acts 8:26-40 Mark Klinedinst

Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went.

Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Kandake, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it.” So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, “Do you under-stand what you are reading?” He replied, “How can I, unless some-one guides me?” And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him.

Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his descendants? For his life is taken away from the earth.

The eunuch asked Philip, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.

As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing.

REFLECTION Look Through It– Like a Window Barb & Mitchell

MUSIC Sunrise Praise Kathryn

PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE Marie Howe

Every day I want to speak with you. And every day something more important
calls for my attention- the drugstore, the beauty products, the luggage

I need to buy for the trip.
Even now I can hardly sit here

among the fallen piles of paper and clothing, the garbage trucks outside
already screeching and banging.

The mystics say you are as close as my own breath.
Why do I flee from you?

My days and nights pour through me like complaints
and become a story I forgot to tell.

Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.

SHARING PRAYERS & LORD’S PRAYER

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