Who does your life belong to? We know that at least some of it belongs to the Lord so we make an effort to give Him His due share. But what if all of your life, every last bit of it, belongs to the Lord? At first this might seem like a constraining idea. But in fact it can be freeing. We do not have to balance out what is mine and what is His; when we give it all to Him we free ourselves to live our best lives possible.
Practicing Forgiveness is a 5-week program that offers the chance to come together and focus on ways to learn to accept, forgive, and love each other. This is an opportunity to practice love, even when it’s not easy.
When we have made the Lord a priority and started to work on living better we often expect things to change dramatically. Sadly, that is not the case. Changes in our external lives are an important beginning but we will not see real change until the change happens in our hearts. When the children of Israel built a house for the Lord not just as a place of worship but also as a state of mind, then the Lord could begin to bless them again.
Starting on Tuesday, 30 January at 7pm (and for the following 3 Tuesday evenings) we’re going to be watching Dr. Gary Smalley’s “Hidden Keys to Loving Relationships” in the church hall. Each session is about an hour long and we’ll do 1 session a week for 4 weeks.
When the people obey the Lord and rebuild the house of the Lord it doesn’t meet their expectations of what it should be. The Lord’s response to them, through the prophet Haggai, can be very helpful for us when the results of our spiritual efforts aren’t quite what we think they should be.
This Christmas Day, as we celebrate the Lord being born into this world, we will be reflecting on the significance of some of the many different names that that little baby was called.
This Sunday we’ll be talking more about the Christmas story according to the Gospel of John, with a focus on the theme of darkness and light.
Before Jesus could begin His ministry He needed John to prepare the way first. The world at the time was in such a bad state that people could not have taken in Jesus’ teachings if John had not first prepared them and filled them with hope for Jesus’ coming. John did this by bearing witness to Jesus’ Light, so that when that light did come people could recognize it and embrace it.
Singing is one of the most powerful ways to express joy, and this is no more true than at Christmas. The teachings of the New Church tell us that going back thousands of years, the people in ancient times delighted in singing songs about the Lord’s future coming and the salvation He would bring. Today we do the same as we not only look back to the Lord’s birth but also forward to His birth into our own lives. After a short talk on the joy of singing to the Lord we will join together to celebrate the joy of the Lord’s Coming and the Christmas season in general.
As Christians is it our duty to shun wealth? Jesus says that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. So should the wealthy among us be ashamed of their wealth? Should the poorer of us take pride in their poorness? Not exactly. The problem with money is the use to which we apply it. Money is heavenly when we see it as an opportunity to serve others and hellish when we see it as a way to love ourselves. All of us, rich and poor, need to take stock of the gifts we have been given in abundance and ask how we can use that abundance to make the world a better place.
