Last Sunday, October 20, 2013 (full size gallery)
This has been a busy week with feeding the team on Oct 14 and the ECW at Bowling Green’s Harvest Festival. Next week continues the pace with our "Thirteen" concert on Oct 22 and then Port Royal’s Charter Day, Oct 26.
As Catherine indicated the Caroline football coach said that St. Peter’s were the best of those which has participated in feeding the team before the home games – they were "over the top." Eunice announced the ECW had made $300 on the Harvest festival. There is some speculation that rain may have reduced some of the funds.
We were able to meet Rev. Charles Mumbo from Kenya at the Harvest festival who will preach in Catherine’s absence Oct 27. He is an affable man with 3 kids in Kenya. His church has 1,000 active members! As we learned last year, the center of Christianity is now in Africa. We have a basic article on Kenya this week.
We had 39 in church on a beautiful clear fall day. This was the first "sweater weather day" though no frost. The leaves are sporatically turning color – no general bath of color.
The three Davis sisters (Cookie, Jena and Linda) were here. We have Sydney Davis birthday coming up this week on Charter Day. The town will be celebrating her birthday.
Nancy encouraged people to visit Charter Day on the 26th. St. Peter’s will be sponsoring the Slide and the Moon Bounce. She also introduced Samaritan’s purse which kicks off this week until the boxes are collected until Nov. 17
The theme of this week is God will prevail. Here are the readings
The Old Testament lesson is about Jacob who took a hip injury wrestling with an angel but met God face to face. “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved." Jaccob was renamed Israel for he has “striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.”
Timothy emphasizes communicating the message. “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. “ As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.
The Gospel continues the contrast between God and corrupt human officials, this time a judge. This is the Parable of the Persistent Widow. Basically, it you don’t get justice now wait until God’s time. The focus of this interpretation is on God’s goodness and eagerness to bless. Lord grants justice quickly vs. not always the case on earth.
It is comfort for those in distress and encouragement to persevere in faith and prayer. The idea is not to give up dealing with corrupt officials as was the case in the parable of the unjust steward. Believers, like the widow, should pray and petition without ceasing and not lose heart, confident that God’s justice will in time prevail.
The sermon focused on Pslam 121 one of the ascent psalms. It is an individual hymn of thanksgiving sung by the psalm singer on the approach to Jerusalem; the hills of Jerusalem are in view and God guides the singer’s feet. Two voices are present in the psalm — an individual singer, who states firm trust in the Lord, and a respondent who assures the singer that the Lord will indeed guard the singer, thus dividing the psalm into two sections, corresponding to the two voices in the psalm:
Verses 1-2: A Confession of Trust by the Individual
Verses 3-8: A Response by the Priest or Worship Officiant
Psalm 121 provides words of assurance that if the faithful fix their eyes squarely on the source of their “help,” then the Lord, “the maker of heavens and earth,” who “does not slumber,” will indeed “guard, keep watch over, protect” and “be a shade.” If we take our eyes off of the source of our assuredness, when we look to other “mountains” for help, then the mundane, the ordinary — the sun, the moon, the malicious things — find us and strike us. Thus may we all remember to “lift up our eyes to the mountains."
The sermon used the metaphor of a wrestling match
"This prayer is like getting a pair of new wrestling shoes—lightweight, flexible shoes that provide you, the wrestler, with traction, so that you can grip the mat in your struggle, and—these shoes protect your ankles so that you can keep your balance.
"And that’s what prayer does for us—helps us gain traction, protects us and gives us balance on our journeys through life and keeps us from losing heart.
"So it’s no wonder that Psalm 121 is appointed in our prayer book for funerals—because it’s a magnificent summary of God traveling alongside us from the beginning of life to its end and beyond.
"How, then, can we pray with this Psalm? That’s what I want to share with you today—the way you can make this psalm yours as a breath prayer.
"We’re going to take the last verse of this psalm—
“The Lord shall watch over your going out and your coming in, from this time forth for ever more.”
Now we’ll use this verse as a breath prayer, as in “breathe on me breath of God, fill me with life anew.”
As you pray these words, “The Lord shall watch,” (recalling that God is watching over us), take a deep breath in.
And then, as you pray the next words “over your going out”, slowly and purposely exhale—God is watching over us at all of our departings, and especially in our departure from this life into the next.
And then, breathe in deeply on the next words, “and your coming in.”
God is with us at all of our beginnings, at birth, with each breath we take in, and with us at the beginning of new life when we pass through the grave and gate of death and then take our first breath of heaven.
And then a breath out “for this time forth”
and at last a breath in, “for ever more.”