Trinity Times Electronic Edition 03/01/99

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Trinity Episcopal Church, Parkersburg, West Virginia
Week of March 1, 1999
(Last updated 11/29/99) NEW CALENDER

Good For You Outside, Good For You Inside

Please join us for Lenten evenings – bring a dish to share!

Wednesday, March 3 Susan Maluski, of Faithlink

6:00 Evening Prayer
6:15 Dinner with program to follow

Wednesday, March 10 Old Man Rivers

6:00 Evening Prayer
6:15 Dinner with program to follow

Childcare available for all Wednesday Evenings in Lent

A Prayer for Lent

O Lord, open my eyes that I may see more clearly the condition of my soul. If there is darkness, mean-spiritedness, egotistic pride… or worse within, cleanse me from all unrighteousness. Renew a spirit within me and make me truly Christ-like in all my thoughts and actions. And when I begin to edge away from your will, please stir up my conscience until I am in harmony with you again. In Christ’s name. Amen.

The basic secret of the Christian religion is not effort or willpower, important as they are. The secret is Faith.

Dear Sisters & Brothers in Christ,

As I said in this past Sunday’s sermon, if you go one more verse in the Old Testament lesson for that day (Genesis 12:1-8 [add 9]), you find a verse that says, "And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb." Literally, "Abram pulled up tent stakes."

If you have ever been camping I don’t have to tell you how challenging it is to get a well sunk tent stake out of the ground. What one person put in, and put in with some ease, can often become a challenge for even two people to get out.

It is not a great stretch to see that the habits of our lives, things into which we have gotten ourselves so easily, are often as challenging as tent stakes, and even more so, to remove. The addiction to alcohol, cigarettes or other drugs, is an all too easy example. But, lest addictions become the whipping post, what about a deeper examination. How the habit of not exercising. The habit of overeating (or over portioning) or overworking or committing or (dare I say it) over volunteering.

Abram found a way, I believe with God’s help, to pull up the tent stakes. To leave his land and kindred and set off for a destination unknown to him, but known to God. The call of the faithful is to pull up stakes and go where God wills — and just like Abram there is every good chance that the destination may not be revealed to us, certainly in the beginning.

Is that frightening? Scary? Unnerving?

I cannot imagine that it is not, each of these things. Every time I am asked to pull up stakes I find myself resistant — I like it where I am … it is pretty here … it is comfortable here … I have grown used to the view from here … I feel safe here … [you doubtless have your own responses]

More than you or I could imagine, I believe that God understands this. I believe that God understands it so well that the first thing God did for Abram, and the first thing God does for us is give us "blessing." Neither Abram nor me nor you did anything at all to earn or deserve that blessing. It is God’s grace — that comes to us before we ever flinch, twitch or breathe.

May that grace sustain you (and me) as we whack at the tent stakes which hold us back from following. May we have the good sense to offer God the mallet to knock them loose when they are too hard for us to budge. May we accept God’s blessing so deeply into our hearts that we "be a blessing to others."

Faithfully,

Scott

	Come Walk the Road With Jesus From Pilate’s Seat To A Borrowed Tomb Pray the Stations of the Cross At Trinity Church 5:15 pm Fridays in Lent On Good Friday there will be an ecumenical Stations of the Cross through downtown Parkersburg 12:00 noon sponsored by The Downtown Clergy Group and beginning at St. Francis Xavier Church

Connie’s Corner

A Prayer for the Children

We pray for the children who sneak popsicles before supper, who erase holes in math workbooks, who can never find their shoes. And we pray for those who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire, who can’t bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers, who never "counted potatoes", who were born in places where we wouldn’t be caught dead, who never go to the circus, who live in an x–rated world. We pray for the children who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions, who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money. And we pray for those who never get dessert, who have no safe blanket to drag behind them, who watch their parents watch them die, who can’t find any bread to steal, who don’t have any rooms to clean up, whose pictures aren’t on anybody’s dressers, whose monsters are real. We pray for all children who spend all their allowance before Tuesday, who like ghost stories, who shove dirty clothes under the bed, who never rinse out the tub, who get visits from the tooth fairy, who don’t like to be kissed in front of the carpool, who squirm in church or temple and scream in the phone, whose tears we sometimes laugh at and whose smiles can make us cry. And we pray for those whose nightmares come in the daytime, who will eat anything, who have never seen a dentist, who aren’t spoiled by anybody, who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep, who live and move, but have no being. We pray for children who want to be carried and for those who must, who we never give up on and for those who don’t get a second chance. For those we smother and… for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind enough to offer it.

