VIRTUAL CHURCH IS ALWAYS OPEN
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EMERGENCY PHONE (941) 548-6163
ALL IN-PERSON EVENTS
INCLUDING ACTIVITIES/MEETINGS/WORSHIP
CANCELED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
This is the broad scope of our planning to safely re-open Messiah Lutheran Church for in-person worship. In line with guidance from the Churchwide Office and Presiding Bishop in Chicago, our Synod Office and Synod Bishop in Tampa, and CDC Guidelines, in-person worship requires several steps in order to proceed safely.
The minimum safety precautions include, among others, hand sanitizing stations at all public entrances, the use and wearing of masks, and the taking of temperatures of all persons entering the building. We have had these items on order with suppliers since the latter part of March. At the time the sanitizer stations and sanitizer, masks, and thermometers were ordered, they were immediately placed on backorder with an anticipated shipping date of mid-June.
Your personal safety, the safety of our friends and neighbors, as well as our pastoral staff needs to remain paramount in our decision-making processes. These are certainly trying times, and we appreciate your patience and understanding. The risks of getting this wrong, and re-opening too soon and/or without the necessary safety precautions in place, are too dire to imagine.
In the meanwhile, we will continue to provide our thrice-weekly devotions from Pastor Rich, Deacon John, and Deacon Scott, we continue to offer times during the week to gather for study and conversation (with plans to increase these opportunities in the near future), as well as our weekly service recording on the weekend. Our recorded service will likely continue to be posted each weekend, as when in-person worship resumes, there will be social-distancing limitations placed on the number of attendees.
We all long for the day that we can resume in-person worship, and the future time when all limitations will be able to be lifted, until that time, please be assured of our prayers for each and every one of you.
Should you have any questions, you may direct them to us via email
pastor@messiahnfm.org
john.renfroe@messiahnfm.org
office@messiahnfm.org
Abundance... from Scraps
9th Sunday after Pentecost - August 2, 2020
Jesus is able to feed us abundantly, even with scraps. He meets earthly needs by feeding the crowds and continues now to offer himself as holy meal, freely given to all, no matter their income or rank in society. Advertisers have trained us that what’s proclaimed as FREE usually isn’t. More often, it’s a ploy to get our money for some other, larger, purchase. Today we are invited to trust and receive Jesus’ free gift of love without mistrusting that he’s got up his sleeve some scheme to swindle our money.
It can be hard to relax and trust God to take care of us and nourish us with the mere scraps we often see around us. We panic and take matters into our own hands instead of trusting. We experience that crushing sense of responsibility, not just to ourselves, but to our children or parents or other loved ones to keep them fed and clothed and healthy. Trusting as the crowd did that day seems completely foreign to those of us living in North America, abundant in resources.
With food freely given, with quantity enough to feed only a few, Jesus makes this miracle, and there are leftovers to clean up. But for most of us, belief comes slowly and warily when we’ve been burned by experience: how will there be enough for all of us, when we’ve been the last one at the lunch line, the late arrival at the party, and everything’s gone? What if we see people in the crowd we don’t want to be fed and jostle our way to the head of the line to get the first choice? Will it be fair? Trusting that our daily bread and even our very lives are in God’s hands is hard to do as we grow older and burdened by responsibility, but God has compassion for every member of the crowd, and we are blessed and invited to be joyful recipients of that generosity.
(c) 2020 Sundays and Seasons
Cape Coral, Florida 33909
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