All Are Welcome
Here is a link to photos from last year’s Advent Night, posted on Facebook. This year’s pageant is entitled “Joy to the World” and is directed by Kaleigh Corbett and Tom Shelton. The pageant is at 4, dinner and crafts at 5:15, and a carol sing-along with dessert at 6:30. All are welcome!
Hi All! Don’t forget – our Family Thanksgiving Celebration is November 22 from 4-6PMfor all families with children and youth from Pre-K to 12th Grade.
We will join together to feast, worship, and do a mission project. We are asking you to bring the following:
- Your family’s favorite Thanksgiving side dish for our potluck dinner. We will provide the Turkey!
- Personal hygiene products for our mission project for Threads of Hope: shampoo, soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant. Since we will be assembling kits for families, we also want to collect things like hair elastics, headbands, barrettes, etc.
We will also have a short, interactive worship service with prayer stations for all ages around the thanksgiving theme. It will be a wonderful night. If you could RSVP to me with what you are bringing and how many people, I would appreciate it.
This will be our event for UMYF on the 22nd, and Youth Choir will meet AFTER from 6-7PM. Please mark your calendars appropriately!
Thank you,
Kaleigh
For the sermon series “Gospel of the Nobodies,” based on the parable of the Prodigal Son, Rev. Kaleigh Corbett compared the desperation of the Prodigal Son, reduced to slopping pigs, to the desperation felt by those suffering from addiction, depression, self-injury, and suicidal thoughts. Our Associate Pastor for Children and Youth quoted a much-read blog post by Jamie Tworkowski, “There Is Still Some Time” illustrated in a poster above.
If you feel too much, there’s still a place for you here.
If you feel too much, don’t go.
If this world is too painful, stop and rest.
It’s okay to stop and rest.
If you need a break, it’s okay to say you need a break.
This life — it’s not a contest, not a race, not a performance, not a thing that you win.
It’s okay to slow down.
F0r the complete post by the founder of “To Write Love on Her Arms,” click here. It closes with these lines:
Other people feel how you feel.
You are more than just your pain.
You are more than wounds, more than drugs, more than death and silence.
There is still some time to be surprised.
There is still some time to ask for help.
There is still some time to start again.
There is still some time for love to find you.
It’s not too late.
You’re not alone.
It’s okay — whatever you need and however long it takes — it’s okay.
It’s okay.
If you feel too much, there’s still a place for you here.
If you feel too much, don’t go.
The unusual line, as Kaleigh pointed out, is the part about surprise. The good news “is that there is always time for us to be surprised, and there is always time for us to find the love of God no matter how far we stray.”
Here is more from her inspiring sermon
