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<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">We Are in the Middle of It</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Years ago a man was traveling by ship with his
young daughter across the ocean. Earlier that particular Sunday he had preached
a sermon about God’s love. It had been a very difficult service to preach,
because he was newly widowed.</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">He was standing against the rail of the ship,
looking out at the vast and magnificent ocean, when his daughter asked him if
God loved them as much as they had loved her late mother.</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">“Of course He does,” answered her father.
“There is absolutely nothing bigger or more powerful and all-consuming than
God’s love for us. It’s the biggest thing there is!” The little girl
pressed on for more information, wanting to know exactly how big God’s love was.
Finally her father with great tenderness said, “Well, look across the sea as far
as you can. Look up and down and all around. God’s love stretches around to
cover all of that; above the blue sky and deeper than the deepest part of the
ocean underneath us.”</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">The little girl pondered for a minute and
replied, “And to think Daddy, we’re right in the middle of it.” And we are.
We’re right in the middle of God’s love. We don’t need a miracle to tell us
that. Most of us have known God’s love all our lives. Of course, that is not to
say that miracles do not occur. They do--to the eyes of faith.</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">King Duncan, Collected Sermons, <A
href="http://www.sermons.com/"><FONT
color=#800080>www.Sermons.com</FONT></A></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">________________________________</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">The Widow of Nain</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Christ said, ‘Weep Not,’ but still she went on
weeping</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">The mother thus, how will the son obey?</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">‘Young Man, arise;’ lo! From the bier
up-leaping,</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">The Dead proved quicker than the quick that
day.</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Anonymous, Poets’ Life of Christ, compiled by
Norman Ault</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">__________________________________</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Who Jesus Raised to Life</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">If you ask most Christians who Jesus raised to
life, the most common response you would get would be "Lazarus." How could we
miss the story of the raising of the brother of Mary and Martha? The three days
in the tomb caused the sisters to warn Jesus that Lazarus would "stinketh." What
a great word, "stinketh"! It sounds like something you would say about a high
school locker room after a big basketball game. The resurrection story found in
the chapter 11 of the Gospel of John is THE story that springs to mind when we
talk about the incredible power of Jesus even over the minions of death. But
here in chapter 7 of Luke, we have another miraculous resurrection of an
individual without much fanfare or comment: a miracle that ranks right up there
with walking on water and bringing sight to the blind, but which gets less than
exciting press coverage. I have a feeling that we tend to leave it alone because
we get embarrassed by it. <BR><BR>You see, this is a miracle without much
explanation or theological intrigue. It happens so quickly that we read it,
swallow hard and move on.</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Alexander H. Wales, The Chain Of Command, CSS
Publishing</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">____________________________</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">The Price of Mourning</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">The home of Paul Laurence Dunbar, noted poet,
is open to the public in Dayton, Ohio. When Dunbar died, his mother left his
room exactly as it was on the day of his death. At the desk of this brilliant
man was his final poem, handwritten on a pad.</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">After his mother died, her friends discovered
that Paul Laurence Dunbar's last poem had been lost forever. Because his mother
had made his room into a shrine and not moved anything, the sun had bleached the
ink in which the poem was written until it was invisible. The poem was
gone.</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">If we stay in mourning, we lose much of
life. </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Henry Simon</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">___________________________</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">God’s Plan for Renewal</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">For Jesus, God had a plan for the recovery and
renewal of all people on earth, and his mission was - he believed and staked his
life on this - to initiate that plan to bring in the fullness of the kingdom of
God.<BR><BR>If Alvin Toffler, author of The Third Wave, is right, we need that
kind of hope more than ever. In the face of economic chaos all over the world,
Toffler insists that we are going through something more drastic than recession
and temporary hardship. He believes that we are suffering the "birth pains of a
new civilization." Arthur Coxe’s verse sounds so contemporary:<BR><BR>We are
living, we are dwelling, in a grand and awful time,<BR>In an age on ages telling
to be living is sublime.<BR>Hark! the waking up of nations; God and Magog to the
fray.<BR>Hark! what soundeth? ‘Tis creation groaning for its latter
day.<BR><BR>Hope in God helps us to make sense out of the senseless turn of
events in our time, in all time, because hope enables us to endure and to press
on in the face of present and impending tragedies…</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">The conclusion to this illustration and for
many additional illustrations and sermons for Proper 5 can be accessed at <A
title=http://www.sermons.com/ href="http://www.sermons.com/"><FONT
color=#800080>www.Sermons.com</FONT></A>.</DIV>
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