Music for Sunday

For music this Sunday we will be singing Better is One Day and Blessed Be Your Name during the time of opening worship

The first hymn is going to be Why Should We Start and Fear to Die?, an old Isaac Watts hymn sung to the tune of Lamb of God by Twila Paris (#302 in the hymnal), with added words for the refrain. The words of this wonderful old hymn are included at the end of this post.

And the prayer hymn is #567, Nearer, Still Nearer, with the closing hymn being #779, I'll Fly Away.

Why should we start and fear to die?
What tim’rous worms we mortals are!

Death is the gate of endless joy,

And yet we dread to enter there.

Refrain:
Oh numbered days, my numbered days,
Teach me the more to cherish grace
For after all my numbered days
Dawns one long day of endless praise!

The pains, the groans, the dying strife,

Fright our approaching souls away;

Still we shrink back again to life,

Fond of our prison and our clay.

Refrain

O, if my Lord would come and meet,

My soul should stretch her wings in haste,

Fly fearless through death’s iron gate,

Nor feel the terrors as she passed.

Refrain

Jesus can make a dying bed

Feel soft as downy pillows are,

While on His breast I lean my head,

And breathe my life out sweetly there.

Refrain

Readings for Sunday, October 26th

Despite all of the huffy denials, it seems pretty clear that one of the two candidates for vice president received an injection of botox before the vice presidential debate a few weeks ago. I don't bring this up because I think it has any political significance, but because I think it's just so telling about our culture.
We put more energy into ignoring our mortality or pretending it away, than we do into resisting our mortality or dealing with its implications. We have a natural but foolish reluctance to number our days. I confess that I hate doing that math myself, but I'm also discovering the ways in which doing so give s me "a heart of wisdom," and how that makes a practical difference in the way I spend the days I've numbered.
It's exciting stuff. You'll have to take my word for it.


Sunday October 26th, 2008

Call to Repentance
Proverbs 28:13 (page 1027)

Call to Worship
Psalm 57 (page 894)

OT Reading
Ecclesiastes 11:7-12:7 (page 1047)

NT Reading
Luke 12:35-48 (page 1618)

Message
The Worst Sort of Math
Psalm 90 (page 929)

Readings for Sunday, October 19th

This is one of those classic confound-the-connivers passages in the gospels where Jesus sends away in disgrace those who had come with the sole intent of disgracing him. But it's not just recorded in the gospels to illustrate how clever our Savior is. Jesus makes their insolence an occasion for our teaching. But, as is so often the case, Jesus' teaching poses questions more than it provides answers.

The question we're left to ask in this passage is "If the denarius, with its portrait of Ceasar, is the currency of Rome, what is the currency of heaven with which we are to 'render to God what is God's?'"

Too many Christians live as though the currency of heaven is good deeds, or occasional devotions. Or perhaps the currency of this world does double duty as the currency of heaven when it finds its way into the offering plate.

Until we settle in our minds what the currency of heaven is it is going to be difficult to faithfully render unto God what is God's.

Call to Repentance
Joel 2:12-13 (page 1415)

Call to Worship
Psalm 51 (page 889)

OT Reading
Amos 5:18-24 (page 1426)

NT Reading
1 Peter 1:3-9 (page 1886)

Message
The Currency of Heaven
Matthew 22:15-22 (page 1535)

Readings for Sunday, October 12

It's hard not to get caught up in the apocalyptic talk about the economy, isn't it? I obviously never went through the Great Depression but I've known people who did. My grandparents didn't let me throw away a tissue until I had gotten a minimum of six nose-blows out of it. And when I had used it six times they would scold me if they caught me throwing it away in a waste basket. They belonged in the wood stove.
Up to now, that's been my experience of economic hardship: brief encounters with the frugality which is the long shadow that it casts.
But that seems to be changing. I wish I could say that the church has been counter-cultural through this period of reckless prosperity, but it has not. The church has been every bit as materialistic and debt-financed as the world around it.
But our Bible is counter-cultural and Paul sheds some light on how we as Christians ought to react to these circumstances.


Call to Repentance
Luke 6:21 (page 1601)

Call to Worship
Psalm 37:1-19 (page 874)

OT Reading
Selection from Proverbs

NT Reading
1 Timothy 6:3-10 (page 1850)

Message
Joyful Hearts and Constant Feasting
Philippians 4:10-13 (page 1830)