With the traditional Thanksgiving Feast just days away, many of us are pulling out our recipe books and preparing to pour our hearts into our favorite dishes. Our efforts will include all the best quality ingredients, careful measuring and mixing, and lots of love. All with the hopes that the food we prepare and serve and make for a special and memorable gathering. This is also the time of year we look for the perfect blending of experiences, decorations, gifts, and embellishments to make for a special and memorable season. If we can only pull together the best, most special, grandest elements, we will truly have a Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas. Scripture invites us to consider another recipe for joy. One that doesn't have anything to do with tinsel or packages, but everything to do with ingredients like gentleness, hope, time with God and others, and the secret sauce - gratitude. This week we whip up some thanksgiving to make for a truly memorable holiday. Worship Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkMLtUXcd8g

Life is complicated. Just take a look at your calendar and your to-do list. Appointments and obligations overlap each other. There aren't enough hours in a day or days in a week to accomplish even a portion of the tasks you'd like to (need to?) get done. Work requires more of you than you have to give. Spouses, children, parents and friends all want something from you. Add to everything the strain of living and working in the 'COVID Era,' and life is busy, stressful - and complicated. Your spiritual life doesn't have to be. An encouraging, life-giving, uplifting faith is really very simple. The early church gave us a simple model for a life of faith with Jesus that offers hope and power for living, even in today's complicated world. It begins by connecting with God. And because God wants to connect with you, it's really pretty simple! Worship link: https://youtu.be/fqo1tVd4r-g

One of the silver linings of the COVID-19 pandemic, has been the opportunity it has given us to recognize and praise the many people in our communities and around the world who have always - and especially during this difficult time - served the greater good; helped people in need; and given sacrificially for the benefit of others. Seeing and celebrating the best in healthcare workers, public servants, retail and food service workers, community leaders, as well as everyday people who are kind, loving, and caring, helps us to be better people ourselves. To praise another is to recognize the good in them and be inspired to find and develop that good in ourselves. The practice of Christian worship does the very same thing for the followers of Jesus. To praise a good and gracious God who makes God's own self known through Jesus, is to be inspired to find and develop that same goodness and grace in ourselves. As we lift our hearts and voices in worship on a regular basis, we not only articulate our praise to God, we are formed in our own hearts, lives, and loving to be more like the One we worship. For all its diversity in content and context, corporate Christian worship is one of the most dearly held, dearly beloved, gifts of the faith. People of faith the world over, throughout the ages, have held worship as the central practice of their faith. The heart of our life together as the church is to connect with God and each other in worship and praise. Even across the current digital distance, God is worthy of our adoration, praise, and worship... of our best efforts to offer up something of worth to the One Most Worthy. Worship Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHaHM7k2rZI&t=4s