20181208Beecher and Bennett
Good afternoon, everybody.
First I'd like to thank Pastor John Blossom and music director. Lori. Grandal will opening up this beautiful sanctuary. Providing very special service force today. Thank you Pastor. I'd like to invite everyone to the store here for some wonderful homemade baked cookies and treats. Thank you again for being here. Please join us after the service.
Good afternoon.
It is a pleasure and a privilege to see you. Let's open up our service here today with a ham for my red and no mold Come O Come Emmanuel on the 211. All the verses will be projected on the screen will be singing the first two verses.
What is fraying?
Donald love dynaflyte God is everlasting life. We thank you for the love that brings everybody here today. Lodging in remembrance of people who have been in our lives. We will never erase them our hearts. Because love can never do right. And we thank you for your love that endures helps us to be connected and companionship with ones who we love in this world and in your heavenly Kingdom. diners at this time a preparation in Christmas to be close to you and to our loved ones into on another the light of your everlasting love. Comfort Inn warm our hearts give his vision and strength and Pizza in Hope for this journey and hope that you prepared for us in fate. We pray.
Everyone knows the holiday season can be difficult one. Your loved one is not present when Joy the usual festivities. There's an empty seat at the table. You're watching very difficult to bear. Today We Gather to honor and remember. You're welcome. Read me new also a family member of our dear friend is easily one of the hardest life challenges we can face. Rick doesn't always been cold and orderly Scott Nord early stages. It's a process many emotional highs and lows over no set. Of time.
What the holiday season I'm sure we can all agree and proved to be most difficult because we are without our loved one. Even though they're not here today doesn't mean they will be forgot. What did Christmas mean to that? Maybe Mom was the one who put up the holiday decorations for host of the family gathering. Or you can always depend on dad to tell a great story.
Don't hesitate to remember them mention their names. And happy time spent together during the holidays. These memories help us truly remember why we love them so much. And that's what's most important. They provide us with a sense of hope that tomorrow will be brighter.
Our goal today is a pastor that whole. Capture all the great memories and remember that we love them and they love us.
before us we have a tree with some Christmas lights in a few bar ones. The evergreen tree was selected to represent life Everlasting. So it's fitting that this type of tree also represents Christmas and the birth of the Christ child. Right now archery looks empty. Each family has been given an ornament with their loved one's name on it. As their name is red. Please come forward and place you want even on our tree and then come to this side and light a candle in your memory.
Dorothy and Frank Quigley Dustin Roberts
Olivia Nevada for real
Arlene and William the Harris Teeter
Fred Wagner
blues guitar
Debbie hartenstein
Betty and Lewis Shepherd Jackie sites Gordon Webster
mean
William rizio waffle and Florence Jansen Danny Garza.
Sophie folic and Walter Garland
Hall of Fame in and that for me
5 rifle
Catherine baracus
Eva Sarazen
Chester and Norma Dumont
Jessica Cartier
Evelyn
Nathaniel Penza
Robert Morrow
Helen Hoffman and Irene Savino
Daniel Rivera
Nicole
Mark Ward
all rude jr.
Dolores Medico
Farnsworth
Helen of Troy
Anthony Pier 4
Hector Medina senior
Eileen Kelly
Richard Mahler
breakfast beaver
Walter of DNA
Ruth Handler
What are three now? Come to life. beautiful I can service come forward and home place in a favorite location with the thought that you loved ones still with you, but it's far from with love and fond memories. We hope that when you leave here today knowing that you're we are some among strong family friend and wonderful feeling you're not alone. You're welcome still love you. And so does God. But it'd be a Merry Christmas.
I'd like to share a phone with you title. The oak tree by Johnny Ray Ryder from you.
Mighty wind blew night and day it's still the oak trees leave the way Mathews Bows the coldest part of the tire.
The weary Wings do you luck and spoke? How can you still do standing up? geometry set I know that you can break each branch of mine into Carry, every Libra way shake my limbs and make me sweat. But I have Roots stretched in New York growing stronger since my garden. Will never touch them for you. See they are the deepest part of me. Until today, I wasn't sure just how much I couldn't do it. But now I found thanks to you stronger now than I am.
In this poem I find free powerful symbolism. First the wind symbolizes the sadness and grief that you all experience each day. You the surviving family represent the oak tree? And finally the roots of a toe symbolize the morals and character that have been instilled in you by your departed loved one.
Remember that you can stand strong through the sadness and grief as it is try to knock you down. Those morals and character Street character traits and sealed in you reach deep into your soul not backbone of Who You Are. Sadness and grief cannot reach that tea to knock you down. So the next time you feel sad and down remember that you are the strong up and the Mighty Wind cannot touch you all over. Thank you everyone Merry Christmas and happy.
