This is the first week of our annual stewardship series with the theme Giving and Growing. Each week, we ask how we grow as people; how we mature and deepen our faith, our relationships and our purpose in this troubled world. This first week, we focus on growing DEEP, or planting roots. In a time where very few of us know how to be still or stay put, how can we ground ourselves in God and what God might want for our lives?

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This sermon is gifted to us by Rev. Robert Bohnsack, a Presbyterian pastor and Air Force Chaplain. We are grateful to him and his perspective in these times.

This sermon explores the often-overlooked story of Abraham and Sarah’s slave woman Hagar. She has her own story of promises from God to her descendents, and we do well to always ask “whose voice are we not hearing? Who do we need to listen to in order to be more faithful to a God who has plans for us all?”

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This week, our church kicks off the Fall by pivoting back to the Narrative Lectionary, the Bible reading plan for this year that tries to help us all weave the Bible together as one big story of God with us, pursuing us with love and guiding our life together. And today we start at the very beginning; examining the story of the first created people and the story of how what we now call “sin” entered into our world. What can we learn about sin in modern day pandemic times from this story? What does God have to say to us in these times in order to pursue right relationship with God and with each other?

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This year more than any other in recent memory reminds us that life can sometimes go sideways, and the unimaginable thing happens. Yet sometimes that unimaginable thing can be not just negative, but also beyond our most hopeful, joyful dreams. We use the story of so called “Doubting Thomas” after Jesus’ resurrection to think about how God unravels us in the face of these positive things that we could never have imagined.

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PART 1 (audio file of reading and sermon)

PART 2 of VIDEO WITH COMMUNION