Service Highlights or Announcements for this Sunday
We observe Holy Communion this Sunday. Please prepare your elements at home and/or join us for Drive Through Communion this Sunday morning at 11:00 am in the Wagner Avenue parking lot.
With the beginning of the Advent Season, we are blessed to have beautiful Christmas carols and instrumental by our talented musicians. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did recording it for you.
Come check out our virtual Gather(ing) via Zoom on Wednesdays at 7 pm. We would LOVE to see you there. Come ready to discuss our scripture passage and raise our voices in song! If you would like the Zoom link, please sign up here.
Reflection of the Week
During Advent this year, we will explore “Where We Find Hope.”
Let us venture into the wilderness this Second Sunday of Advent along with the cousin of Jesus, John the Baptist (Mk. 1:1-8). To prepare for the coming Savior, John goes “off the grid,” inviting all of Israel to return to the Jordan River, the place where they first entered into the Promised Land. John chooses this as the perfect place for them to start over by repenting and being baptized.
The wilderness is an apt metaphor for our own time of exile in pandemic quarantine. It is also a great place for us to “repent” which means “to turn around.” In our present wilderness, may we look within, turn around, and turn to God who alone can repair the injustices and sin in our hearts and in our world.
Come, wait in the wilderness this Sunday, and see how God’s Spirit will meet us!
We will focus on Mark 1:1-8, which you will find below.
See you Sunday!
Peace and Health,
Pastor James
Scripture Passages of the Week
The Proclamation of John the Baptist
The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight” ’,
John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’