Good afternoon.
our first scripture reading comes from the Hebrew Bible Scroll of Isaiah Prophet chapter 40 verses 1 through 5. It's printed in your program.
Isaiah reveal from God comfort Comfort my people says your God speak compassionately to Jerusalem and Proclaim to her that her compulsory service has happened and that she has received no cards and double for all her sins. a Boise Is crying out clear the Lord's way in the desert make a level Highway through the Wilderness of our God every Every Mountain will be flattened uneven ground will become level and rough-terrain. If Ali playing the Lord's Glory will appear and all Humanity will see you together the Lord's mouth. askmen Reddit Uranus the first movie
Our second scripture reading this afternoon.
Comes from The Book of John.
chapter 14 verses 15 through 19 as you were able and body or the spirit, please rise for the reading of the Gospel.
Jesus sad if you love me you will keep my Commandments. I will ask the father and he will send another companion would you ever this companion is the spirit of Truth whom the world can't receive because it neither sees him nor recognizes him. You know him. Because he lives with you with you. I won't leave you as orphans. I will come to you soon. The world will no longer see me, but you will see me because I live. You will live to.
This is the gospel of the Lord for the people of God. Please be stupid.
Play with me please.
Gooding giving God author of all gifts on Trevon Grace bringer of all life and hope into our hearts and into our lives and into our world. We come here because we need our hearts still Dope Lord. We come. Find The Emptiness filled up in the Heights brought down so that our hearts need to be at peace with one another. With our loved ones in your heavenly Embrace and with God's Will and so may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable unto thee O Lord our Rock and Our Redeemer either through a sore inside of us speak to us time people. We pray on it.
It truly is a privilege to welcome you to our beautiful church and enjoy that help you experience God's love Comfort. Hope this place. We all come from different families different houses of worship or from no particular face and here in this place. We honor and respect our differences. But we are more greatly the need that makes us one today. We may not be companions with one another when we leave this place. But right now here in this place. We are companions with one another. So let's please acknowledge our companionship now and turn to the person you're right and your left and welcome them to the spice. What do you know that let's do that, please.
I did this with everybody would be heroes.
Welcome.
Thank you for like gesturing and bless you for affirming our companionship with one another today. I am also a companion with you today on this journey of Hope. Has my family remembers my wife's parents, both of them died earlier this year. When we lose a loved person in our lives the Rhythm of Life Changes, doesn't it? We expected a companion in our life to be there to respond to things in a particular way and not having that response. It wasn't always a perfectly warm response. Changes the rhythm of how we experience life.
Light becomes a different story no matter what because a key person in that story isn't with us. And when it comes to the holidays often, it's those small things that might not have seemed so great at the time that remind us of things the most. in our family, I know that there will come a time after dinner on Christmas Day when we would normally break out a box of Mike's pastries from the North End of Boston is the best my wife's father brought them every Christmas for more than 30 years. That will do something good on Christmas Day on sure but the rhythm of our family traditions has changed because her companion is gone. For those people who have faith we can find some comfort knowing that even though our companions are not with us on Earth in heaven. We have a different kind of companionship with them now. They're with us but it's different. That's the hard part. Isn't it? Like Christmas? We become more aware. Not only a poo is not with us. But also withheld there's a new kind of way that they can. The story of our companionship with them is over in one way but a new story of companionship with them.
amendments new companionship with our loved ones there can be both comfort and holy there can people healing potential for New Girl 13B like gifts under a Christmas tree the possibilities of an open gifts coming from new types of companionship with our loved ones and with others in our lives. We can see that Mike is a process of Eternal beginnings and endings. Not a Forever Frozen in time would be invited into new possibility. The pastry from Boston on my family's Christmas dinner table. They were raped just pastries in a box. Good morning, cuz it's not something that comes in a box is it and we can't put our love for our list companions or their lives into a box? Why can something more? Love is something more and it should be something more and still with the possibilities of something more and God wants us to have this something more in our lives. Be comfortable. Give us a way forward as a prophet Isaiah reminders and today's reading from the Hebrew Bible. The prophet Isaiah was speaking to the word of God to the people of Israel who had laws. Everything near and dear to their hearts their Kingdom and their magnificent Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. Their Nations and become slaves to the king of Babylon. They felt abandoned and punished twice over my God. David I must have seemed like a mountain to climb Valley of Despair to escape a winding road with no end in sight to the Curves in Twix. They came from them in their grief as it comes to us in our please. And in the middle of this Bleak picture of grieving for what could no longer be the prophet Isaiah offers one of the most amazing messages from God and all of the Bible. The word of God came to Isaiah and he told Israel what God had told him. comfort
comfort My people says your God. Speak compassionate to Jerusalem. I got to do the Greek was in the hearts of Israel's people and God did not say it's all your fault Our God knowing how lost the people of Israel word that we did not say our loving God the hope of all creation offered the greeting people of Israel what we all want in the middle of our grief comfort. And hope. Ass is real through Isaiah to let go of the burdens of Kilt wave them down. Ask Israel to hear the word of hole from the God who loves the people who God himself had lead out of Egypt from slavery. Israel to listen to a voice. Voice from the new companion who would make the twists and turns of Greek give way to straight roads of cold. A companion would make the unclimbable mountains and a level playing. Danse companion would come to them and offer them comfort and Transformer.
