Views from The Ridge 05.01.2024
Sunset Ridge is a church that desires to follow Jesus, reach people, and radiate God’s love and hope to all.
This Week
This Week
Sunday, May 5th
9am Worship in the Sanctuary (Love Like You Mean It - I John 5:1-6) (see website for more info)
10:15am Formation time for all ages (please check our website for a digital companion guide to our current adult class series, Practicing The Way)
11am Chapel worship
12:15pm Parent Group, Every Season Sacred book
Upcoming
Saturday, May 11th Second Saturday
9am Donation-based Yoga
10:15am Storytime with Chelsea
Sunday, May 19 Sunset Ridge 75th Anniversary
Interested in what’s scheduled for our campus at large? Please consider subscribing to Goodness Weekly.
Around Our Community
This Saturday, May 4th from 9 am - 2 pm, the Terrell Heights Neighborhood and Community Garden are having their annual Yard Sale. Proceeds benefit the community garden operations, garden workshops and community events. Unsold items will be donated to VetStrong, an organization serving veterans and families in need. If church members wish to donate items to the THCG yard sale, they can contact Judy Temple at sjntemple@yahoo.com for details.
The Practice of Abiding
—Jess Lowry, Executive Director, Sunset Ridge Church
There is a lot of data out there right now about habits: Atomic Habits, The Power of Habit, these books have been on the top of many of our must-read lists. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell writes that true mastery of a skill requires practicing it for 10,000 hours. As we studied our passage in John 15:1-8 this week, I learned the term spiritual inertia—coined by theologian Dallas Willard. Willard asserts that in the realm of the will, the power of inertia rules—it is easier to do what you have done than what you have not.
As Jesus tells us to abide, remain, make your home in me—we likely ask the question “How?” Jesus might suggest that we use spiritual inertia and the power of habit to continually be present with him.
To use Jesus’ vineyard metaphor, we’ve been through a great deal of pruning in our church. We’ve had 75 beautiful and difficult years. There has been good fruit and there have been fruitless branches. There has been tremendous joy and great sorrow. Jesus knows this; he is trying to comfort his disciples for what is ahead for them, and the reminder is that no matter what is ahead on the journey, the answer is to abide. It’s no surprise to me that the branch that produces the best fruit in the vineyard is the one closest to the central vine—that’s where the highest concentration of nutrients live.
If we now know it’s easier to do what we have than what we have not, we understand that this can work to our advantage and disadvantage.
If we are practicing hope, prayer, kindness, time in the Word, giving of ourselves in service to others—this will be evidenced in good fruit. And our first response will be rooted in these good things—it will be easier to keep doing them.
If we are practicing fear, scarcity, hoarding, gossiping, etc.—this will also be clear by the lack of good fruit. Inertia will make it hard to redirect our path and our first response will continue to be rooted in things that do not give life.
As we continue on this incredible journey as a community—may we be people who remember that we are not the vine, the vinedresser, or the fruit. We’re not the soil or the sun or even the rain—we are simply a branch. And the branch bears fruit when it stays closest to the vine—-for God’s glory alone.
May our first response be hope, love, goodness, kindness—for God’s glory and the next 75 years.
Love, Jess
A Prayer for May Day
Creator of new life and wonder,
Thank you for fresh blooms
And cleansing showers of rain.
Reminding us that newness can spring up anywhere.
Draw us into your quiet work of re-creation,
And center us on paths of peace and justice,
As we think not only of spring flourishing,
But of the sabbath of newness.
Amen.
