This blog is a record of the call to worship, Scripture readings, and prayers from our Sunday liturgies. If you are interested in writing something for the liturgy, or if you have a concern about any aspect of our liturgy, please email jamie@ubcwaco.org.
Call to Worship
we have gathered to worship
our Creator and Sustainer
seeking rest in the wilderness of Lent
and hoping to be formed
more fully in the way of Christ
to make his self-giving love our own
and to seek the wisdom of the Spirit of God
that we might pursue the Kingdom of God
with our lives
Amen
Scripture
Numbers 21:4-9
From Mount Hor the Israelites set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way.
The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.”
Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.”
So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.”
So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.
John 3:14-21
Jesus said, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.
For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”
Prayer
This week's prayer was written and read by Kim Stübben:
God,
So much of the time things are unexplainable, they are so difficult that they are beyond comprehension, so painful that they defy logical thought, so confusing that hope is hard to grasp onto.
But you make ways. That sounds cliche, but I know it’s true because you promise that you make ways. When life gets to be a way where we can’t fathom making it, somehow we do. Somehow, regardless of what life is or where it takes us, you are there.
So much of the time I want to know why. I want to know what the purpose is for it all. I want to know the reasons things happen. Why do we suffer? Why is pain so prevalent? Why, how, can we be the source of so much pain?
Though we can’t know why (even though we try so much of the time to make sense of it all), help us to be aware when we are the cause. We can’t control so much of what happens in our world, but help us navigate the way you set, the path you wish us to go. Help us bring light into the darkness, even when it is us that dim the light.
Amen.