Please view First Reflections and Posts on:
Learning for Life: Ecclesiastes 9:30
JOIN our Worship Service: 11:00 am
The People of the Triune God: Paul’s Letter to the Galatians
Listen to the sermon Joel Russell-MacLean
Watch the worship service June 7 2020 Worship Service
Bulletin: Bulletin June 7
Newsletter: Weekly Letter May 31 2020
Scriptures: Galatians 3.23 – 4.7; Psalm 68.4-6; Matthew 28.16-20
Songs:
- How Great Thou Art: (lyrics & melody, Stikyard, C&W, choir)
- Praise the Father, Praise the Son (lyrics, melody, background, video, solo, meditation)
- All Creatures of Our God and King (video w creatures, contemporary, background, 2, 3, meditation)
- The Doxology (lyrics & melody, a cappella, guitar solo, contemporary, background, author, question, meditation, inspiration)
Joel Russell-MacLean
The world rips itself apart time and time again. Human envy and desire pits us against one another over and over again and our differences become our vulnerability instead of our strength and beauty.
The Creator has been revealed as Three-who-are-one, difference within unity, beautiful and wonderful.
Paul exhorts us to let this God, the Holy Spirit of Jesus and of God the Father live within us and to be born again in the Spirit, to live in the Spirit, to be led by the Spirit. The Spirit will confirm in your heart that Jesus gave his life for you and that God knows you and chooses you to be his child.
The Spirit will welcome you into a new family with brothers and sisters from around the world and across time.
This is close to the heart of Paul’s plea to the church in Galatians; Jesus gave up his life so all of that could happen!
The church in Galatia had tenderly cared for him at a point in own his life when he was vulnerable and had made much of him. They were his friends, whom he loved. Now, he ached for them and was torn up inside for them and didn’t know what to do. For, instead of continuing to grow deeper into the freedom and the love that comes with living in the Spirit, the Galatians were trying other things.
In these first weeks of the season of Pentecost, we will be reading through Paul’s letter to the Galatians and reflecting on living in the Spirit.
An attempt to explain the Trinity
Here is an instructive and funny video on the difficulty of describing the Trinity which you may remember from a few years ago: St Patrick’s Bad Analogies.