Lent

Sunday Reflection – Lent V, March 17, 2024

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Jesus at the Temple

John 12 20 Some Greeks had gone to Jerusalem to worship during Passover. 21 Philip from Bethsaida in Galilee was there too. So they went to him and said, “Sir, we would like to meet Jesus.” 22 Philip told Andrew. Then the two of them went to Jesus and told him.

23 Jesus said:

The time has come for the Son of Man to be given his glory. 24 I tell you for certain that a grain of wheat that falls on the ground will never be more than one grain unless it dies. But if it dies, it will produce lots of wheat. 25  If you love your life, you will lose it. If you give it up in this world, you will be given eternal life. 26 If you serve me, you must go with me. My servants will be with me wherever I am. If you serve me, my Father will honor you.

27 Now I am deeply troubled, and I don’t know what to say. But I must not ask my Father to keep me from this time of suffering. In fact, I came into the world to suffer. 28 So Father, bring glory to yourself.

A voice from heaven then said, “I have already brought glory to myself, and I will do it again!” 29 When the crowd heard the voice, some of them thought it was thunder. Others thought an angel had spoken to Jesus.

30 Then Jesus told the crowd, “That voice spoke to help you, not me. 31 This world’s people are now being judged, and the ruler of this world is already being thrown out! 32 If I am lifted up above the earth, I will make everyone want to come to me.” 33 Jesus was talking about the way he would be put to death.

Kids Korner: Loving the world (Mar. 17th)

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Read John 12:20-33 with your family.

The idea of ‘losing your life to find it’ is very confusing for adults as well as kids.

Jesus gave a different word picture – seeds. If you have a package of seeds sitting on the counter, nothing happens. However, if you take those seeds out of the package and plant them in soil, water them when they need it, soon a plant will grown. The part that happens underground is that the seed cracks open so the new plant can be made. If the seed doesn’t crack open, there won’t be a new plant.

People are like that too. If we keep all our love and happiness to ourselves, after a while we don’t really feel very happy or loved. But when we give our love and happiness to others, then we feel even more love and happiness. When we share what we have in the spirit of generosity, when we “crack open our hearts”, we feel wonderful.

God wants us to think about others more than we think about ourselves. That can be really hard especially if we are having a bad day. But even on bad days, we can be kind.

Lenten Study 2024 – Week 4

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There are many children in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, but they are often overlooked or by-passed by Sunday lectionaries and Bible studies. Even Sunday School curriculums rarely take time just to focus on the children, or the childhood of significant people in Scripture.

Through this Lenten series we will be looking at some of the children found in Scripture, why their stories are significant, how they are related, and their influence on the growth of our spiritual tradition.

Week 4

Jesus as a child & teenager

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Sunday Reflection – Lent IV, March 10, 2024

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Recorded 2022

Jesus at the Temple

John 3 14  And the Son of Man must be lifted up, just as the metal snake was lifted up by Moses in the desert. 15 Then everyone who has faith in the Son of Man will have eternal life.

16 God loved the people of this world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never really die. 17 God did not send his Son into the world to condemn its people. He sent him to save them! 18 No one who has faith in God’s Son will be condemned. But everyone who doesn’t have faith in him has already been condemned for not having faith in God’s only Son.

19 The light has come into the world, and people who do evil things are judged guilty because they love the dark more than the light. 20 People who do evil hate the light and won’t come to the light, because it clearly shows what they have done. 21 But everyone who lives by the truth will come to the light, because they want others to know that God is really the one doing what they do.

Kids Korner: Loving the world (Mar. 10th)

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Read John 3:14-21 with your family.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember, and hard to imagine, the world and the culture around us being different than what we know. When we learn about history, however, we can see that the people in the past live differently than we do today.

Now, imagine what the world can be in the future? What does God ask us to help create?

God came in human form named Jesus, to show us how to love each other. Imagine if we showed that love more often, how would the world look different.

It’s hard to imagine something that hasn’t happened yet, but we have God’s promise that if we try to make everyone’s life better, we will get to a world of happiness and peace. We can imagine it through the way Jesus lived and asked us to live.