Christian prediction Jesus in today's reading from John's gospel letting his followers know that nothing would ever stop offering us this companionship and comfort in transforming both our hearts one so very much we hear the words of Jesus in John's gospel story on the night before Jesus died on a cross. Is companionship was ending? And he knew that his followers would feel orphaned from losing him. What Jesus Promised his followers that God will never leave them to feel like orphans even death on a cross would not remove the Comfort transforming photo of God's love and their lives. God would always be there companion of Hope. And to seal This Promise of everlasting companionship and hope Jesus offered his followers of us the ultimate companion God's holy spirit. Some translations of this passage from John's Gospel called the holy spirit in our lives through faith, but the original text of John's gospel. Reminds us that God's holy spirit when courage is us who speaks the truth and you advise us to change how we live is also our companion. We all need one another and still have companions Disturbed healing and hope that were on. But we also need to turn to the guy who offers us Comfort Inn. Hold a companion who through faith will never ever leave.
Now perhaps the idea of God's holy spirit might seem like a small copper to us at a time when we long for a file. Tender moment that familiar last of us a funny joke from our life companions. Cuz God is here. alive right now in this place to tell us that the living companion of God is the gift that will unlock God's Comfort Dodge Comfort Inn. Hope will lead us to the gifts of new possibilities for life. Just which gives us faith in our impending relationship with our loved ones in God's Eternal hand with your help and to help us see straight highways level claims that lead to the love healing and hope that God wants for us and everyone.
And I worship this month in our church. We're focusing on opening the gifts of faith that it will help us to receive God's comfort and Hope. Is Christian season of adron are preparing for the coming of Jesus on Christmas is the time of preparing for this new life. When the season of new beginnings end and our calendar year end. When were the beginnings begin? Will we turn the corner and see a news story unfolding? When will we see God's companionship in our lives calling us to the renewed companionship that we have in Ghana.
are season of advent calendar soon very soon. God is here. God is coming the god of Christmas called Emmanuel the ancient Hebrew word. Meaning God is with us. The locals love with the Living God surrounds Us in this place. God's promises for Hope are in this place the love of God surrounds our loved ones say forever in the Everlasting Arms God. Guy is your companion? together a prayer for you for your families and friends and for all of you who love is that God's love will comfort you heal you and help you to see both the amazing journey of life and the possibilities of us.
The season of new beginnings offer you everything that your heart wrong with the Living God. as our Everlasting companion
it's time now for the prayers of people.
What is frame together?
Loving God our Everlasting companion. We thank you for your loving presence here today. It invites us to let you into our hearts. And let us just let us to see either the way forward that we yearn for. We thank you for your love that and Lighting Supply. gets his courage and Hope thank you for all of us.
Bring us here today and for our family to support it is through these times and our families who need even more startling. Lord even though there is a part that is empty and broken you fill us and will walk with us every step of the way.
In silence now, I will pause a moment for people to seek out the names of their loved ones that they would like to speak now.
Grace is Gone. You can win lipstone moons. You know what words are upon people's hearts. And we trust in your healing and hope and salvation. It will bring us through China peace now and forever. And we trust in that with courage in and Hope. As we praying the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray. Our Father who art in heaven Hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us And lead us not into temptation. But Deliver Us from Evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
Would you please join us in our closing hymn Let There Be Peace On Earth? Missing are red candles number 431 but the words will be projected on the screen.
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It's our tradition and our troops to conclude the service with are charged Ki together. But it's a no. Play God loves us is with us always and always wants to be our companion on our journey of remembrance and new life. May God's love unites always with our loved ones here and in God's Heavenly Kingdom and may God grant us and Mal who we love Comfort Insurance and hope now and forever all men and now. May the Lord bless us and keep us. The Lord shine his face upon us. braces
rank of Lord lift up his countenance upon us. And grant us peace now and forever. all men