Be sure to join us tonight for an Advent Conversation in the Fellowship Hall.

Be sure to join us today at 2 pm or tonight at 6 pm for an Advent Conversation in the Fellowship Hall. For the evening session there will be a  family friendly light meal will be served beginning at 5:15 with a teaching time from 6:00 to 7:00. Please feel free to arrive at a time that works best for you and your family. Advent activities for children will be available during the 6 pm teaching time. If you need childcare for either session, please call the church office to sign up.

Tonight’s Focus will be: John Chapter One

We all know people who do not fit into the social norms of the day. We know the outcast and the obnoxious; the rude and the rebellious. We see folks who might drive us to walk on the other side of the street and people who just do not connect with the rest of the world. Personally, my mind drifts to Arthur the Walker. He walked all over town wearing his coat and hat in the summer and his shoes wide open in the winter. He never bathed, shaved, or thought about changing clothes. Arthur did not fit in the mall or even at church. At least that was the case until we developed a hospitality plan for Arthur. It was simple. Instead of moving away because of the smell, someone was assigned to welcome him and sit with him. It worked. Arthur never missed church. Arthur’s funeral was full to overflowing with people who wept when they heard the poems he wrote about his faith and his friends in the congregation. I heard one person say, it was like the day when Jesus took time to be at the well with the Samaritan woman. He simply offered the living water of life. She did the rest. Her testimony of faith touched her friends deeply. She shared her experience with the Lord while they listened with open hearts. In the end, they responded, “we no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” Do you know someone who does not fit? Have you ever wondered if you were acceptable? Have you ever been to the well only to encounter the love of God waiting for you? Advent, a time of waiting. Advent, a time of discovery. Advent, a time of grace.

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John 4:1-15 4

Now when Jesus* learned that the Pharisees had heard, ‘Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John’— 2 although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— 3he left Judea and started back to Galilee. 4But he had to go through Samaria. 5So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. 7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. 8(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)* 10Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ 11The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ 13Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ 15The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’