The Sanctuary Is Burning
Image: “Coffee Klatch” by Ricardo Levins Morales (www.rlmartstudio.com). Used with permission.
Sanctuary is a holy refuge, a place of worship, and a hiding place for migrants.
But what if you keep looking for sanctuary and you can’t find it?
What if sanctuary is elusive to you? What if your sanctuary is on fire? Where do you go for safety?
Please join us for worship at 9:30 or 11:15 a.m.!
Order of Service: December 9 Order of Service
Offering Recipient: Hiawatha/Franklin Encampment (give here)
December Worship Theme: Sanctuary
In ancient times, finding an inn was more than finding a place to spend the night. Certainly, the inn was a place for the traveler to rest, but it also provided safety and healing to the wayfaring stranger. There were no hospitals in those times, so the inn functioned as one. It was a place to tend to the physical body, and to gather one’s spiritual resources for the continuing journey. When we hear the story of the Nativity, when an innkeeper provided a place for the Christ child to be born, perhaps we could imagine ourselves as the innkeeper, and our church as the inn, a place of respite, and healing, a sanctuary. This is one of our strengths as a faith community. We are a sanctuary, a place one can go to find health, healing and community. When people ask, “What do you believe?” We might respond: “Come with me to a place on 34th and Dupont Avenue South. This is a place where people are nourished, where people begin ministries, where people invest in something beyond self interest, growing in community and ever widening circles of compassion.” As writer, theologian, Gary Gunderson writes: “I may have trouble articulating what I believe, it is easy to say where I believe.” This month we explore the where of what we believe.
