Church Calendar

Sunday Worship Service:  10:00 a.m. 

The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper:  First Sunday of each month

"Red Bag" food donations:  First Sunday of each month

Bible study:  Tuesdays at 10:00 a.m.                                                

Fellowship lunch:  Third Sunday of each month

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September 15, 2024- Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost  Upsala Descendants Day

              Scripture Lesson:  Matthew 10:1-8   

                               Liturgical color:  Green

The gospel is pure, sweet, unmerited comfort.

When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.                            (Abraham Joshua Heschel)

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that if the stars came out only one night a century, that night would be considered an astounding spectacle, a wonder of the world, and all of us would stay up and behold them in breathless awe. And yet, there they are each cloudless night, no less miraculous for being so frequently visible.    

The poet Tony Hoagland says “the good parts” are like that: they are everywhere around us every day, and for that very reason, we tend to overlook them, or find them merely pleasant or charming. But in fact, they are sheer wonders, astonishments, glories to behold. Water really is “that most precious element of all.” A dragonfly really is a marvel, as is a feather, as is the tension on the still surface of a lake. As are you, and me, up to our necks in miracles, every moment of every day.   

"FIELD GUIDE" (by Tony Hoagland)
Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,
up to my neck in that most precious element of all,
I found a pale-gray, curled-upwards pigeon feather
floating on the tension of the water
at the very instant when a dragonfly,
like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin,
hovered over it, then lit, and rested. That’s all.
I mention this in the same way
that I fold the corner of a page
in certain library books,
so that the next reader will know
where to look for the good parts.