Slideshow image

I’m back in your inboxes after a week off! Scott and I had a great time away right before Thanksgiving. We visited the Ark Encounter, Creation Museum and the surrounding area in Kentucky. I highly recommend visiting both museums, what a great learning experience for all ages!

We came home to a really wonderful Thanksgiving Eve service with you all and delicious Thanksgiving meals with our families. I spent the weekend working at a local farm equipment auction, which made for quite a long weekend. I was grateful for a slow Sunday! Scott and I got our Christmas tree yesterday, probably the earliest we’ve ever purchased it! Now to get around to decorating it…

There was something particularly peaceful about our worship service for the first Sunday in Advent. Though we were focusing on the Hope that this season brings, I felt as though yesterday was a refreshing deep breath before we all hurry into all that the next several weeks hold. 

This week in particular, the OAKS will ring in the Christmas season with their “Everything Christmas” party, Wednesday night is another Roots Night and Thursday evening the women will embark on their annual “Pine Trail,” visiting beautifully decorated homes of a few in our congregation. Next week things will get extra busy as we’ll gear up for the Live Nativity. I know that the committee is working so hard to make this community event possible. Tell your friends to come and experience the gift of Christmas!

We are also not far from our anticipated move in date for the new MGCB Kid’s Wing! Stay tuned for ways you may be able to serve our Wee Friends Preschool Teachers, COM Staff and the Roots Team to help with the big move. We’ll do our best to communicate with you as we know what those needs will be, until then, be prayerful over all of the new spaces we will have access to!

 

What WE’RE Learning This Week: A nugget of what our Lil’, Youth and Adults Roots heard this week

Our Family Theme: Is Fighting Ever Right?

Our Root Text: Genesis 14:1–20; Genesis 15:16; Deuteronomy 20:1–18; 9:4–5; 18:9–14; Revelation 19:11–21

Verse of the Month: John 3:16

How Every Generation Lives This Out: Discuss how God sometimes uses war and fighting to accomplish His purposes.

 

What I’M Learning This Week: Sharing what I’m reading and listening to lately

I’m using an Advent study that is using a very nontraditional passage for its core scripture, Psalm 1:1-3. I kind of like that it’s off the wall a little, it keeps me on my toes a bit! 

The last two days of the study have been dedicated to meditating on these three verses in preparation for how we will dig deeper into them over the next 20 some days. I’ve been meditating particularly on verse 2 today, which reads “but whose delight is in the law of the Lord and who meditates on his law by day and night.”

My December calendar and to-do list feels a little daunting from this view at the beginning of the month. Sure, it is full of a lot of delightful things and people, but all the moving pieces do feel a little overwhelming. But what verse two and three tell me is that when I choose to delight in the law of the Lord, there will be fruit! 

So for me, it’s eyes up and feet forward. Hope, peace, joy and love are ours because of Jesus. May we find delight in how the Word reveals that to us this Advent season!

 

Make Every Week Count: Parenting, Grandparenting & Spiritual Mentoring Resources

Check out the 2024 Roots Gift Guide! A tool to help you gift purposefully as you help make disciples of the kids and teens in your life.

 

How Can You Pray? Prayer Requests and Praises from Roots Ministries

PRAY for the next Adult Sunday School class, the Peacemakers. This class is made up of Age 70+ Church Members, in all stages of life.

PRAISE for the time we got to spend with our church family and our real families over the Thanksgiving holiday!