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Weekly Memo: Soul Work

2/27/2020

St. Augustine grew up in a mixed religious home, his father a pagan and his mother a Christian. And though his mother had great influence over his life, St. Augustine followed after rebellion and a self-indulgent lifestyle. You might want to look up his story sometime. He’s quite the character early in life.

But when he was 31, something changed dramatically for him, and in answer to his mother’s prayer, he converted. He became a Christian, and eventually a Bishop of the church. He experienced God’s radical renovation of his life. In his famous “Confessions” he wrote of his conversion:

The house of my soul is too small for you to enter: make it more spacious by your coming. It lies in ruins: rebuild it. Some things are to be found there which will offend your gaze; I confess this to be so and know it well. But who will clean my house? To whom but yourself can I cry? (The Confessions; page 6)

He knew what a wreck he had made of his life, and he knew the only one who could come in and rebuild his life into a reflection of love and grace was the God of love and grace, known in Jesus Christ.

I am particularly struck by St. Augustine’s invitation to God to come and make his soul more spacious. Our busyness, our worry, our misguided focus, our destructive habits – they all shrink the house of our soul. And eventually these distractions shrink the house of our soul so much that there seems to be no room left for God. We don’t have time for prayer. We fail to make space for Bible reading. We can’t seem to get up and go to worship. We stop seeing the world through God’s eyes. Situations and relationships seem to be crumbling around us. What we are building our lives on seems shaky at best. And our lives lie in some form of ruin.

How small is the house for your soul? What part of your life lies in ruins? What radical renovation is God wanting to accomplish in you?

I invite you to journey with me in this season of Lent on Sunday mornings as we explore the radical renovation God wants to do in us, inviting God to come into our soul and make it more spacious, asking God to help take the ruins of our life and rebuild them into something sturdy and useful. I invite you to join me as we seek to Build the Cross-Shaped Life through the radical renovation God wants to accomplish in us.

Journeying with you this Lent,
Pastor Becky Jo Messenbrink

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BRRR...it's winter and we are open

2/14/2020

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Dear Friends,

This past Sunday was a snowy one! I am grateful for all the people who chipped in to make sure people who came to worship could park their cars and walk into the building with as much safety and comfort as possible. We worshiped, celebrated a baptism and welcomed new members. It was a joyful day punctuated by the sun that burst out just as worship was getting over, it seemed.

Sunday raised a question I want to answer for you. It is my intention to gather for worship every Sunday for anyone who is able to come. That means, you can assume we will worship on Sunday morning and if you can safely make it to worship, we hope you will. Only twice in 25 years of ministry have I cancelled worship, and one of those times was 2 years ago when we had a literal blizzard in the Twin Cities on Sunday morning. (I hope that doesn’t happen again!) You can assume we will gather for worship at 10 am every Sunday of the year. Please make the best decision you can about the safety of your travel.

This is a good time to remember our weekday weather policy. If the Eden Prairie Schools are closed or close early, the church building will also be closed and all activities will be cancelled. We don’t want to keep you guessing. Having a clear policy is one way to make sure you don’t have to wonder.

Today it’s bitterly cold. Sunday brought a dumping of snow just as we were coming to worship. Who knows what each day will bring from our weather. But we are Minnesotans and we have come to expect changing weather conditions. We make jokes about it! But we don’t’ want you to have to guess about what the changing weather will mean at Eden Prairie UMC. If you ever have weather related questions for which these two policies don’t provide the answer, give me a call.

Stay warm today, inside and out!
Pastor Becky Jo Messenbrink

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