Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time
Thursday, December 7, 2017
Catch up on previous emails on our website.

Or join us any time at church:
Monday evenings 7:00-8:30pm,
Tuesday afternoons 2:00-3:30 pm,
or Tuesday evenings 7:00-8:30pm
Prayer Practice for the Week
Clearness Committee
This is the last week of “Meeting Jesus Again.” How has this experience and book-study changed your life? How has it deepened your faith? What is God calling you to next?

Quaker Clearness Committee is a small group that is called together to assist a person who is seeking the Holy Spirit's direction. In this process of discernment, the participants listen for God who is speaking through each person present. If the participants are hearing the Spirit's leadings, there is a common direction that is discerned. ( Continue reading.)

Today, who do you want to be a part of your Clearness Committee? Who are the guides, mentors, friends, and family you want to help you discover God’s guiding hand? 
Daily Devotion

Scripture of the Day
“Peter, do you love me?”
“You know I do, Lord!”
“Tend my sheep.” ( John 21:16)
Reflection
Jesus asks a great deal of us — from the total reordering of society toward justice, to the forgiveness of sins — mine and yours. For all its size and difficulty, what Jesus asks is actually very simple, from the many commandments to love to this request to shepherd. Not that tending sheep is necessarily easy. But at the end of the day it is not confusing. Make sure they have water to drink, grass to eat, a safe place to sleep, and at the end of the day, make sure none have wandered off and gotten lost.

Prayer
Shepherding God, your rod and your staff are my comfort and my discipline. Nudge me when I veer off course. Yank me back from the brink of disaster. Defend my company against wolves and shelter us from storms. Lead me beside still waters and to wide field of green grass. Amen.
Spiritual Practice

Participants of the Racial Justice Training unpacked this definition of racism:

Racism is racial prejudice plus power. Racism is the intentional or unintentional use of power to isolate, separate, and exploit others. This use of power is based on a belief in superior origin, identity of supposed racial characteristics. Racism confers certain privileges on and defends the dominant group, which in turn sustains and perpetuates racism. Both consciously and unconsciously, racism is enforced and maintained by legal, cultural, religious, educational, economic, political, and military institutions of societies. Racism is more than just a personal attitude. it is the institutionalized form of that attitude... it is both overt and covert.

What words jump out for you in this definition?