insearchof courage

Se*lah, January 24th, 2010.    Text: Acts 5: 17-42; Psalm 40.   The 3rd Week after the Epiphany.  

Our Liturgy (slides).

What were were seeking? This week I think we were seeking courage. The courage to stand up and teach about the Lord no matter who beats us down or protests against us. How did we seek? We searched for God by responding to him with our art. And joining our voices together in praise. We also prayed with icons to help us ’see through the windows’ to find Him. What did we find? One piece of scripture that especially stood out to me was a couple lines from Psalm 40: He lifted me out of the ditch, pulled me from deep mud. He stood me up on a solid rock to make sure I wouldn’t slip. This, to me, shows that if we have enough courage to proclaim our faith, even if we do get in trouble, and stuck in that deep mud…He will be right there to save us. How then shall we live? We can put this into practice through our lives by not just believing that God is present. But knowing he is present and knowing he will save us somehow.

-Katherine Deal.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Advent Feast 2009!

This past Sunday was the annual Selah Advent Feast. Along with singing a variety of Advent carols about the coming of Christ, we prayed in various ways at different stations set up around Barnabus. One station in particular stood out to me and that was “Praying with Mary.” To be completely honest, it was the only station I made it to because it hit me so hard. Mary would have been around the age of twelve when she was to bear God’s son. It is absolutely mind boggling. Mary, age twelve, traveled to Bethlehem with the Lord’s son inside her. Wow. Anyways, there were many other stations which I would have liked to experience too. Sally encouraged us to write letters for the homeless at one station, and at another we learned and practiced what it means to really wait for Christ. There was something for everyone at the festive feast, including a bag of candy at the end of a highly entertaining, musical edition of “Twas the Night Before Christmas.”

-ChristinaKateMcCormick

insearchof faith?

FAITH: a belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny; complete confidence in a person or plan; loyalty to a cause

Well thank you, google, for making me feel so shaky! I don’t understand how someone can define faith so matter-of-factly. They make it sound so easy….complete confidence? Pretty rare. Maybe that’s what faith is all about though…taking risks…believing when nobody else is…trusting with all of your heart. It takes an amazing amount of faith to save lives, to stand up for yourself, to feed the hungry, and to do other miraculous works. But it also takes a tremendous amount of faith to gather together on a Sunday night and do what we do. There are different kinds and ways of expressing faith, but none are greater than the others. God doesn’t look down on someone who chooses to participate in a sport rather than join a religious group. He likes for us to be happy and comfortable in whatever we do. The challenge is to make that sport about God, to make that play practice about God, or even to make school about God. No matter what you do to make the most out of life, God loves it. That’s why faith doesn’t have to be a big scary concept- it can be as simple as loving God with all of your heart. There’s no better way to be ‘loyal to a cause.’ The cause is God, and God is the cause of our faith. It’s definitely not easy…but it’s worth working towards. God is worth anything and everything because He loves each and every one of us with all of His being.

“Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths; guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.”
-Psalm 25:4-5

 

Katie Roth

 

November 15th

We were in search of good posture…

We started our time together with prayer, and eating together as the early church.  After offering the first bite and drink to our neighbor, we finished up dinner and started to explore Acts 4.

The confidence of Peter shines through Acts 4 as he defends healing the paralytic in the name of Jesus Christ.  We searched through the text and our conversation and brought an offering to the whole group and God at the end of our time together.   The postures each group offered were full of mighty fist pumps and overall excitement.  It was a great time together!

Fall Retreat: Jesus Dojo

Some post retreat reflections surrounding our conversation and practice of living in the wilderness as a body of 70 people from 4 different churches (St B’s, STP, St George’s and Good Shpeherd).    We began at the passover and exodus on Friday, led at times by a lantern (the pillar of fire was a little hard to make mobile) and ending at a fire.    Saturday took us out in the wildnerness (literally) setting up a tabernacle; hiking thru Greeter Falls, resting at “Mt Sinai and conversing about “Torah” (the way to live out the marriage covenant between God and his people) and even throwing aside our own “golden calves.”  Four hours of practicing Sabbath on Saturday afternoon led us into conversation and practice surrounding the exile.   And Sunday morning saw us connecting the dots as we had some conversation surrounding Jesus as the fullfillment of the Passover, the exodus, the wandering and the answer to the exile.   

