Bulletin 2/11/24

…the pace of change in the last century that we have witnessed in technology,
society, and our inner personal lives has given us all a case of whiplash. My
grandparents, for example, grew up without electricity in rural Virginia and slept
on hay-filled sleep sacks with 9 or 10 siblings. Today, just shy of 90 years old,
their smart tablet gives them access to the totality of human knowledge, most of
the music that’s ever been written or recorded, and the ability to video chat with
their family across three or four different states.

It isn’t difficult to find examples of acceleration in everyday life. Acceleration is
cheaper LED lights, which mean more affordable Christmas decorations, which
means more neighbors are decorating for Christmas, which means we
experience the peer pressure to decorate for Christmas ourselves. Acceleration
is politically correct language, which changes quickly and shapes public
discourse, and those who don’t know the language are excluded from that
discourse. Acceleration is being assigned a new social media platform to manage
on behalf of your company… However much there is to be done, the answer is
always “more.”

— Bryan J. “Accelerating Past Happiness” (MBird.com
2.7.24; emph added)

What need does she have for a water jar when she has drunk the living water
that makes one never thirst again? She goes to her fellow Samaritans to tell them
of this Jesus who offers something better than their patriarch Jacob. “Come, see
the man…!” She brings this good news to the very people who ostracized her.
They too, like Jesus, know the things she had done, but unlike Jesus, they had
rejected her. The ethnic bond between her and her people was a thin veneer
over a thick layer of alienation… But when the living water flows, boundaries are
traversed, social and gender boundaries as well as ethnic ones. The differences
no longer separate. The woman regains a voice in her community; her witness is
heard and believed…

The entire story testifies that the gift of eternal life is experienced in the fellowship
of those once estranged but now reconciled...

— Judith M. Gundry-Volf and Miroslav Volf,
A Spacious Heart: Essays on Identity and Belonging

The Call to Worship: Psalm 134 (A Song of Ascents)

Behold, bless the LORD, all servants of the LORD,
Who serve by night in the house of the LORD!
Lift up your hands to the sanctuary
And bless the LORD.
May the LORD bless you from Zion,