Views from The Ridge 12.18.2024
Sunset Ridge is a church that desires to follow Jesus, reach people, and radiate God’s love and hope to all.
This Week
Saturday, December 21 Sunset Ridge Farmers Market 9am-1pm Charis Park
Sunday, December 22 Scott Heare preaching: Matthew 22:34-40
9am Worship in the Chapel
10:15am Classes for all ages
Adult Class: Advent Conspiracy, Fellowship Hall
Women’s Group: Advent Conspiracy, Chapel Classroom
Youth Group: Advent Conspiracy, Rm 218
Roots PK-K, Rm 102
Roots 1-2, Roots Room
Roots 3-6, Rm 203
11am Worship in the Chapel
To view recorded sermons from Sunset Ridge Church, please make sure to add us to your subscriptions on YouTube.
Coming Up…
December 24 Christmas Eve Service 4:30pm in the Sanctuary
OFFICES CLOSED DEC 25-JAN 1
Around Our Community
Our Elementary Girls’ Bible study has come to a close for the 2024 season. We are so proud of this group of girls who gathered in Charis Park to study the book of Ephesians through the Being Brave Bible study by neighbor Abigail Davis.
We are so grateful for the support of our community for Camelot Christmas and because of your abundant generosity we were able to provide gifts for all 107 children of Camelot Elementary as well as kids from East Terrell Hills Elementary, Crestview Elementary, families from I Am For Her, and other local families in need.
If you ordered a poinsettia, please remember to pick it up this Sunday, December 22, immediately following worship (both services).
Repeat The Sounding Joy
Kelley Frost, Member, Sunset Ridge Church
This week’s message is adapted from Goodness Weekly.
When our daughter was a teenager, she loved the phrase “Choose joy” and plastered it all around her bedroom. The great thing about adopting this mantra is its emphatic notion that “joy” is a choice, and our message this week distinguished between the fleeting moments of happiness and the depth of pure joy. Think about your mountaintop moments – like a graduation, getting married, or the birth of a child – but if asked to come up with the times you’ve experienced pure joy, you may scratch your head and wonder.
One of the things that researchers understand about our brain is that we remember negative experiences more easily than positive, because when something bad happens, we immediately store it in our long-term memory. Some of this has to do with our own survival; we need to remember not to put our hands on a hot stove or it will burn us. Without taking you down a nerdy neuroscience rabbit trail, you might recall the main character in the Disney Pixar movie Inside Out and how she worked through her emotions and began to practice a mindful embracing of her feelings as a better way of handling her life experiences.
So that brings me back to choice. This season presents itself with more decision-making pathways than a fall corn maze in Hondo. Do we go to the office Christmas party or that small dinner with friends? Are we inviting the extended family to our house or heading out on holiday? If we’re going to “spend less and give more,” do we cut someone from the gift list or scale back on everyone? As someone who owns a retail business, I feel like I strapped onto the roller coaster before Thanksgiving and have been riding up and down the rails for the past month without much time in between to get off the ride.
Throw in a few hairpin curves of harried shoppers and tired employees, and the joy part of the season can be hard to find.
Choose joy. What does that even look like? I felt it during the time spent registering families at the church’s Camelot Christmas. They showed up with their children all dressed up for a celebration, and the warmth of their presence conveyed their appreciation to the church for making a Christmas wish come true. Across the street, joyfulness can be found in the Saturday Farmers Market or our family’s Sunday night tradition of a Scott’s pizza by the trailer. More joy arrived on an Advent Sunday when the children sang “Hallelujah” at the front of the church with sign language motions to illustrate the words. Seeing the chapel filling with new faces each week brings another sense of pure joy in worshiping together as the body of Christ.
In the coming year we can make a choice of whether to become a place that spreads joy throughout our community and beyond or stay tightly knit in the warmth of our holy space.
I challenge each of us to move outside our own box and work on choosing joy in 2025. One of my favorite lines from that old Christmas carol, “Joy to the World”, is “repeat the sounding joy.” What I do know about making something a habit is the power of repetition. Shampoo, rinse, repeat. Repeat the sounding joy has a nice ring to it.
Joyfully yours,
Kelley Frost
Annoucement from Our Leaders
Our annual budget was posted on the bulletin board outside of the kitchen for your review. Along with the standard budget you see posted each year we have included our actual spending for 2024, and the balances of our reserve and investment accounts.
The budget is pending member vote which is scheduled for 12/29 at 10:00am in the Chapel. All members of the church are invited to be present for the vote.
Praises & Prayers
Janie Corona, Theresa Whigham’s sister, is home awaiting heart surgery.
Congratulations to Riley Mankins and Megan Troyer, who were married in New Braunfels on December 14. Riley is the son of Julie and Jeff Mankins.
