Our monthly newsletter, the Breadbasket, contains upcoming events, a note from the pastor, financial report, Church council minutes, birthdays and anniversaries, and miscellaneous news and information. If you would like to receive a free copy in the mail (it is often 8 pages or more long) or by email in PDF format, please email the church office at harrisvilleumc@zoominternet.net or phone us at 724-735-4671 and we will gladly add your name to our snail mail/email list!
In the meantime, enjoy a few articles from our newsletter!
As I sit to write this latest entry, a beautiful snow has graced Western Pennsylvania and this holiday season with the latest witness of God’s creative power. It’s just absolutely beautiful!
Yet I write from the comfort of my office. The cold temperatures which have allowed this snow to fall are outside of my windows. While the snow is beautiful, it is also a reminder that someone who does not have a home is suffering the consequences of cold temperatures. Someone who does not have a meal may be shivering in a constant state of uncertainty. For them there is an urgent need for warmth and nourishment
As I write this column, I am healthy. Yet, many have uncertainty in their lives due to health concerns. A disease has invaded their bodies and they will never be the same. An untimely illness has, all of a sudden, made them keenly aware of numbered days. For them there is an urgent need for health and wholeness of body and spirit.
Wes Seeliger, in this book One Inch from the Fence, wrote:
I have spent long hours in the intensive care waiting room ... watching with anguished people ... listening to urgent questions: Will my husband make it? Will my child walk again?
The intensive care waiting room is different from any other place in the world. And the people who wait are different. They can’t do enough for each other. No one is rude. The distinctions of race and class melt away ... The garbage man loves his wife as much as the university professor loves his, and everyone understands this. Each person pulls for everyone else.
In the intensive care waiting room, the world changes. Vanity and pretense vanish. The universe is focused on the doctor’s next report. If only it will show improvement. Everyone knows that loving someone else is what life is all about.
There it is! It’s all encompassed in one line – Everyone knows that loving someone else is what life is all about.
Here we are — ready to embark on a new year, a new decade. Many are analyzing the first 10 years of the 21st Century as a time of monumental mistakes and disasters. Given our rapidly changing culture, the uncertainties facing our globe, and the lack of assurance for what the next day holds, many are forecasting nothing but more of the same. It’s an intense time.
Intense times of urgency demand an intense and urgent response. This is not a year when we as the church can afford to continue to mirror the whims and wishes of the world. Sadly, there have been significant times when our apathetic, unfocused attitudes have contributed to the declining perception of the institutional church. This new year gives us another chance to recognize the conditions around us, seek the care we need in the intensive care department, level the playing field, and once again discover that loving someone else is what life is all about.
Every day of our lives is a day when we find ourselves in the intensive care waiting room. Some are waiting for food and shelter. Others are waiting for good reports and proper medication. Still others are waiting for hope and peace.
Reality is, every one of us has a need and every one of us finds ourselves in the intensive care waiting room hoping for an answer that will help us find our way through. No one is any better off; no one is more privileged than another. Life itself has leveled the playing field and each is on a common ground of hope verses despair, life verses death.
What will make it survivable? Is there any hope to which we can cling?
God has promised to always be with us. Ultimately we are never alone. The God who created you still loves you today in 2010 and has promised to be with you throughout the journey.
God has also shown clearly that He works extremely well through willing and eager hearts. This is a year when we, in the name of God, can love one another more deeply, criticize one another less frequently, and show the face of Christ to the world more intensely. May it be so. May it be so.
And so here we sit, in the intensive care waiting room of life. We sit with the homeless, the hungry and the diseased. We sit together waiting for a word – a simple word.
And it comes. It comes through the spirit in our midst and it comes from the lips of those who have listened carefully to the voice of God.
What is that word?
The Journey Continues ...
Care Team—the Care Team would like to invite you to join us in bringing smiles to those whom we try to visit each month. If you feel led to send a card or stop and visit with any on this list, we know you would make someone’s day and you will come away feeling blessed. Please call the church office for a addresses.
Orchard Manor, Grove City: Mary Whetzel, Kathryn Hockenberry, Paul Moore
Grove Manor, Grove City: Sara Riddle, Mary Sutton
Fellowship Manor, Grove City: Blanche Tennies, Margaret Fryman
Trinity Living Center, Grove City: Velma Jamison
Home: George Buchanan, Joanie Kearney
The Breadbasket is published monthly by:
Harrisville United Methodist Church
PO Box 424 301 S. Main St. , Harrisville , PA 16038
Phone: 724-735-4671
www.harrisvilleumc.org
If you would like to be included on our mailing list or receive our newsletter by email, please call the church office!
