Passionate God,
So often we find ourselves in a “rut”. The daily routine is the same. We don’t see much change in the future. We feel stale and life is mundane. Forgive us, O Lord, for our shortsightedness. Each day is a gift and You are present in every moment of our lives. Help us to open our eyes to see You. May we be like Brother Lawrence and “practice the presence of God” even when our journey seems lifeless and we think we are reduced to menial tasks. You are Abundant Grace. You are the Everlasting Arms. May we feel Your embrace and experience You as we practice Your presence in all we do. This we pray in Jesus name, AMEN.
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Our prayers go out to the family of Nikki Vance, the young girl who was tragically killed on Monday in a car wreck. She has no church home and we are hosting her funeral in our sanctuary on Friday at 11:00 a.m. Dan O’Daniel will be presiding. Please pray for her family and friends.
Please pray for our friends and neighbors in the Southeast and Midwest who have suffered from severe storms and who are facing terrible floods.
Please pray for Will and Judie Stocks. They were in a car wreck yesterday that totaled their car. They are home, but I sure will be very sore. The wreck also caused them to cancel a trip to Florida to attend the college graduation for their granddaughter.
The scripture for today is Matthew 21:33-46:
“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son. ‘But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.”So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.
Grace and peace,
John McLemore
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