July 13th, 2008 – Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

The service began with prayer and reflection for many. We learned that Eileen’s mother passed away this morning. Eileen’s mother and the family had been in prayer for many of us during the past week.

Luke played piano for Creator Praise and during offering he performed “Go Light Your World”. The service volunteers were part of Team Hope.

For Children’s Time two leaders from Camp Lutherwood and Stephanie joined with Josh on guitar and taught the congregation a camp song. Also for Children’s Time Rev. Mary gave out seeds hope, fun, joy, energy etc… to link in with the Gospel and sermon theme

Rev. Mary gave a sermon today about the gospel lesson, the parable of the sower. She stressed the extravagance of the how the seed was flung everywhere. This type of planting is an act that comes out of abundance. Where we might plant where seed is likely to sprout, or the places most beneficial this is not the way God sows.

In her sermon, Rev. Mary found two words came out for her – hearing and understanding. She preached about both of these words being part of community; in particular that community is central to understanding. Understand means to bring together and through her sermon Rev. Mary made it plain that the normal use of the word (where we focus on the individual’s knowledge) is not the most important part of what it is to understand. It is what brought together in community and their knowledge that makes significant change.

There was a congregational gathering after the service where we talked about abundance and scarcity and how we live our lives. Do we live as if there is abundance or scarcity in our community? This was, in part, spurred by a concern over Creator’s current financial picture.

There was no conclusion but Rev. Mary did point out that people stayed for the conversation and they do deeply care about Creator.