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A faithful presence of love in the absences of our city.

A New Year

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Happy New Year!  I barely eeked my way into 2018.  I fell asleep on the couch about 10, and was aroused about 11:55, just in time to make the rounds and give everyone in my family a hug and kiss.  I’m old.  I hope you all were able to ring in the New Year in some form or fashion better than me.  As we look to 2018, I wanted to first share some very encouraging things.  On Dec.17, we began collecting both gifts and pledges for the Christmas Offering, as well as Impossible Prayer Requests.  We received over $31,000 in initial gifts and pledges and nearly 30 impossible requests.  Praise God!  We are really thankful for all of these things and look forward to seeing how God moves at City Pres through these things in the coming year.  Thank you all so much for praying, participating, giving and asking.  If you missed out, or still want to share your request or give, there is always time.  Just grab a prayer request and place it in the offering basket on Sunday, or earmark your giving either on the memo line of your check or online where we have an earmark set for you already.

The New Year also means Scripture reading plans, goals and maybe resolutions. If you have some goals in these areas, I want to help you by sharing a couple of apps that I have found helpful in my Scripture reading and prayer.  

  • The first comes from a group called Mission St. Clare.  This app/website takes you through the daily office of Scripture readings, as well as a large number of prayers.  I have been using this for several years now, and it has been a huge help to me.  Check out this website below a multiple number of ways to access the content.  

My hope for you in 2018 is that you will make time for God’s Word.  That we as a church will continue in or begin again the formative practice of Scripture Reading and prayer.  And that Jesus will be formed and shaped in us in the process.  

Lastly, I wanted to leave you with a poem from Lucy Shaw.

Simeon

"You are to give to the Lord the firstborn of every womb." Exodus 13:2, 12

"The Lord makes his life an offering for sin ..." Isaiah 53:10

 

Expectant, though never knowing quite

what he watching for, the old man

had waited out the years of a long life

to be in the right place,

at the right time.  

 

How many generations of crying babies

brought by new parents into the holy precincts

for dedication?  How many innocent doves

wrung by the neck for their blood,

and burned on the altar?  Yet, when they

came with their child and their pigeons,

and when the man Simeon, seized by the Spirit,

took the infant in his arms, his eyes

looked into the eyes of God; there was

that flash of absolute knowing.  

 

So, as the Law decreed, he gave the child

back to the Master of the Universe, singing

for joy (salvation now had come),

and grief (a sword was in his song).

Here was the fulfillment

of Simeon’s expectation.

Here in the Presentation, he saw the

commencement of the offering.  

~ Justin Edgar 

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