HE’S GOT THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS HANDS

How do we know there is no such thing as time, you ask?

Ah — I can document it for you: cast your mind back to the Christmases of your childhood. Remember the afternoon of the great day — the wreckage of toys and wrapping paper, the ruin of the Christmas feast still littering the table, the exhausted adults surveying it all listlessly. Remember your lust for the toys you received, remember the carefully-selected gifts you brushed aside, so entranced were you with whatever gift it was that seemed to you to be the star. And remember, then, the despair that clung to the edges of your orgy: it would be a whole year until next Christmas. A YEAR! A YEAR, do you tell me? How on earth would you make it through? A year was as good as a century in those days. A year was an eternity.

Now think of last Christmas. How long ago does it seem? About a month? Me, too.

Time is not constant. It is relative. It speeds up — and not just the human experience of it, either. Time itself is intimately paired with location. It’s why there are time zones — it’s already tomorrow in India. And yet I can pick up the phone and speak with someone there: he will answer right away: real time intersects with elapsed time when I do that. If that’s the case in India, on the other side of the modestly-sized earth from where I sit and write this, imagine what time it is on Alpha Centauri.

Did I mention that this train of thought can be confusing?

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Just when we think we might have overdosed on Nativity scenes, the gospel reading in church this Sunday will feature this austere reminder: that which is, always has been. It IS. Jesus of Nazareth was born in a time and a place, but Jesus the Christ is not contained in a moment. The moments of Christ are all now.

Don’t worry if this isn’t coming together for you yet. Sit with it for a few decades and it will. When it does, its implications will, too: if there is no such thing as time, nothing is lost. What was still IS. The sad parade of loss we know as history is only a parade on this narrow stage of earthly life. It stretches out only here. The God’s-eye view of our life is not linear. It is all now.

He’s got the whole world in His hands. Bet you never thought of it as a Christmas song.
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Want to hear Mahalia Jackson sing it? Considerably abridged, but majestic nonetheless: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0Tz0PZm3og&feature=youtube_gdata_player

And here are some beautiful Zambian schoolchildren singing it, too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXMtK3awAPI&feature=youtube_gdata_player
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The Almost-Daily eMo from the Geranium Farm Copyright © 2001-2011 Barbara Crafton – all rights reserved

“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!

“Night of the Father’s Love:  The Awe and Mystery of God with Us”

Presented by the MUMC Chancel Choir

Written and arranged by Pepper Choplin

Directed by Lauren Hill

Accompanied by Elizabeth Walters

Narrated by Celena Johnson and Heath Stewart

Instrumentalists:  Kendra Glanville, Flute/Oboe and WJ Moretz, Trumpet/Percussion

Our Bell Choir will also be ringing special music as well.

And don’t forget to join us at 9:30 for a Drop-In Christmas Fellowship hosted by our Wesley and Friendship Classes!

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.

Sunday, December 4

5:00 p.m. Holiday Dinner (Everyone is invited)

6:00 p.m. Frazier Smith Recital

A free will offering will be taken to help Wingate University Choir’s International Competition and Mission Trip to Estonia in May, 2012.

Sunday, December 18

9:30 a.m.  Drop-in Christmas Fellowship

Sponsored by the Wesley/Friendship

Class in Fellowship Hall

10:30 a.m. Choir presentation of Night of the Father’s Love

Tuesday, December 20

6:00 p.m.  Community Wide Christmas

Caroling

Saturday, December 24

8:00 p.m. Christmas Eve Service of Candlelight and Communion

11:00-midnight Drop-in Communion

Sunday, December 25

10:00 a.m. Celebration of Christmas.

A Service of Lessons and Carols

(No Sunday School)

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!

Chicken and Dumplings

11:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Cost is $7

Price includes

Chicken and Dumplings

Green Beans

Coleslaw

Cranberry Sauce

Roll

Dessert

Beverage (for eat-in only)

All proceeds will go to benefit Hope House.  The Hope House was purchased by the church in 2009 and currently houses the community’s Senior Nutrition Site.  It is also home to our Back Pack Buddy ministry in which we have partnered with Marshville Elementary and Union Elementary to provide weekend food for students.  Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts and other community clubs use the House as well!