GEMS Sunday, Love Overflowing

This Sunday we will be celebrating our GEMS.

GEMS is an acronym for Girls Everywhere Meeting the Savior. GEMS Girls Clubs are found across North America and in other parts of the world as well. Girls, and counselors, meet together weekly to build relationships, to learn about Jesus, to develop skills, and most of all, to have fun together.

Our congregation is blessed to have an active, excited, GEMS Girls Club, with dedicated leaders interacting with an enthusiastic group of girls.

This week we will celebrate this program and involve the girls in leading us in worship. We will focus on their theme "Love Overflowing" and take a close look at their theme text for this year, Thessalonians 3:12: 

May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.

Join us this week, at 9;30, as we join with the GEMS to worship the source of love,  to recognize that love overflows from him, to us, and into the world. 

He is Risen!!!

Of all of the happenings that are reported by the writers of the gospels, the empty tomb is likely the most extraordinary.

Many of us have, at one time or another, stood beside a grave and been hit with the finality of the words "dust to dust, ashes to ashes". There is a sense of hopelessness in the grave, the final end of something from which there is no return. As we walk away from the final resting place of that loved one, we find ourselves forced to go on, knowing that person will not longer be part of our journey.

The grave seems like the end.

I seemed that way for the disciples as well. The amazing things they had seen and heard, in their time with Jesus were a thing of the past. The grave, the tomb, everyone knows, is a final stopping place.

And yet, the women find the tomb empty! They are told that Jesus has risen! For the first time there is hope beyond the grave. The cemetery isn't the end of the story. The grave couldn't hold Jesus and it doesn't hold us either.

Join us this Easter Sunday morning as we celebrate victory and new hope.

We Remember: Good Friday

Friday evening, at 7:30 we will come together to remember and reflect on the sacrifice made for us through the cross.

Icon of the Crucifixion, 16th century, by Theophanes the Cretan

Our service will begin with a celebration of the Lord's Supper as we "take, eat, drink, remember and believe, that the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ was shed for the complete forgiveness of all of our sins.

We will reflect together, in scripture,  on the events of that day, as the darkness comes closer, and closer, until with a final cry we hear Jesus' words "It is Finished"

All are welcome, and invited, to join in this service commemorating the lengths God goes to demonstrate love for us.

Hosanna!!!

This Sunday we will mark Palm Sunday, remembering Jesus' entry into the city of Jerusalem, riding a donkey, down a mountain, through a crowd of Hosanna shouting, branch waving people. These are excited people, they've seen what Jesus can do, and are sure that his coming will usher in a new time of prosperity for their country. He causes a great stir as he arrives. 

James Tissot Created between 1886 and 1894

Hosannas though, soon turn to angry shouts of "crucify", are soon replaced with the sound of nails being hammered, the anguished cries of the condemned, tears at a tomb.

But, we're getting ahead of ourselves. For now we'll spend some time with that jubilant crowd. We'll join our children singing Hosanna. We can because we know the story doesn't end in that tomb, it doesn't end in sorrow. With the word's "It is finished" Jesus will mark the end of his task on earth, a battle won, victory gained.

Hosanna!!!