Today’s Daily Devotional From The Upper Room

• Wanted: Ordinary People

  Read Matthew 14:22-33

  Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God — what is good and acceptable and perfect.

  - Romans 12:2 (NRSV)

  Today’s Devotional

  What would you do if Jesus came to your church and said, “I’m looking for a few ordinary people”? Why would Jesus be interested in ordinary people?

  Yet these are the ones Jesus called to be his friends: fishermen, a tax collector, a teacher, a homemaker. I have related to Peter more than any of Jesus’ other followers.

  Peter was impulsive, like me. Seeing Jesus walking on the water, he said, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you.” Jesus did and Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water, something no one except Jesus had done. That is not ordinary. Then Peter looked around at the wind and the waves, and he fell. That is what I would do. That’s ordinary.

  After Jesus’ arrest, fear overcame Peter and he denied knowing Jesus. I hate to say it, but I probably would have done the same. I am grateful that Jesus loved and forgave Peter and commanded him, “Feed my sheep” (John 21:17). Peter later became a preacher in the early church. The longer Peter walked with Jesus, the more he was changed. And the more I walk with Christ, the more I realize how much he wants to help me become the servant God wants me to be.

  Sue Tornai (California, USA)

  Thought for the Day: God calls ordinary people to be extraordinary servants.

  Prayer: O God, help us ordinary people to be extraordinary workers for your kingdom. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

  Prayer Focus: Ordinary people

  The scripture quotation, unless otherwise indicated, is from the NEW REVISED STANDARD VERSION of the Bible, copyright © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  Copyright ©2012 by The Upper Room, a ministry of GBOD. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce or redistribute without written permission from the publisher.

5:30 – 7:00 p.m.

Pancake Supper sponsored by the United Methodist Men

Proceeds will go to benefit our Youth Summer Missions

Pancakes are a tradition for the day before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday.  In earlier times, the people were called to give up rich food during the season of Lent.  Those foods included, eggs, milk, meat and butter, and what better way to use up those items in your household than by making pancakes.

“WHEN the song of the angels is stilled,

WHEN the star in the sky is gone,

WHEN the kings and princes are home,

WHEN the shepherds are back with their flock,

the work of Christmas begins:

TO FIND the lost

TO HEAL the broken

TO FEED the hungry

TO RELEASE the prisoner

TO REBUILD the nations

TO BRING PEACE among brothers and sisters

TO MAKE MUSIC in the heart.”

Howard Thurman

On Christmas Day we will gather at 10:00 a.m. for a special service of lessons and carols!

Come join us as we celebrate our Savior’s Birth!

A copy of the program for the recital can be found by clicking the Media link from the Home Page and then clicking Bulletins.

The Holiday Dinner is a Marshville UMC annual tradition at which we celebrate the holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We’ve begun to refer to this dinner as the Christ-giving dinner.  The food will be plentiful thanks to the Fellowship  Sunday School class and folks within the church will be bringing their favorite desserts.  There is no cost for the dinner.  Everyone is also invited to bring a “white” gift for the residents of Autumn Care and/or a food item(s) for the Back Pack Buddy program.

White gifts include hard candy, lotions, soaps, kleenex, shampoo, tooth brushes and paste.  Food items include main dishes such as pasta, stews, soups, canned meats, canned fruit and pudding cups.

There will be a love offering taken at the Recital to help Frazier raise funds for an upcoming trip with the Wingate University Choir to Estonia in May 2012.

Hope to see you here!

Pastor Sherri

Pastor Sherri

ST. MARTIN’S LENT

And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.
Mark:13:37

After a tryptophan-induced night’s sleep, and apple pie with several cups of wonderful coffee for a post-Thanksgiving breakfast the next day, a ride in the car through the South Fork from Sag Harbor to Amagansett. How lovely it is here — the little old cedar-shingled saltboxes in town, the larger houses of the estates that surround it, the ordered rows of plants in the vineyards, the peculiar lucidity of sunlight informed by the proximity of the sea. We went to have a look at the beach and then we poked our noses into a few charming shops. In East Hampton I bought a gorgeous wool dress coat, easily worth five hundred dollars, for twenty-five at the Ladies’ Village Improvement Society. Then we came home and had a luscious split pea soup for lunch.

What a lovely day.

Something began to nag at me in the car on the ride back Sag Harbor, though — a gathering foreboding. It seemed to center on a vague feeling of illegitimacy. I should be doing something. Too many hours had passed without my having made a contribution to the world’s well-being. I was having too much fun.

Most of the people with whom I have discussed this uncomfortable feeling in the past have counseled me to get over it. Relax and just be, they tell me. You don’t have to be producing all the time. And I agree — I don’t need to be producing all the time, but I do need to be producing some of the time. I need to work. I can’t survive for very long on a steady diet of fun. It is like a steady diet of dessert — after a while, you just need to bite into a carrot.

