Views from The Ridge 01.17.2024
Sunset Ridge is a church that desires to follow Jesus, reach people, and radiate God’s love and hope to all.
This Week
Sunday, January 21
9:15am Life Groups, children’s Roots gathering, teen gathering (see website for more info)
10:30am Worship in the Sanctuary (A Very Good Place To Start - Matthew 7:24-27)
4:30pm Outdoor worship
6-7pm Parent Group: Every Season Sacred
6-7pm Youth group gathering
Upcoming…
Sunday, January 28
4:30pm Chapel worship
6:00pm Parent group & youth group
Wednesday, January 31 Women’s Wednesday Fellowship
A Dog with a Bone
-Riley Stirman, Preaching Minister at Sunset Ridge Church
An excerpt from Eat This Book by Eugene Peterson:
“Years ago I owned a dog who had a fondness for large bones. In his forest rambles he often came across a carcass of a white-tailed deer that had been brought down by the coyotes. Later he would show up on our patio carrying his trophy.
After a while, sated with our applause, he would drag the bone off twenty yards or so to a more private place and go to work on the bone. The social aspects of the bone were behind him; now the pleasure became solitary. He gnawed the bone, turned it over and around, licked it, worried it. Sometimes we could hear a low rumble or growl, what in a cat would be a purr. He was obviously enjoying himself and in no hurry. After a leisurely couple of hours he would bury it and return the next day to take it up again. An average bone lasted about a week.
There is a certain kind of writing that invites this kind of reading, soft purrs and low growls as we taste and savor, anticipate and take in the sweet and spicy, mouth-watering and soul-energizing morsel words - ‘O taste and see that the Lord is good!’ (Ps. 34:8)
I am interested in cultivating this kind of reading, the only kind of reading that is congruent with what is written in our Holy Scriptures. By keeping company with the writers of Holy Scripture we are schooled in a practice of reading and writing that is infused with an enormous respect - more than respect, awed reverence - for the revelatory and transformative power of words. These are words intended to get inside us, to deal with our souls, to form a life that is congruent with the world that God has created. Such writing anticipates and counts on a certain kind of reading, a dog-with-a-bone kind of reading.
Spiritual writing requires spiritual reading, a reading that honors words as holy, words as a basic means of forming an intricate web of relationships between God and the human, between all things visible and invisible.
Reading is an immense gift, but only if the words are assimilated, taken into the soul - eaten, chewed, gnawed, received in unhurried delight. Words come off the page and enter our lives freshly and precisely, conveying truth and beauty and goodness, words that God's Spirit has used and uses to bring life into our souls.”
As we set about studying the challenging, life-changing teachings of Jesus contained in the Sermon on the Mount, I'd like us to have this image in mind. These aren't words to be forced into the filing cabinets of our minds. They are words to be savored for nourishment and delight.
May we taste and see that the Lord is good.
Around Our Community
We love Second Saturdays on our campus! Last week, we had an amazing yoga session followed by storytime and DIY bath bombs. We were glad to soak up a fun morning outside before the cold blew through.
Last Sunday, Riley kicked us off on a new sermon series on The Sermon on the Mount. Follow along with this word search.
Praises & Prayers
Dick Ihfe is undergoing treatment for a blood clot in his leg.
Anthony Scalercio’s cancer has metastasized to his lungs. He is the grandson of Glennie Scalercio.
For when you need a gentle day
Adapted from Psalm 90.1-3,12-17, MSG
God, it seems you’ve been our home forever;
long before the mountains were born,
Long before you brought earth itself to birth,
from “once upon a time” to “kingdom come”—you are God.
So don’t return us to mud, saying,
“Back to where you came from!”
Patience! You’ve got all the time in the world—whether
a thousand years or a day, it’s all the same to you.
Oh! Teach us to live well!
Teach us to live wisely and well!
Come back, God—how long do we have to wait?—
and treat your people with kindness for a change.
Surprise us with love at daybreak;
then we’ll skip and dance all the day long.
Make up for the bad times with some good times;
we’ve seen enough evil to last a lifetime.
Let your people see what you’re best at—
the ways you rule and bless your children.
And let the loveliness of our Lord, our God, rest on us,
confirming the work that we do.
Oh, yes. Affirm the work that we do!
Amen
