God’s Vision: Revive It

Service of Worship (Monday, July 1, 2013)

http://www.ucc.org/synod/video.html

“This is a season of new things,” said the preacher…and I was wowed at the thought that he really already knew what we knew!  A season of newness is upon us.

J. Kwest (http://www.jkwest.com/) showed us what it looks like to worship in a season of new things…and made it possible for us to see that even in the darkness, there is room for those “new things.”

Manantial de Gracia said “PRESENTE” sending from its doors: Pastora Maritza, Gaby (Chiquito), and myself.  And we three felt welcome and whole and complete, but imagine how much God loves us that on the day that Gaby was feeling down and missing his baby sister…God sent a reminder that GOD is with us.  “For with you is the fountain of light; in your light we see light “(Psalm 36:9).

—if you watch the sermon, stop it at 7:17—

Now this was part of Pastor Julian’s message, but what he did not know is that is also our church scripture.  The one that appears on every church bulletin.  The one that is featured on signs and PowerPoints.  The one from which our name flowed…a “manantial” is a flowing body of water, a fountain, a spring…and “gracia” is grace, that light that shines eternally like a beacon of hope!

This was a message of experienced loss, or the hardship that we go through but most of all it was a message about how WE ARE THE MIRRORS OF GOD AND THE TEMPLE ISN’T THE BUILDING BUT US…  I am the temple of God!  The stuff going on around me is going on in the church, because THAT is also the temple of God…”We don’t need MORE church, we need BETTER church,”  said Pastor Julian.

And some of us sat and looked out the window and waited for those that needed church to come inside, but others…well, others saw a need and made signs and some of us carried them, and made friends and connections and took God out of the building into the community by our “normalnesss…”

Which are you?  Which am I?