As someone who works in the church and also as a parent of school-aged children, I can feel my anxiety rising at this time of year. There are so many things that are happening: cycles and schedules beginning again, items to be prepared, tasks to be listed and checked off, all sorts of communications to track. 

So, of course I feel personally challenged by this week’s Scripture lesson that tells a story about Jesus creating controversy on the Sabbath. There doesn’t seem to be enough time to take care of everything that is demanding my attention, and Jesus wants me to think more carefully about Sabbath? 

God’s Spirit does have an amazing way of speaking into our lives, doesn’t it? Come join us in worship on Sunday, and let’s listen for its leading together. 

Faithfully, 

Hardy

Please join us immediately following the service for our Coffee Hour

(in-person in the sanctuary or online via Zoom).

bit.ly/SVPCCoffeeHour

“Since the Reality that religion claims to deal with is beyond space and time, we cannot use normal space-and-time language (i.e. nouns and verbs) to describe it directly. We must fall back on the language of metaphor and resign ourselves to describing it at best indirectly.”

 Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking 

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day." But the Lord answered him and said, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?" When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.