Please join us for in-person worship and the Celebration of Holy Communion this Sunday, October 3 at 10:00 am! The bulletin for this Sunday is available for viewing HERE.
*[Our 10 am in-person Sunday worship in the Sanctuary requires masks for all. Please continue to practice 6 feet physical distancing whenever possible.]
This Sunday there will be in-person Lego Sunday School! First, children will be in worship. Following the Children’s Time and Special Music, the teacher, Joan Culbertson, will lead our children to the Nursery Room where Lego Sunday School will be held.
The fabulous guest singer, Vanessa Yearsley, will sing “Must the Winter Come So Soon” by Samuel Barber under the piano accompaniment of Marina Thomas.
The message for this Sunday will be based on the enigmatic sayings of Jesus in Luke 23:31(see below) that seems to have uncanny meaning for what humanity is facing today. Pastor John will be exploring the latest book, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, by Suzanne Simard who is a forest ecologist and the Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia. She sheds light on the vitality of the living system of forestry and how similar they are with human families and society. She has proven, beyond doubt, that trees communicate with each other — that a forest is a single organism wired for wisdom and care. It is a groundbreaking discovery that will make a paradigm shift in our consciousness that will make an impact on how we relate to nature and our planet. All of this turns out to be catching up with intelligence long held in aboriginal science.
Message: How Did We Lose Our Way & How Can We Find Our Way Back? Part 5) “What the Wisdom of the Forest Can Teach Us”
Gospel Reading: Luke 23:31 ~ What will happen when the tree becomes dry?
“26 As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus. 27 A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. 28 But Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. 29 For the days are surely coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’ 30 Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us’; and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ 31 For if they do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
Genesis 1:11-12 ~ God saw that it was good
11Then God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them”; and it was so. 12The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good.
Isaiah 41:19-20 “I will put the cedar in the wilderness, The acacia and the myrtle and the olive tree; I will place the juniper in the desert Together with the box tree and the cypress, That they may see and recognize, And consider and gain insight as well, That the hand of the Lord has done this, And the Holy One of Israel has created it.”
Words of Meditation Hildegard of Bingen heard God say, I am the breeze that nurtures all things green. I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits. I am the rain coming from the dew that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life. – Hildegard von Bingen, the 12th-century German woman Christian mystic
Keep a green tree in your heart and a songbird will come. ~ Chinese proverb
For if they do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?
~ Luke 23:31
