Prayers were asked for Rev. Howard and Carolyn Martin; their son Bryan passed away suddenly last week. Rev. Martin is pastor of Stephenville First United Methodist Church.
Our friend Monita Cebell of Fort Worth has experienced a tragedy, her daughter Tiffany, miscarried her child. We pray for Monita, her daughter and family.
The congregation extends sympathy to the family of Joy Traweek. Joy was a lovely lady and will be missed in the Dublin community.
It was great to see Butch Belew back in church and getting around so much better. Butch and Carolyn wanted the congregation to know how much they appreciated the flowers Butch was sent in the hospital. They also thanked Pastor Ken for his visits, thanked Neva Smith for the snack basket and Leta Sage for visiting every day.
We have beautiful fall flower arrangements at the altar rail and we can thank Leta Sage for them.
“Love Your Neighbor as Yourself” was the title of Rev. Ken Lunsford’s sermon and he drew on the book of James; second chapter for the message.
The lesson from James starts like this, “My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord, Jesus Christ, must not show favoritism.” James says you must not treat a rich, finely dressed man in your meeting better than a poor man in ragged filthy clothes. If you do, you have discriminated among yourselves and become judges.
“Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom He promised those who love Him?”
We might ask about someone about another person this question: “How much do you think he or she is worth?” We mean how much money you think they have. But we say “How much are they WORTH?” Well everyone is worth the crucified body of Christ if they have accepted Him as their Savior.
People seem to value a wealthy person more than one without wealth. Maybe we aspire to be wealthy ourselves. We want finer things so we admire the people who have them. The poor don’t have nice possessions and can’t help us get ahead at our careers, so we devalue them.
But Jesus said in His first major public sermon, “Blessed are the poor. Blessed are you when you’re hungry. Blessed are you who morn. Blessed are you when people hate you.” Remember Jesus said “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
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