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Toward Christmas Eve
We’re thrilled to celebrate Christmas Eve in our sanctuary at 5265 H Street Sacramento, CA 95819 this Thursday at 5:00 pm and 11:00 pm. Here is a link to our short video. Christmas Is Coming Outline November 29: Jeremiah 33.14-16 (Hope) December 6: Malachi 3.1-4 (Love) December 13: Zephaniah 3.14-20 (Joy) December 20: Micah 5.1-5a (Peace) 5pm & 11pm Candlelight Christmas Eve: Luke 2.1-20 Christmas Eve will undoubtedly be a thin place for countless people around the world. Take time between now and Christmas Eve to reflect on the memories you hold…
Toward Sunday
We celebrate the fourth week of our Advent worship series called Christmas Is Coming by turning to Micah 5.1-5. Our worship series has been rooted in the Hebrew Bible readings from the lectionary (collection of appointed readings) for this season & the fiftieth anniversary of Charles Schulz’s A Charlie Brown Christmas. This will be the final week in our preparation for the coming of Christmas. Thank you for watching over young mommies & their children in love this Christmas. Your generous and…
Toward Sunday
We continue in the third week of our Advent worship series called Christmas Is Coming this week by turning to Zephaniah 3.14-20. Our worship series will be rooted in the Hebrew Bible readings from the lectionary (collection of appointed readings) for this season. We will look back to these ancient writings as we prepare for the coming of Christmas. Christmas Is Coming Outline November 29: Jeremiah 33.14-16 (Hope) December 6: Malachi 3.1-4 (Love) December 13: Zephaniah 3.14-20 (Joy) December 20: Micah 5.1-5 (Peace) 5pm & 11pm Candlelight Christmas Eve: Luke 2 This…
Advent Hymn.
Take a few minutes. Breathe. Listen. How might the Advent of God’s new reality be coming to you today?
Who needs love today?
“We can be certain of one thing: transformation into God’s image and God’s purpose requires that we pass through God’s refining fire. Being made holy is not a one-time deal; it is an ongoing process that continues until we are fully reconciled with Christ….The key idea to remember is that we pass ‘through’ and do not remain in the fire.” Okoro, Enuma. Silence and Other Surprising Invitations of Advent. Nashville: Upper Room, 2012. 65. It is a powerful metaphor…
Toward Sunday
We move into the second week of our Advent worship series called Christmas Is Coming this week. Our worship series will be rooted in the Hebrew Bible readings from the lectionary (collection of appointed readings) for this season. We will look back to these ancient writings as we prepare for the coming of Christmas. We’ve received so many people interested in supporting teen mothers this Christmas through Teen Success that we’ve decided to reach out to Tubman House & offer gifts to…
Hope is the thing with feathers…
Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I’ve heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me. ~Emily Dickinson
Hope is coming
“Come, Lord Jesus” is a leap into the kind of freedom and surrender that is rightly called the virtue of hope. The theological virtue of hope is the patient and trustful willingness to live without closure, without resolution, and still be content and even happy because our Satisfaction is now at another level, and our Source is beyond ourselves. We are able to trust that he will come again, just as Jesus has come into our past, into our private…
Toward Sunday
We transition this week from Acts to a four-week Advent worship series called Christmas Is Coming. Our worship series will be rooted in the Hebrew Bible readings from the lectionary (collection of appointed readings) for this season. We will look back to these ancient writings as we prepare for the coming of Christmas. Christmas Is Coming Outline November 29: Jeremiah 33.14-16 (Hope) December 6: Malachi 3.1-4 (Love) December 13: Zephaniah 3.14-20 (Joy) December 20: Micah 5.1-5 (Peace) 5pm & 11pm Candlelight Christmas Eve: Luke 2 Pastor Steve Garnaas-Holmes writes, Advent takes…
Toward Sunday
This is the final week of our worship series on the New Testament Book of Acts. The Acts of the Apostles is a colorful book of the New Testament which shows the Gospel expressing itself through the lives, speech, struggles and adventures of some of Jesus’s earliest followers. The Book of Acts November 8: Acts 4:32-37 Community November 15: Acts 9:1-22 Old Boundaries Erased November 22: Acts 23:1-11 Heroics “The Book of Acts emphasizes the disruptive character of the…
Toward Sunday
We’re so grateful for all of the Deep Commitment Cards we’ve received online and in worship. Please turn in your Deep Commitment card or fill it out online if you have not already done so. We are in the second week of our worship series on the New Testament Book of Acts. The Acts of the Apostles is a colorful book of the New Testament which shows the Gospel expressing itself through the lives, speech, struggles & adventures of some of…
The gospel and God.
“The gospel” and “God” are not identical, of course, but the gospel discloses who God is by expressing what God’s intentions look like; we see these intentions when people experience healing, inclusion, forgiveness, and hope. Acts depicts the gospel as not only a message but also something embodied in Jesus’s followers, as individuals and mostly as the communities they form.” ~from “Intrusive God, Disruptive Gospel, Encountering the Divine in the Book of Acts” by Matthew L. Skinner p. xvi How…