This bulletin is sponsored by Bev Baker and Ovide Baciu
in memory of Bev’s brother Bruce

A Song of Faith, part 2                       5 February 2012

Prelude

The Celebrating Community

Call to Worship 
Finding ourselves in a world of beauty and mystery,
of living things, diverse and interdependent,
of complex patterns of growth and evolution,
of subatomic particles and cosmic swirls,
   we sing of God the Creator,
      the Maker and Source of all that is.

Processional   VU79
Arise, Your Light Is Come

Each part of creation
reveals unique aspects of God the Creator,
who is both in creation and beyond it.
All parts of creation, animate and inanimate,
are related.
All creation is good.
   We sing of the Creator,
      who made humans to live and move
         and have their being in God.
   In and with God, we can direct our lives
      toward right relationship
         with each other and with God.
We can discover our place
as one strand in the web of life.
   We can grow in wisdom and compassion.
   We can recognize all people as kin.
   We can accept our mortality and finitude,
      not as a curse, but as a challenge
         to make our lives and choices matter.
Made in the image of God,
we yearn for the fulfillment that is life in God.
Yet we choose to turn away from God.
   We surrender ourselves to sin,
      a disposition revealed in selfishness,
         cowardice, or apathy.
   Becoming bound and complacent
      in a web of false desires and wrong choices,
         we bring harm to ourselves and others.
This brokenness in human life and community
is an outcome of sin.
Sin is not only personal but accumulates
to become habitual and systemic forms
of injustice, violence, and hatred.
   We are all touched by this brokenness:
      the rise of selfish individualism
         that erodes human solidarity;
      the concentration of wealth and power
         without regard for the needs of all;
      the toxins of religious and ethnic bigotry;
      the degradation of the blessedness
         of human bodies and human passions
            through sexual exploitation;
      the delusion of unchecked progress
         and limitless growth that threatens our home,
            the earth;
      the covert despair that lulls many
         into numb complicity with empires
            and systems of domination.
   We sing lament and repentance.

Hymn   VU708
My Lord What A Morning