Prayers 1 6 2013
*Happy New Year! First Sunday in 2013 with new times and schedules
*Hope that you have been able to find your way to your new SS classes and worship services
*New parking meter enforcement on Sundays as well
*RMMO—Thank you offering in the month of January
*Lands of Luther tour begins on April 29th; two more places to fill; see brochures in the vestibule
*Men’s Fellowship, Saturday, 9:00, Dan Lee’s on “Tech Apps”
*Next Sunday—Ivy and Emerson Wu will be sharing at all three services; they are endorsed ABC missionaries to Macau
*Church Annual Meeting, Feb. 3, turn in annual reports, make corrections on your church directory, plan to celebrate the ministries we had in 2012
*Sarah Jang lost an umbrella with some sentimental value—golf style, straight wooden handle, navy/black and white
Prayer Concerns
*Tristan Feng with unexplained and yet to be diagnosed headaches that cause him to have challenging behaviors
*Mrs. Chin, Marian and Betty’s mother
Prayer of God’s People
Dear God, the holiday is over but the work of Christmas is just beginning. Guide us, loving God, as we follow in the footsteps of the one whose birth we celebrate. Grant us the grace to order our lives so that others might know that we have knelt in Bethlehem and worshiped the newborn king.
On the threshold of this new year, let us remember to follow the star instead of the crowd. If we lose our way, help us to remember, O God, the angel songs and the gift born to us in the darkness of night and in the depth of winter that we might have life and have it abundantly.
As the light from the star guided the wise men of old, O God, so might your love shine from within us to encircle and embrace all those who have lost their way. Nowhere is the spirit of Christmas more radiantly present than in the simple faith of a child. We pray for the children and the youth in our church that they would grow up like Jesus in stature and in wisdom and that we have a responsibility as adults and mentors to guide future generations to become faithful disciples. We also claim that faith of a child as our own in the name of the Christ child, born to us in this holy season.
As your beloved community, we pray for those in our midst who are in need of your healing powers and merciful grace. Be with Tristan Feng as he undergoes tests to determine the cause of his headaches. Bless Tristan’s parents, Laura Dare and Tom Feng to provide the strong support necessary to care for Tristan’s needs. Continue to strengthen Marian Hom and her family as they care for Mrs. Chin at this time of her life that these days are ways that you, Lord help us to see the preciousness of life.
And when we have spent all of our energies and resources by spending more, consuming more, and attaining more at the expense of helping others, we confess our sins to you, our Savior who had less, gained less and gave it all for our everlasting life. As the boy Jesus grows, and receives the wise from other lands, may we turn at last, growing in our faith, and joining the wise in seeking you.
The holiday is over but the work of Christmas is just beginning. Let it begin with us as we pray with gratitude the prayer of the one who calls us to new life, Jesus the Christ, who taught us to say when we pray together…Our Father…
The Lord’s Supper
I have wondered why I have felt that I needed to share another story before we celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Perhaps the pastor of my home church did so where I grew up. And the story of how Jesus and his disciples went to the upper room and how Jesus said that the bread now represents his body broken for you and the cup represents the blood that will be shed for the forgiveness of sins needs no further elaboration from me. That is for sure! But after today’s sermon, I believe that just as the apostle Paul understood why he is the way he is, I dearly want you to know why you are the way you are as well. It’s only when we understand what we believe will we begin to see fundamental change in our behavior.
The theologian, Frederick Buechner writes in his book, Telling Secrets, “My story is important because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours. Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally. If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but also spiritually.”
The story of the Lord’s Supper is also our story. We are the disciples who have gathered in the upper room and Jesus is breaking bread for us and pouring wine into our cups. Since we know what it means to eat of this bread and to drink from this cup, we dedicate our lives in servanthood to Christ our Lord.
Benediction
May the joy of knowing Jesus in our fellowship,
The peace from abiding together as people of God,
And the love, which is the clear sign that we have followed the star
And arrived at the place where Jesus reigns,
Live in us all, today and every day. Amen.