“feel good lost” has continued to stick with me,
even now back off of the mountain.  i think i took away that whole message of
finding contentment even among the stress and tolls of daily life, and to accept
where i am even if i don’t know where i’m going.  i guess i’d say that i most
clearly heard the message to thrive despite not being in control, if that makes
sense.

i think i most liked our exile, when i got to lay out under the stars and just
look up.  being in nature was most excellent, and that was set apart this
retreat from me.  not knowing as many people as i usually do helped, too.  it
helped me focus more on god and introspection and less on the social aspect,
which was refreshing. 

 - Grace Oberholtzer

Living water has really stuck with me. Living water or flowing water is a great
phrase. God really is living water (versus dead water) and that was just an awesome way to express God. I absolutely loved our 4 hour sabbath!! It was a great amount of time to meet others and praise god through play. I also liked all of our conversations.  Each  one taught me something and made a big impression on me.

-Grayson Huber

Click Here to see Pics.  

All Saints Day: it’s a feast!

Emma Williams November 1 at 8:19pm

This being my first time knowing November 1st is all Saints day I had no idea what I was going to. I dressed in my costume, and walked over with the wondering stares of the people at Star bucks.
Once I walked in I heard good music and said hi to every one. Once I had sat down and waited until I knew exactly what I was to do. A few minutes past and Sally came in and told us to circle.
We watched our little slides put our phones down (we turned them all on silent!). Afterwards we feasted and remembered
the past saints in our lives. We finished and started to search.
We were in search of the past, the present, and the future saints. We remembered the lost, our friends, our family, and our sooner or later friends and family. We found them through laughter(zeke bong!), through frustration and thought(super hero or saint?), through remembrance(the banner). The banner had written on
it those who changed our lives, those how are still changing our lives, and those who will change our lives. We read a part of acts that named some of the Saints with a big S. The whole point is we
remembered, we were thankful for, and thought of, The Saints with a little s. I had never known we were all saints. I’m glad I finally found out. It makes you see life and others in a more heavenly way. It’s like the fedEx logo. In the EX part there’s an arrow at the bottom ring of the E and X. Once you’ve recognized the arrow, you can’t ever not see it. Now we see everyone as a saint. Not a person,
a saint. Not people ,saints. In our eyes were a small percentage of
Gods saints.

Emma Williams

insearchof THE RESCUE

Se*lah, October 25th 2009

Wow! The Book of Acts is quite a testament to belief and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit came down! Peter, the one who denied Jesus even AFTER He told him he would, stood up and preached! A crippled man stood up and walked! The disciples grew from a group of twelve…to two hundred….to three thousand!
And remember, all this was written by Luke, a doctor, a scientific, analytical man. Cool, huh?
We are left to echo the disciples: “What do we do now?” What do we do when God calls us to heal the sick, or raise the dead, or spread the Good News? In terms of our community at Se*lah, I think Acts 2:42-47 outlines a good start:

42They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

-Bryn Hooper

Family Game Night At Se*lah

Samba de Amigo – Sally’s new game!!!!!!!

Pick Up Sticks

Se*lah, September 27, 2009

 

in search of sticks. 

After Judas betrayed Jesus and suffered death, the apostles had to decide who would become one of the twelve. They didn’t know how to decide of all the many that could have been apostles, who could be an apostle. They resolved to drawing straws, or sticks. Whoever’s stick was drawn won, and it ended up being Matthais’s stick, but that wasn’t why we heard the story. By drawing the sticks, they left it to God to decide. It’s important for us to include this in our every day lives. Too much of the time, we feel the need to be in control of everything. We feel pressured to make decisions based on opinions and approval of others, when really, it’s not always wise for us to make the decisions ourselves. We need God’s help, and so tonight we realized that by drawing sticks, we’re letting God make the decision. When there’s nothing more we can do for a situation, we should let God have control. Now, that doesn’t mean taking the “easy way out”, or not deciding anything at all- if He didn’t want us to think for ourselves, he wouldn’t have given us minds. There’s a fine line between faith and common sense, and we should use our common sense to the best of our ability, because God gave us that gift. However, we realized that we can’t do this alone. We cannot live this life alone. So tonight, we’re leaving all of our lost causes in God’s hands.