|
 |
|
All are invited to celebrate the 1st Sunday of Advent this Sunday at both the 9:30 Traditional and 11:00 Contemporary Worship Services.
|
|
|
MESSAGE FROM THE STAFF
Dear Friends and Members of the Ark and Dove Community,
In gratitude for our ministry together as a congregation, we wish you every blessing as you prepare your hearts for the national celebration of Thanksgiving. We offer our Thanksgiving for being able to serve Christ by your side. We are providing some scripture and prayer that you may use as you gather with family and friends.
Peace of Christ,
Rebecca, Mark, Mondee, Jon and Tim
|
|
|
A Psalm for Thanksgiving Day (Based on Psalm 104)
Bless the Lord, O My soul
O Holy One, my God, You are very great
You are clothed with majesty and honor
You are wrapped in light as your winter jacket
You built the whole earth from the beginning
You make the rivers flow
You give the rain to the trees the potatoes and the pumpkins
You make the birds sing and the apples shine
You give us beautiful mountains
You let the lions roar, and you put the moon in the sky
What a wildly wonderful world God - thank you
We pray to you with thanksgiving
May your glory endure forever
|
|
|
PRAYER
O God, our Provider, you open your hand and lavish good gifts upon us. So we give you thanks. You create the beauty of the earth and stock it with abundance to sustain human life. You give us friends who share the journey of our lives; family who make us laugh with joy and dry our tears of sorrow; strangers who minister to our needs with generous kindness. You knit us into your larger family called church to encourage us in your Way. You have blessed us with the freedoms of a great nation. "Thank you" seems insufficient for all your blessings, yet we say it with all we are as an offering of gratitude for our many blessings that we name before you. {Enumerate all you're thankful for; count your blessings}. Though we may have seen our fortunes fall this year, we praise you for hiding our treasure in Jesus Christ our Lord, whom not even death can destroy. Though we miss those whose places sit empty at this year's table, we give you thanks for lending them to us for what time we had. For all your providence with the feast of life that you set before us, we give ourselves to you with all we are in thanks and praise. Amen.
|
|
|
PRAYER
Dear Lord,
As we gather together around this table laden with your plentiful gifts to us, we thank You for always providing what we really need and for sometimes granting wishes for things we don't really need. Today, let us be especially thankful for each other--for family and friends who enrich our lives in wonderful ways, even when they present us with challenges. Let us join together now in peaceful, loving fellowship to celebrate Your love for us and our love for each other. Amen.
--
Joanna Fuchs
|
|
|
AN IROQUOIS PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING
We return thanks to our mother, the earth, who sustains us. We return thanks to the rivers and streams, which supply us with water. We return thanks to all herbs, which furnish medicines for the cure of our diseases. We return thanks to the corn, and to her sisters, the beans and squash, which give us life. We return thanks to the bushes and trees, which provide us with fruit. We return thanks to the wind, which, moving the air, has banished diseases. We return thanks to the moon and the stars, which have given us their light when the sun was gone. We return thanks to our grandfather He-no, .., who has given to us his rain. We return thanks to the sun, that he has looked upon the earth with a beneficent eye. Lastly, we return thanks to the Great Spirit, in whom is embodied all goodness, and who directs all things for the good of his children.
|
|
|
A Prayer of Thanksgiving
Lord, behold our family here assembled. We thank you for this place in which we dwell,
for the love that unites us, for the peace given us this day, for the hope with which we expect the morrow; for the health, the work, the food, and the bright skies that make our lives delightful; for our friends in all parts of the earth.
Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies. Bless us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavors; if it may not, give us the strength to endure that which is to come; that we may be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath and in all changes of fortune and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving to one another.
As the clay to the potter, as the windmill to the wind, as children of their parent, we beseech of you this help and mercy for Christ's sake. Amen.
--Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
|
|
|
VERSE
First Fruits and Tithes
When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, "Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lordswore to our ancestors to give us." When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, you shall make this response before the Lord your God: "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me." You shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.
--Deuteronomy 26:1-11
|
|
|
The church office will be closed, Thursday November 24th and Friday, November 25th for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
- 2 Corinthians 4:15
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
