WHAT’S HAPPENING!

Time Change!

Daylight Savings ends on November 1^st. Please remember to change your clocks before bed on Saturday, October 31^st. It’s Spring forward and Fall back. That means you gain an hour of sleep on Saturday night. If you don’t set your clocks back you get to help set up for church in the morning!

Prayer meeting

The Wednesday night prayer meeting/bible study has changed.  Due to the Wednesday night AWANA children’s program and youth program needs; people will be working with these ministry areas.  We will change our prayer meetings to a once a month fellowship prayer meeting that will meet in someone’s home.  Check the weekly bulletin and the calendar for when and where we will meet each month. This month we will meet at Philip and Mary Grogan’s home at 7pm on Tuesday the 3rd. Their home is located at 807 1^st St. N.

Ladies meeting update

We had a good turnout for the last Ladies Meeting. This means we will continue to have the meetings on the first Sunday of the month. Mark your calendar.

Also, the Shelby Bazaar is November 7^th at the Elk’s Club. We will have a booth. All the proceeds will go to the land fund. So, don’t forget to stop by and see what we have!

The Kingdom

of God

He said therefore, "What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it?

It is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden, and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches."

And again he said, "To what shall I compare the kingdom of God?

It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened."

Luke 13:17-21

I was involved in a conversation recently, in which we discussed the current maladies of society and how we felt as if nothing we do will have any effect on the world around us.   In our limited view, that could be the case.  Our perception that the world is on a sharp downhill slide is probably accurate.  Does this give us justification for depression?  I believe the answer is a resounding NO! 

God is at work around us.  We might not see His hand moving in the events around us, but rest assured, God did not set the universe in motion and then retreat to Heaven leaving His creation to its own devices.  

Romans 8:28 assures us of that, but I would like to look at the verses mentioned.  Christ gave us two different pictures of the Kingdom of God.  The first is the picture of that of a mustard seed growing into something very large, and the second is that of leaven being spread throughout a large portion of flour. 

First let us look at the mustard seed.  To the casual observer it is a tiny seed.  In a logical way of thinking, once you plant it you would get something small from it.  But as Christ says it grows into something more than expected.  It becomes something even bigger than thought.  The kingdom of God is much like the mustard seed.  It will use something that we perceive as small and useless and use it for  much more than we expected. 

Then when we look at the picture of the leaven we see that it goes through the entire amount of flour.  Again we have something small moving throughout something very large.  Things that I have read say that 3 measures of flour would have been enough to make bread for about 100 people.  The kingdom of God started small but in its full glory will be unexpectedly large. 

One thing that can be gleaned from these passages is that when things seem their worst and there seems to be no hope for the world, remember that the Kingdom of God continues to grow around us and will culminate into something spectacular and beyond what we ever thought it would be.  We need to trust God and his word concerning his constant work in the world around us. 

  Obie