A Brief Word From Your Pastor

Today is the day after another tightly contested election. Much is at stake. I know we feel on edge and anxious about the future, about the pandemic, about our nation’s leadership. Poll workers will continue to tally every vote in the coming days. Every vote, of course, deserves to be counted; every voter deserves to be heard.

Thank you to each of you who voted, who drove someone else to the polls, who discerned and weighed the candidates and questions, who prayed for our nation and our world.

So what do we do now on this day after, when everything seems to still hang in the balance? What do we do with our anger, our dread, our fear, our hope, and our yearning for transformation for our nation?

Perhaps there is wisdom in scripture on this day after.

In Genesis 1, we are blessed with a Creation story, how God moves to carefully lay out the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, and all living things, including humanity. On the seventh day, God rests, taking a long day off after a grueling and creative work week.

A shallow reading of this scripture would suggest that God finished with Creation and is done. The Alpha and Omega is now on a long and deserved vacation for millennia.

A more careful reading invites us to see the seven days of Creation as a cycle. On the seventh day, yes, God rests, but on the first day of the next week, God continues creating and sustaining the beauty of this earth, the very oxygen that we breath, and the seasons that bring abundance, change, and rhythm to our lives.

The day after God finished bringing all things into being, God gets back to work.

As people of faith, whatever we are feeling about this election, whether it is anger, confusion, joy, or resignation, we too are invited to take this day after as an invitation to get back to the creative, life-giving work of Christ’s kin-dom. If you need to lament, lament. If you need to rest, rest. If you need to pray, pray. And then, let’s get up and get our hands and feet messy for Jesus.

Let’s get up and use our lives to bring about justice and peace for our hurting communities.

Let’s get up and stand in solidarity with those crying out for change.

Let’s get up and comfort those walking in grief.

Let’s get up and build relationships to let others know about Jesus.

Let’s get up and steward our gifts for the glory of God.

How is God calling you to use your energy on this day after?

Whatever the next few days bring, may we have the courage and strength to get back up and get back to work, bringing heaven on earth with God’s help.

— Rev. Nathan Hill

Interview with Elizabeth Libert, Author of the Way of Discernment

Continuing in our discernment series, I am reprinting this interview with Dr. Elizabeth Liebert, author of the Way of Discernment. May we continue to grow in hearing and doing God’s will, as best as we can.
Click to view interview: Discernment

A PRAYER FOR ALL SAINTS DAY

Let us pray.
 
Lord, we gather together today to worship and ask for your blessing.
We are awed by your infinite wisdom to plan for different seasons when you created our earth. 
We marvel at the brilliant reds and golds of the leaves falling from the trees and we welcome the crisp fall air on our faces.
Thank you, God, for the beauty of our earth.
 
Today, we celebrate All Saints Day . . . a day to remember the people who have gone before us.
We give thanks for the “saints” who first came to this intersection in 1959 to begin a new congregation in your honor.
Dear God, we remember the vision of Rev. Marion Brinson, the minister at Mt. Rainier Christian Church, who had an idea to start a mission church and gave his blessing for this adventure.
We are thankful for all those leaders who believed in this mission, too.
We are thankful for Francis Stark’s guidance in organizing how we would conduct our business and how we would worship.
We remember Jerry Flynn, our organizing minister . . . Carl and Eleanor Bock . . .  Bill and Martha Wallace . . . Joe Lynn . . . Elton and Dixie Brown . . . Leonard DeGast and Mary Ruth DeGast, our first and long-time organist . . . and 100 others who joined at the beginning of our history.
We give thanks for all of those who came after those first “saints” to help University Christian Church grow to be what she has become today.
We give thanks for those who served on the boards, taught Sunday School, sang in the choir, served as deacons and elders.
Thank you, dear Lord, for all the “saints” who have served you in this place and gone on to be with you in Heaven.
 
Let us pause for a moment to remember the “saints” in each of our own lives – parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, for the first of your family who came to this land to find a better life and the freedom to worship as they pleased.
 
Let us remember, in silence.
 
PAUSE
 
Dear God, we recognize that we are all immigrants in this land.
Some of our ancestors came when the country was very young; some have come only recently.
But we are all one family under our flag that is waving proudly in the autumn breeze.
We are Americans!
Help us, Oh Lord, to learn to live together in harmony and fairness and to support our neighbors in the good times, as well as when we disagree with one another.
Forgive us, Lord, when we forget to love our neighbor as ourselves.
 
Dear God, we pray for this country that we love so much.
And we pray for our leaders.
Help them to govern with justice . . . with honesty . . . with humility . . . with compassion.
Help our country heal after this time of great disagreements.
 
Dear Father, we thank you for all our blessings – and there are many!
 
Lord of all, to thee we raise, these our prayers in grateful praise.
 
In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Thank you to all who helped make Trunk or Treat a Success!

Announcements

Adult Bible Study @ 7pm 

Thursdays In November 

Bible Study Host: Jim Duff
Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89894708458
Meeting ID: 898 9470 8458
Passcode: 914256
One tap mobile: 301-715-8592

Upper Room Devotionals

We have received the Upper Room Devotionals for November and December if you would like a copy mailed to you please email the church office.  Thanks.  cucoffice@verizon.net

We  You!

~From the church at the Intersection

We are called to prayer in this season of change and challenge in our church and our world.