Everyone is not the same. A nice long stretch of doing nothing is good for some people, but it is not good for me. I am most myself and happiest when I snatch downtime here and there, when the centerpiece of my day is working, when relaxation is my well-earned reward for a job well done. I don’t do well when relaxation is my job. I am like an athlete: they don’t feel well if they don’t get out there every day. That’s not how they’re made. They need to move.

The sobriety of the church’s Advent season suits me. I realize anew every year that I cannot yield to the frenzy of Christmas as the festival of consumerism it has become — I enjoy all the preparation as much as anyone else does, but I must hold something of myself back from it. I must claim the time I need for prayer and for music that centers me on the coming of Christ, and I need more of both at this time of year, when the demands upon me are greater than at other times. Pray and listen and write. Let the stillness and the darkness partner me — they mean me no harm. Light a candle to mark them both.

Deep penitence is not really appropriate for the weeks of Advent — though there was a time when it was thought to be just the thing. The six weeks leading up to Christmas were a time of penitence and fasting; they were even called “St. Martin’s Lent,” beginning as they did on November 11th, the Feast of St. Martin. We long ago left off treating this time of year so somberly; St. Martin’s Lent shrank to the modern four-week Advent, and the grimness in the lessons is all that remains of it. We instead ponder the brevity and fragility of life, as a means of coming to terms with limits to our power and our freedom which we might prefer to ignore. In many parts of the world, these winter months are hard ones, cold, dark, inhospitable outdoors. We huddle together for warmth, cling to one another to calm our fears.

Somber? Not so much. The world is good, and we love it so much that most of us don’t ever want to leave — even its glitter is fun, in small doses. Sober is more what I’m after: a reasonable blend of work and play, of penitence and praise, a gathering of strength arising from renewed awareness of where strength comes from.

Read about St. Martin’s Lent and how it became the Advent we know at
http://fullhomelydivinity.org/articles/advent.htm.
You can also hear a lovely mediation on Advent given by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

I am also reminded however, that there are those who will gather and find their table empty.  It is hard to believe that in our country, in our community, that there are those who struggle to keep food on their table.  Policy folks have even come up with a term for those families, “food insecure.”  Each week, we along with our brothers and sisters at Marshville Presbyterian, Philadelphia Baptist, First Baptist Church of Marshville and others, seek to give aid to thirty seven (37) children in our community who find themselves without.

For many of these children, their only meals consist of breakfast and lunch while at school.  Each weekend, for the cost of around $7, we send home a bag full of main dishes, breakfast items, fruit, pudding, drinks, and snacks to help carry them until they return to school on Monday.  The program in its second year has yielded many positive results.

I just wanted to give thanks for all of the support this program has received.  Through donations of food and financial gifts, our churches’ members have provided what is needed week in and week out.  Right now, we are looking at finding and involving other partners such as Loaves and Fishes and Second Harvest Food Bank through which we might be able to extend our help even further.  This ministry will always be one for which I give God thanks each and every day.

So enjoy your celebrations.  Count and name your blessings, and remember those in need.  May your Thanksgiving be most blessed.

Pastor Sherri

And please join us here for our annual

Community Thanksgiving Service

Sunday, November 20

6:00 p.m.

An offering will be taken for Union County Crisis Assistance Ministry.

Participating churches are Austin Grove Baptist Church, First Baptist Church of Marshville, Marshville Presbyterian Church and Marshville UMC

Monday, October 31st

for our Annual

Trunk o’ Treat

6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Food,Games, Candy

Come meet your neighbors and enjoy an evening of

Good, Safe, Fun and Fellowship!

By the Rev. Jeremy Pridgeon

O God, our hope and refuge,
in our distress we come quickly to you.
Shock and horror of that tragic day have subsided,
replaced now with an emptiness,
a longing for an innocence lost.

We come remembering those who lost their lives
in New York, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania.

We are mindful of the sacrifice of public servants
who demonstrated the greatest love of all
by laying down their lives for friends.
We commit their souls to your eternal care
and celebrate their gifts to a fallen humanity.

We come remembering
and we come in hope,
not in ourselves, but in you.

As foundations we once thought secure have been shaken,
we are reminded of the illusion of security.

In commemorating this tragedy,
we give you thanks for your presence
in our time of need
and we seek to worship you in Spirit and in truth,
our guide and our guardian. Amen.

The Rev. Jeremy Pridgeon is District Superintendent of the Pensacola District of the Alabama-West Florida Annual Conference.

taken from the United Methodist General Board of Discipleship website