Don’t you love it when scripture gives us that concrete “thing to do?”
We may have foggy brains, sleepy bodies, or be in great shape! But, what’s next?

The book of James has the answer. Pray! Are you suffering? Pray. If you are cheerful, sing! (To Calvin, all music is sung prayer. It would do us good to remember that the gifts of our church musicians are their offerings of prayer which encourages our grateful AMEN!)

James also encourages the prayer of confession, and to pray for one another. In that regard, you could say that St. Andrew is a James church in regard to prayer. We do all those things every Sunday.

On Sunday we bring our prayers and our songs to the Service of the Lord’s Day. Either in person, or streaming online, or watching later, all are welcome.

Enter into worship.

We continue to keep our financial commitments to our mission partners and staff. If you are not yet able to join us, thank you for remembering to send in your financial pledges and offerings or donating here. ​

You, beloved, are full of wisdom, God has gifted you with deep knowledge and a profound thirst for that which is lifegiving. This wisdom is passed to us in our faith practices. It is also carried in proverbs; in the riches of our various cultures; and in the cries of our neighbors for justice.
 
We need each other to be able to name and follow the ways of wisdom.  Working out the way to go takes community. It takes a community that offers space to be vulnerable and to be courageous. Its takes a community that offers space to claim our need for rest while others take up the work for a while. It takes a community that will remember together that we belong to something bigger than ourselves – the God of Wisdom – who delights and desires life for us.
 
Come beloved, come to worship and let us build, with God’s help, the community we need.
 
Enter into worship. 

We continue to keep our financial commitments to our mission partners and staff. If you are not yet able to join us, thank you for remembering to send in your financial pledges and offerings or donating here. ​

Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice.
~Provers 1:20
 
…the tongue is a fire.
~James 3:6
 
Wisdom and speech are intimately connected so say Proverbs and James. Wisdom calls out, cries out, raises her voice, reproofs, pours out her thoughts. The tongue is a fire, says James—capable of igniting new possibilities, or spreading destruction like wildfire. Blessing and curse, from the same mouth, from our mouths.
 
We are all too aware!
 
Not many should be teachers, James warns. How grateful we are, though, for those who teach us and those we love—so often amidst fraught circumstances and societal battles. How grateful we are for those who offer words of learning and life. How grateful we are to have the power to bless and support and create the conditions for wisdom to flourish among us!
 
Come and seek the ways of wisdom. Enter into worship. ​

We continue to keep our financial commitments to our mission partners and staff. If you are not yet able to join us, thank you for remembering to send in your financial pledges and offerings or donating here. ​

The rich and the poor have this in common: 
​the LORD is the maker of them all.
~Proverbs 22:2


Yet another spike in infections and, tragically, deaths. The schools are open, but the hospitals are full again—dangerously so—sparking widespread concern and anxiety for what is and what may come. To the surprise of few, the ICUs are populated with COVID patients, the vast majority unvaccinated.

It’s all over the media—social and otherwise: We are experiencing a crisis of empathy, or so we hear. Empathy is like a pie, there is only so much to go around, or so we hear.

Even Jesus is wrung out, the pie plate empty. He goes to Tyre and hides away in a house there, looking for some respite, not wanting “anyone to know he was there” (Mark 7:24). But this is a futile hope, of course. A Syrophonenician woman full of anxiety for her daughter offers, perhaps, a mirror to his own soul. And by the end of the story this one whose empathy was on on empty is now out in the open more than ever, getting dirty—fingers in ears, spitting, touching tongues. What fire is this?

“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head,” said Nelson Mandela. “If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” Ephphatha is Jesus’ own original, Aramaic language.
Ephphatha, be open.
​
Is empathy really so fragile, so scarce a resource?

​Let us come together to worship God. Enter into worship.

We continue to keep our financial commitments to our mission partners and staff. If you are not yet able to join us, thank you for remembering to send in your financial pledges and offerings or donating here. ​