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*About our Worship*
Today's preacher is EmmaRae Carroll, our Student Minister
Dear, dear Corinthians, I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way. I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively! - 2 Corinthians 6.11-13 (The Message)
The poet Mary Oliver asks in one of her works, “what are you going to do with your one, wild, precious life?” One thing we have learned in these past few years is the power fear has to drive us to division and acts of injustice. Yet, we have also seen how feelings of hope can drive us to work for equity and justice in this world. The Apostle Paul is trying to spread the gospel news of new life in Christ, but Christian communities like the one in Corinth frustrate him with their petty feuds and small thinking. “Open your hearts and minds,” is the message here. What do you tend and nurture in your life? Is it fear, or is it hope? One leaves us anxious and small. The other offers us new life and expansive possibilities of a just world.
*Credits and Permissions:*
-Worship series design idea © 2012 by Dr. Marcia McFee and the Worship Design Studio. Adapted in 2021 by the Rev. Jeff Lukens and used with permission as a part of our subscription. www.worshipdesignstudio.com
-“More Light,” lyrics and music by Christopher Grundy, arr. by Paul Vasile. Used with permission. www.christophergrundy.com.
-Scripture quotations marked (CEB) come from the Common English Bible, copyright © 2011. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
-Scripture quotations marked (NRSV) come from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
-Printing & Streaming Music license from OneLicense.net. License # 731003-A