From the February 1999 Wildflowers Newsletter

In Our Parish Prayers

Please hold these people, events and circumstances in your daily prayers. Also, we encourage you to always say a prayer for those unknown persons who have no one to pray for them. By-the-way, please remember to renew prayer requests weekly.

Tom Patrick, Charlotte Martin, Larry Bellew, Nellie Taylor, Terri Hindman, Alex Northrup, Mary Carolyn & Bill Mildren, Sr., Donna Tyo, Ruth Greer, Ray Hofmann, Mazie Smith, Betty Rodda, Mary Glen Rice, Bob Lawrence-Berrey, Maggie Crofton, Mary Harlow, Butch Shaver, Carr Leavitt, Esber Tweel (priest) and Rocky Rachell (priest), Gladys Fitcher, Lu Reindle, and Juliette McIntire.

After last week, praying for all those whom you love, pray this week, please, for all those you dislike, those who are your enemies, those who are difficult people for you, or who persecute you.

Ministers for Sunday, March 7, 1999

Chalice Bearers: Charlotte Bee, Carol Olson, Jennifer Currey, Eric Lawson
Lectors: Charlotte Bee, Eric Lawson, Lee Fritch, Kim Couch
Ushers: Charlie Culbertson, Jim Full, Forbes Hiehle, Gary Vincent
Acolytes: C.J. Adams, Gavin Blankenship, Anne Renner
Coffee Hour Hosts: Sue Ellen & Ed Johnson

Proper for the 3rd Sunday in Lent
Exodus 17:1-7 Psalm 95:6-11 Romans 5:1-11 John 4: 5-26 (27-38) 39-42

Altar Guild for March: Susie Fitcher, Carma Guertin, Lucy Hill, Joyce Vincent, Paula Sellers, Tina Hunter, Lynn Randall

Outreach
Items of the Month

Shampoo
Combs & Brushes
Peanut Butter
Canned Meat

Please place in basket at the back of the church

Lenten Habitat Houses

As you know, in January the Vestry decided to join in a joint Wood County Episcopal Church sponsorship of a Habitat House. Our goal is to collectively raise $15,000 in 1999 for a house to be built in 2000. You will be receiving a Lenten Calendar and Habitat House shortly. The

two items together will form the first step in our sponsorship effort.

Please use the Lenten calendar and the house together so that we can "break the bank" to build a house.

Thank you!

Bridgewater

College Choir to Perform

The Bridgewater College Choir from Bridgewater, Virginia, will perform Saturday evening, March 20^that 7:00 pm, at St. Andrew’s Methodist Church in Parkersburg. An invitation has been extended from the St. Andrew’s Youth Group to

all area youth groups for a Lasagna Dinner before the free concert beginning at 6:00 pm. Please call 422-1300 for reservations by Wednesday, March 17.

(Yahoo!)

I mean we welcome

We welcome to the ministry of Altar Guild, Paula Sellers, Lynn Randall and Tina Hunter. They are currently training under guidance of Susie Fitcher. Others interested are encouraged to speak with Susie or with Fr. Hunter.

This is how God showed His love to us:
He sent His only Son into the world
To give us life through Him.
1 John 4:9

All creatures
Great and small,
The Lord God loves them all.

Dear God,
Mom says You love all animals because You made them.
Do I have to love skunks and toads just because You do?
Is it OK if I love cats and dogs more?
Do I have to love pesky kids just because You do?
I guess if You love me, and You even love pesky kids, maybe I should love them, too.

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