Greetings!

How has your summer been so far? Have you been enjoying your time? More importantly – have you been able to find rest and restoration? Time away from the usual routines that can leave you feeling drained? Some of you may have been blessed with a period for recovery and relaxation. But my guess is that many more of you have found it hard to achieve this. If my guess is right, what can be done?

I think it’s too hard to go about our whole year trying to just make it through to a summer vacation that will give us the rest we need – especially when it’s so hard to make room or to find the resources for such a thing! So then maybe we need to think again about the regular practices that define our living during the whole year.

This Sunday we’ll hear a story about a very busy period in Jesus’ own ministry, and how he does (or doesn’t) address the same concerns that so many of us encounter. I hope you’ll join us for a meaningful (and restorative) worship time.

Peace, 

Hardy

Theme for Sunday

"All the days of the week must be spiritually consistent with the Day of Days. All our life should be a pilgrimage to the seventh day; the thought and appreciation of what this day may bring to us should be ever present in our minds. For the Sabbath is the counterpoint of living; the melody sustained throughout all agitations and vicissitudes which menace our conscience; our awareness of God’s presence in the world. What we are depends on what the Sabbath is to us. The law of the Sabbath day is in the life of the spirit what the law of gravitation is in nature.”

—Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, "Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while." For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.

When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.