#Blessed
#Blessed
If you google #blessed, you’ll get an astounding 1,220,000,000 results. That’s 1.22 billion. With a b.
#Blessed is a popular meme generally meant to express to the world gratitude for—or sometimes brag about—the good things one has going for them. It’s “a good thing” (a much lesser meme at only 363,000,000 hits) to be genuinely grateful. We should, after all, count our blessings...as the Sunday School song emphatically instructs.
But what if Jesus has an entirely different notion than we generally do of which life is the good life? What if it’s a lot closer to what Paul Simon wrote in the song, “Blessed”: “Blessed are the sat upon, the spat upon, the ratted on.”?
Is this the kind of life we should aspire to?
This isn’t an idle question. Misunderstanding of the “blesseds” given by Jesus in the Sermon in the Mount have caused intense pain and confusion down through the ages and continue to do so today. Strangely enough, the blesseds haven’t uniformly been a blessing. So,
Who is it, according to Jesus, that has the good life?
What is it to be #blessed?
And most importantly, how does it help frame the power of the Gospel?
See you Sunday.
Steve+
2022 Giving Receipts
Copies of individual 2022 giving receipts will be sent as a .pdf by email today. The email will be from “Redeemer Anglican Church” (redeemer@redeemerannapolis.org). If you don’t see it today, check your junk mail folder. If you don’t see it or would prefer a paper copy, please email the above address and let us know.
Discovery Dinner—for those new(ish) to Redeemer.
Thursday, February 2, 6:30-8:30PM at the Wishart’s. Today is the final day to register with Steve: steve@redeemerannapolis.org
Ash Wednesday Service—February 22, 7:00 PM
Lenten Small Groups
This season, our Lenten Small Groups will be reading Dane Ortlund's “Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Suffers” aided by the Gentle and Lowly Study Guide—both available on Amazon. Our reading will accompany a sermon series based on key themes from this book. “Gentle and Lowly” helps us meditate on the heart of Jesus for us and learn how to feel loved by him even in our worst moments, as well as our best. Feeling forgiven is essential for forgiving others and opens up new possibilities for healing, maturity, fellowship, and ministry. We hope you'll join a group this season, lasting about 8 weeks from the week prior to Lent (February 13th) to Easter (First week of April).
If you’re interested in hearing more about Small Groups or joining one, click here.
Joy Together Sundays
One Sunday per month beginning in February and continuing over the following three months, we are taking a different approach to our worship service. For about 40 minutes or so, we'll pray the Daily Office (Morning Prayer service) together. For about 20 minutes, we'll break for some refreshment. Then for an hour or so, we'll focus on one key theme from a book our Small Groups studied last year called “The Other Half of Church” (having a copy will be very helpful). This book is meant to help us experience facets of the Gospel together in a “relational” way that helps us build joy together. The authors, following current brain science research, define joy as the feeling we get when someone is “glad to be with us.” This is a great description of Jesus' name Immanuel, "God With Us”—even when it meant enduring the cross on our behalf. On Joy Together Sundays, we'll learn and practice different ways of experiencing that joy.
Nursery and Children's Formation will be provided during the teaching/experience hour as usual (though not during Morning Prayer) and we plan to finish by noon.
We hope you'll pray for Redeemer during this season of becoming more mature in our experience and expression of the Gospel individually and together. And we hope you'll be engage in our Joy Together Sundays.
Here’s the Joy Together Sunday schedule:
February 26
March26
April 30
May21
Morning Prayer—10:00-10:40AM
Brunch—10:40-11:00AM
Teaching/Experience—11:00AM-Noon
Picture credit: Alex Shute on Unsplash