Bulletin 2.15.26
"'I, the LORD, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles,'" Isaiah 42:6
Reflection Before The Service
Reflection Before The Service
There's a valley of sorrow in my soul
Where every night I hear the thunder roll
Like the sound of a distant gun
Over all the damage I have done
And the shadows filling up this land
Are the ones I built with my own hand
There is no comfort from the cold
Of this valley of sorrow in my soul
— Emmylou Harris, “Prayer in Open D ”
from the 1993 album, Cowgirl ’s Prayer
For this tangled absurdity of a Need, even a Need -love, which never fully
acknowledges its own neediness, Grace substitutes a full, childlike and delighted acceptance of our Need, a joy in total dependence. We become “jolly beggars.” The good man is sorry for the sins which have increased his Need. He is not entirely sorry for the fresh Need they have produced. And he is not sorry at all for the innocent Need that is inherent in his creaturely condition. For all
the time this illusion to which (human) nature clings as her last treasure,
this pretense that we have anything of our own or could for one hour retain
by our own strength any goodness that God may pour into us, has kept us
from being happy. We have been like bathers who want to keep their feet -or one foot-or one toe -on the bottom, when to lose that foothold would be to surrender themselves to a glorious tumble in the surf. The consequences of parting with our last claim to intrinsic freedom, power, or worth, are real freedom, power and worth, really ours just because God gives them and because we know them to be (in another sense) not “ours.”
— C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (CH 6,
“Charity ”; emph. added)
The Call To Worship
The Call To Worship
The Prophet Isaiah 42.1-7 (NIV)
Here is My servant, whom I uphold, My chosen one in whom I delight; I will put My Spirit on Him, and He will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout or cry out, or raise His voice in the streets. A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out. In faithfulness He will bring forth justice; He will not falter or be discouraged till He establishes justice on earth. In His teaching the islands will put their hope."
This is what God the LORD says -- the Creator of the heavens, who stretches them out, who spreads out the earth with all that springs from it, who gives breath to its people, and life to those who walk on it:
"I, the LORD, have called you in righteousness;
I will take hold of your hand.
I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people
and a light for the Gentiles,
to open eyes that are blind,
to free captives from prison
and to release from the dungeon
those who sit in darkness...”
(Prayer)
Reflection Before The Service
There's a valley of sorrow in my soul
Where every night I hear the thunder roll
Like the sound of a distant gun
Over all the damage I have done
And the shadows filling up this land
Are the ones I built with my own hand
There is no comfort from the cold
Of this valley of sorrow in my soul
— Emmylou Harris, “Prayer in Open D ”
from the 1993 album, Cowgirl ’s Prayer
For this tangled absurdity of a Need, even a Need -love, which never fully
acknowledges its own neediness, Grace substitutes a full, childlike and delighted acceptance of our Need, a joy in total dependence. We become “jolly beggars.” The good man is sorry for the sins which have increased his Need. He is not entirely sorry for the fresh Need they have produced. And he is not sorry at all for the innocent Need that is inherent in his creaturely condition. For all
the time this illusion to which (human) nature clings as her last treasure,
this pretense that we have anything of our own or could for one hour retain
by our own strength any goodness that God may pour into us, has kept us
from being happy. We have been like bathers who want to keep their feet -or one foot-or one toe -on the bottom, when to lose that foothold would be to surrender themselves to a glorious tumble in the surf. The consequences of parting with our last claim to intrinsic freedom, power, or worth, are real freedom, power and worth, really ours just because God gives them and because we know them to be (in another sense) not “ours.”
— C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (CH 6,
“Charity ”; emph. added)
The Call To Worship
The Prophet Isaiah 42.1-7 (NIV)
Here is My servant, whom I uphold, My chosen one in whom I delight; I will put My Spirit on Him, and He will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout or cry out, or raise His voice in the streets. A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out. In faithfulness He will bring forth justice; He will not falter or be discouraged till He establishes justice on earth. In His teaching the islands will put their hope."
This is what God the LORD says -- the Creator of the heavens, who stretches them out, who spreads out the earth with all that springs from it, who gives breath to its people, and life to those who walk on it:
"I, the LORD, have called you in righteousness;
I will take hold of your hand.
I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people
and a light for the Gentiles,
to open eyes that are blind,
to free captives from prison
and to release from the dungeon
those who sit in darkness...”
(Prayer)
15/02/26