FAITH CONNECTION – FARMERSVILLE UMC
Ministry Updates for Thursday, November 5th, 2020
Worship – November 8th – 9:30 On-Line and 11:00am In-Person
We are no longer requiring a reservation system for in-person worship at 11am. We will reinstate it when our attendance gets closer to 40. The On-line service at 9:30 is available for those not ready to return to in-person.
Gratitude Journaling for the Month of November
As you heard on Sunday morning, many of our members will be participating in November being a month of gratitude by taking time daily to journal several things or people for which they are grateful. It is never too late to start this practice!
Mission and Community Outreach
The Valley View Junior High is asking our church for help with a career guidance project. They would like members of our church to make a short five to ten minute video in which you tell junior high students about your career, what training you underwent to get there, and what the positives and negatives might be. You could also include other details about your work including, if you like, salaries and benefits. Submit your video (hold phone camera sideways for landscape) to junior high counselor Stephanie Carmack by using this link to Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/home/Virtual%20Career%20Videos. The deadline has been extended to November 13.
The Mission Team is partnering with the Dayton Women’s New Life Center, if you knit or crochet and would like to make baby blankets or other baby items the Mission Team will be collecting them and giving them to the center’s boutique for distribution of mothers and mothers to be. Please bring items to church or call to arrange a pick up.
Scripture – Romans 3:24, 25
Reflection – God’s Forgiveness
Paul uses many words, and speaks in the ‘blood sacrifice’ language common to his day. But long story short, he is saying through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, God forgives us.
If we just say God forgives us, that is true, but it misses an important step. God forgives us through Jesus Christ.
It is easy to imagine God willing himself to forgive, like we try to will ourselves to forgive. But in reality, the forgiveness God gives to us comes at a price, a high one. It is a price we cannot pay, but God devised a way to pay it for us.
Reflection on the passion of Christ, his suffering and death, helps us better understand that God does not just go through some mental exercise to forgive us. Through Christ he poured out his blood, sweat and tears, his very life, to bear the weight of our sin.
Is it fair? Not by any stretch of the imagination. But God is righteous, or ‘right-making’, and when we cannot pay the price, he does.
Does it make sense? Some say yes. I am inclined to say it is a spiritual event which goes beyond our ability to completely understand or give reason to. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ is a revelation, not an easily quantifiable judicial event. So, my answer is no, it does not make sense to me. But it is a revelation that moves me to faith. And so our salvation through Christ must be taken on faith.
God’s forgiveness is not some mental exercise. It is a painful, self-sacrificing and deliberate process. It is visible for all the world to observe so that those who choose to believe, in faith, may carry the mystery of this revelation in their hearts, so they may be assured of God’s love.
Prayer:
God of Mystery, God of Love, God of Sacrifice, we give you thanks for the revelation and the promise of the cross. As Jesus the Christ sacrificed, so may we too learn to sacrifice in love. As he trusted in Your call, so may we too grow in our ability to trust your call. As he was risen to eternal life, so may we too receive the hope of eternal life through faith in Jesus. Amen.