mid-week meet-up: How can I love and give myself up for someone else today?

Hi First Presbyterian Church, 

It’s time for our Mid-Week Meet-Up! We have an exciting weekend ahead of us! First, our spring picnic is this Saturday at 3pm at Hopkins Point Lodge in Mendon Ponds Park. Dinner will be served at 5pm. Hotdogs, burgers, and drinks will be provided. Please let us know if you will be bringing a side dish, appetizer, or dessert by clicking this link! There will also be games, live music, and a marshmallow roast - you won’t want to miss it! 

Second, this Sunday is Pentecost Sunday, and, during worship at 10:00 am, two young men will be completing their year-long Confirmation journey by professing their faith in Christ and becoming members of the congregation. It will also be your last opportunity to hear the choir sing before they take a deserved rest for the summer. What a blessed Sunday it will be! 

We’re currently finishing reading Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians in our Bible-in-one-year journey, and Paul begins chapter 5 with these words: “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (5:1-2). Each of us has been made in God’s image and called to reflect God’s own nature. However, sin distorts and masks God’s image in us. How are we to “imitate God,” as Paul exhorts us? By looking to Christ who “loved us and gave himself up for us.” I encourage you to reflect on this question today: How can I love and give myself up for someone else today? If you can answer that question and ask for God’s help to follow through with it, then you will be imitating God, as a beloved child. How simple, and yet profound! 

Peace,
Pastor Aaron