Hen and Chick Plants are available in the lobby after church for EVERYONE who has not received one, or has received one and would like a second! 😊 Why a Hen and Chicks plant vs. another kind of succulent?  Because Jesus once compared himself to a mother hen who wanted to gather up and protect her chicks: “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings...” (Mat. 23:37b)
 
Whenever you look on your wee creation of God, know that you are deeply loved.

Hen and Chick Plants are available in the lobby after church for EVERYONE who has not received one. The story behind this is that your Community Chaplain intended to provide a birthday plant to everyone who had a birthday in that particular month. Well, there is what you plan and there is what happens. Turns out that Laur and I were away in November and April, and the plant nursery where I bought these plants was closed for January, February, and March.
 
So … for the month of May I’ll have FREE Hen and Chick Plants available to EVERYONE in our congregation who did not get one yet. And from here on, I’ll make sure that gifts are not seasonal. / jan 😊

From www.logicallyfaithful.com/
 
The four loves come from the Greek who use four words to describe what we use one for.
 
1. Storge: Affection Love / 2. Phileo: Friendship Love / 3. Eros: Romantic Love / 4. Agape: Divine Love
 
1. Storge Love: [The frosting on the cake] Affection is the most humble of the loves. It is the love of enjoying someone or something. It is love of the family and of the familiar.
 
2. Phileo Love: [The punch on the side] Friendship arises out of mere companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some interest which the others do not share.
 
3. Eros Love: [My cake!]  This is also the love that creates the hottest of fires in our emotions. Romantic or erotic love: Lewis calls this “being in love.” It is the love that is least thought about but most felt.
 
4. Agape Love [You may take my cake]: This is the highest and most unselfish of the loves, the love the Apostle Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 13. It is also called Charity. It is not natural, it goes against our very natures. It loves the unlovable, undeserving, the ugly. It gives all and asks for nothing in return. It is the one that takes the greatest chance. And is hit with the most loss.

Although she never preached a sermon or published a book or founded a church, she is known as the Mother of Methodism. Why? Because two of her sons, John Wesley and Charles Wesley, as children consciously or unconsciously will, applied the example and teachings and circumstances of their home life. Susanna Wesley, was the 25th of 25 children. Susanna and Samuel Wesley had 19 children. Nine of her children died as infants.

• Help me, Lord, to remember that religion is not to be confined to the church... nor exercised only in prayer and meditation, but that every where I am in Thy Presence.
• There are two things to do about the gospel. Believe it and behave it.
• I am content to fill a little space if God be glorified.
• If you want a quality, act as if you already have it. If you want to be courageous, act as if you were - and as you act and persevere in acting, so you tend to become.

 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susanna_Wesley

Raised without religion, in 1986 Suchet underwent a religious conversion after reading Romans 8 in his hotel room; soon afterwards, he was baptised into the Church of England. Suchet stated in an interview with Strand Magazine, "I'm a Christian by faith. I like to think it sees me through a great deal of my life. I very much believe in the principles of Christianity and the principles of most religions, actually—that one has to abandon oneself to a higher good
 
Following the time when he bade farewell to his role as Hercule Poirot, Suchet fulfilled a 27-year ambition to make an audio recording of The Bible's New International Version, which was released on 24 April 2014. You can hear him read at The Bible in One Year – with Nicky and Pippa Gumbel (Alpha Course) – at www.bibleinoneyear.org

Laur and I have not seen this movie but friends of ours have and truly appreciated it. Here is the gist – from Spectrum News.
 
Mark Wahlberg plays real-life boxer turned priest Stuart Long in “Father Stu.” And for Wahlberg, the story is personal.
After an injury ends Long’s amateur boxing career, he meets Carmen, a Sunday school teacher. Long, who was agnostic, goes to church to impress her and instead finds his calling.
“Well, obviously, I am a man of faith. And I’ve been, I’ve been looking to do more with all the talents that have been given me and this movie came to me. The movie really chose me,” Wahlberg said. “So to be able to tell us the story of Father Stu to continue to echo his message and start my journey of doing more things that will encourage people to find their faith or to not give up on hope.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHREzAdyCPs

Tucked into a remote gorge in western Slovenia, a secret medical facility (Franja Partisan Hospital) housed an extensive staff that tended to thousands of wounded soldiers during World War II—all the while staying hidden from the Nazis. Though avoiding detection from numerous Nazi attempts to locate the facility is in itself a remarkable feat, even more remarkable is that the hospital (founded and run by the Slovenia resistance movement) cared for soldiers from BOTH the Allied and Axis armies. The hospital welcomed everyone.
 
Scripture calls us to help the whole world to be …. healed. This means we need to have compassion for all—regardless of their views. Everyone, no matter their ideology, deserves Christ’s love and kindness.

• The Bible is the cradle wherein Christ is laid.

 

• Pray, and let God worry.

 

• War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity, it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.

 

• Forgiveness is God's command.

"Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can." - John Wesley.

True evangelical faith, cannot lie dormant, it clothes the naked, it feeds the hungry, it comforts the sorrowful, it shelters the destitute, it serves those that harm it, it binds up that which is wounded, it has become all things to all creatures. – Menno Simons, 1539