Bulletin 8.17.25
"So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household" Ephisians 2:19
Reflection Before The Service
Reflection Before The Service
“I love humanity,” he said, “but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. In my dreams,” he said, “I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.”
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1879)
How often we have tried somehow to love somebody that we can’t stand! The harder we try to love, the more difficult it becomes. We get super-frustrated and angry at the other person for making love so difficult. All our human efforts to try to love others are bound to fail because the more we put ourselves under a performance principle, the more our failures make us feel guilty and caused us to love less. This is the corollary to the central message of God’s freeing love throughout … the book of Romans: that all human efforts, all performance principles, will only bring failure and despair. Only when we are set free from the demands of the law can we discover the hilarity of living in love through faith. Indeed, this is not of ourselves but a gift of grace.
Can we grow in love by trying to love more? No, our attempts to love will only end in more frustration and Les love. The solution… is to know God better. This is so simple that we miss it all the time: our means for becoming more loving is to know God better.
– Marva Dawn, Truly the Community: Romans 12 and How to Be the Church (1992; pp 145-146)
The Call To Worship
The Call To Worship
The Letter to the Ephesians 2.19-22
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone,
in Whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in Whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.
(Prayer)
Reflection Before The Service
“I love humanity,” he said, “but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. In my dreams,” he said, “I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.”
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1879)
How often we have tried somehow to love somebody that we can’t stand! The harder we try to love, the more difficult it becomes. We get super-frustrated and angry at the other person for making love so difficult. All our human efforts to try to love others are bound to fail because the more we put ourselves under a performance principle, the more our failures make us feel guilty and caused us to love less. This is the corollary to the central message of God’s freeing love throughout … the book of Romans: that all human efforts, all performance principles, will only bring failure and despair. Only when we are set free from the demands of the law can we discover the hilarity of living in love through faith. Indeed, this is not of ourselves but a gift of grace.
Can we grow in love by trying to love more? No, our attempts to love will only end in more frustration and Les love. The solution… is to know God better. This is so simple that we miss it all the time: our means for becoming more loving is to know God better.
– Marva Dawn, Truly the Community: Romans 12 and How to Be the Church (1992; pp 145-146)
The Call To Worship
The Letter to the Ephesians 2.19-22
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone,
in Whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in Whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.
(Prayer)
17/08/25