Sunnyvale Presbyterian Church
Worship Focus for November 26
A Nation of Caring
The Rev. Hardy Kim, preaching
Greetings!

Thanksgiving Greetings!

I hope that you and your family are enjoying a good Thanksgiving; that you’ve had time to reflect on the ways God has blessed you, and that you have been able to gather together with family (given and chosen) to celebrate the good and to support one another through the bad. 

Thanksgiving is a wonderful time of celebration because it’s a moment when the rest of the society around us takes a step back from busyness to engage in the practice of giving thanks. This is a practice that is essential to our Christian living. So, for this moment, we are united with all communities around us and our spiritual practices seem to fit in with the values of the wider world. 

But is it possible for us to remain comfortably aligned with the world around us? In his parables about the coming kingdom of heaven, Jesus outlines some ways in which we’re called to be different from the people around us---or at least a little out of step with their values. Come join us for this final week of thinking about these stories, and about how we might be called to live according to a different way.

Your companion in this different way,
Hardy
Every gift, large and small, makes a difference...

If you haven’t already, please prayerfully consider your response to our Stewardship drive and turn in your card or submit a response online at www.svpc.us/give.
Theme for Sunday

In the view of American teenagers, God is more object than subject, an idea but not a companion. The problem does not seem to be that churches are teaching young people badly, but that we are doing an exceedingly good job of teaching youth what we really believe: namely, that Christianity is not a big deal, that God requires little, and the church is a helpful social institution filled with nice people focused primarily on ‘folks like us’---which, of course, begs the question of whether we are really the church at all. 
 What if the blasé religiosity of most American teenagers is not the result of poor communication but the result of excellent communication of a watered-down gospel so devoid of God’s self-giving love in Jesus Christ, so immune to the sending love of the Holy Spirit that it might not be Christianity at all?

---Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian: What the Faith of our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church
Scripture : Matthew 25:31-46

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from...

Read more
bible.oremus.org
Questions for
Reflection
 
What are some of the things for which you give thanks, during this Thanksgiving season?

Who or what has taught you to appreciate them and why?

Are there ways that your faith might be calling you to risk giving up some of the things for which you are grateful? Why?
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