And if all of us work together we can bring about that future of love even faster.

Lenten Study 2024 – Week 3

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There are many children in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, but they are often overlooked or by-passed by Sunday lectionaries and Bible studies. Even Sunday School curriculums rarely take time just to focus on the children, or the childhood of significant people in Scripture.

Through this Lenten series we will be looking at some of the children found in Scripture, why their stories are significant, how they are related, and their influence on the growth of our spiritual tradition.

Week 3

Boys who became leaders

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Sunday Reflection – Lent III, March 3, 2024

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Jesus at the Temple

John 2 13  Not long before the Jewish festival of Passover, Jesus went to Jerusalem. 14 There he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves in the temple. He also saw moneychangers sitting at their tables. 15 So he took some rope and made a whip. Then he chased everyone out of the temple, together with their sheep and cattle. He turned over the tables of the moneychangers and scattered their coins.

16 Jesus said to the people who had been selling doves, “Get those doves out of here! Don’t make my Father’s house a marketplace.”

17  The disciples then remembered that the Scriptures say, “My love for your house burns in me like a fire.”

18 The Jewish leaders asked Jesus, “What miracle will you work to show us why you have done this?”

19  “Destroy this temple,” Jesus answered, “and in three days I will build it again!”

20 The leaders replied, “It took 46 years to build this temple. What makes you think you can rebuild it in three days?”

21 But Jesus was talking about his body as a temple. 22 And when he was raised from death, his disciples remembered what he had told them. Then they believed the Scriptures and the words of Jesus.

Kids Korner: Jesus will rise up (Mar. 3rd)

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Read John 2:13-22 with your family.

In the Gospel of John, everyone knew that Jesus was the Messiah from the very start. The other Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke kept Jesus’ identity a secret until almost the end.

Since everyone knew who Jesus was supposed to be, they didn’t listen well to what he said. They wanted to take things ‘literally’, which means only hearing the words and thinking that is the whole message. However, Jesus wants people to understand his words had more meaning than just the surface understanding. He wanted to talk about God’s world with word pictures so people would use their imaginations to learn more about how wonderful God really was.

When Jesus said he would ‘raise the Temple again in three days’, he did not mean a whole new building would poof into existence after three days. He was trying to get people to understand that a building like the Temple was not the only place to worship God. That Jesus would rise on Easter morning, three days after he was killed, and we were to celebrate how good God was with Jesus anywhere, not just one building, because Jesus was the “new Temple” (he wasn’t meant to be a building, it was just a word picture for a place to talk to God).

Lenten Study 2024 – Week 2

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There are many children in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, but they are often overlooked or by-passed by Sunday lectionaries and Bible studies. Even Sunday School curriculums rarely take time just to focus on the children, or the childhood of significant people in Scripture.

Through this Lenten series we will be looking at some of the children found in Scripture, why their stories are significant, how they are related, and their influence on the growth of our spiritual tradition.

Week 2

Girls in the Hebrew Scriptures

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Sunday Reflection – Lent II, February 25, 2024

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Jesus predicts his death

Mark 8 31 Jesus began telling his disciples what would happen to him. He said, “The nation’s leaders, the chief priests, and the teachers of the Law of Moses will make the Son of Man suffer terribly. He will be rejected and killed, but three days later he will rise to life.” 32 Then Jesus explained clearly what he meant.

Peter took Jesus aside and told him to stop talking like that. 33 But when Jesus turned and saw the disciples, he corrected Peter. He said to him, “Satan, get away from me! You are thinking like everyone else and not like God.”

34  Jesus then told the crowd and the disciples to come closer, and he said:

If any of you want to be my followers, you must forget about yourself. You must take up your cross and follow me. 35  If you want to save your life, you will destroy it. But if you give up your life for me and for the good news, you will save it. 36 What will you gain, if you own the whole world but destroy yourself? 37 What could you give to get back your soul?

38 Don’t be ashamed of me and my message among these unfaithful and sinful people! If you are, the Son of Man will be ashamed of you when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.