Everyone is welcome at Cherry Log Christian Church (DOC). 

Our prayer this week - March 7-13, 2010:

Almighty God, we remind ourselves to enter into your presence again.  Yet we tend to come into your presence as ones who have a casual relationship with you.  We come in our sociability and pretend that our foibles and bruised hearts cannot be seen.  We chat with you pretending our masks hide our insincerity and our shallowness.  Our intent is to expose to you only those parts of ourselves that we feel relatively comfortable and we think will evoke a positive response.

We confess to you that our prayers have been very selective and narrow.  Our self-knowledge has been selective and narrow.  We have behaved as strangers before you so we have become strangers to ourselves.

Now Almighty God, we acknowledge to you and to ourselves that we are anxious about our abilities and our worthiness in this sacred relationship.  We are fearful of losing who we are and what we want to do.  We are afraid that our inadequacies will be exposed.   

You call us today, Loving God, to put our trust in you, to let you speak through our lips and to let you use our hearts to love the wounded.  You call upon us to risk our very being and to trust you to heal and to resurrect the pieces of our lives.

As friends who become embarrassed over their lack of deeper friendship, we now commit ourselves to this relationship with you in far more conscious, thoughtful, and honest ways.  We know our words have been cheap and our commitments tentative.  We pray we will have real courage to trust your covenantal love and forgiveness and so we can enter more authentically into your Kingdom. 

In the name of our Redeemer Jesus Christ we pray.              

Amen

OUR LENTEN FAST - FEED MY SHEEP

Annually we make the grand cycle through our liturgical year. In the first half of that cycle from Advent to Pentecost we remember and mark the person of Jesus. In the second half of the cycle from Pentecost Sunday until Advent comes again we remember and mark the teachings of Jesus.

We are now at almost the mid-point of the first half-cycle. We observed Advent as a time of anticipation and preparation for the coming again of God Incarnate in the Babe of Bethlehem. At Christmas we celebrated that coming of the Incarnate Light into the world and into our lives. At Epiphany we proclaimed that Incarnation not only for our lives, but as the Light for the Nations, for all the world. We remembered the Baptism of Jesus as the invitation to remember our own baptisms into him, into the sharing of his incarnation.

What lies ahead is the memory and reliving of Jesus’ crucifixion, which we will observe on Good Friday, April 2. Then the proclamation of Easter: death could not hold Jesus, he lives in us, and we are raised to new life with him.

What an extraordinary set of faith claims we make! If Jesus is all that we proclaim, are we not called to make an extraordinary response to those claims?

We will mark the beginning of this Lenten season on Ash Wednesday, February 17.  As an expression of our Lenten fast we are going to arrange a “Food Tree". Every member of Cherry Log Christian Church is encouraged to participate in the Food Tree. Each time you come to the church during Lent, for worship, or rehearsals, or meetings, please bring an item of non-perishable food to place under the Food Tree. By Easter we shall have amassed a sizeable amount of food, which on Easter Monday we will distribute to the food banks of  Fannin and Gilmer Counties.

We look forward to your involvement in our observance of a Holy Lent.

Cherry Log Christian Church will celebrate its 13^th Anniversary Homecoming on Palm Sunday, March 28, 2010.  We will honor our church moderators through the years with a photo slideshow of memorable events that occurred during their terms.  Please join us as we express our appreciation to these people:  Bruce King, Frank Osborne, Bill Hild, Lynn Chapman, Lynn Doss, Byron Wyndham, and Ronald Midkiff.