Order of Service – July 16, 2023- Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Worship Leader: Angela Wigglesworth
Music Ministry: Lee Dowan & Dr Alex Shawn
Prelude: Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus -arr. M. Ham
Welcome and Announcements :
Service link
Bulletin link
Sermon link
Land Acknowledgement:
With gratitude, mutual respect and reciprocity, we acknowledge the ancestral home, culture, and oral teachings of the Treaty 7 signatories which includes the Siksika, Piikani, Kainai, the Iethka Stoney Nakoda, consisting of the Chiniki, Bearspaw, and Good Stoney Bands, and the people of the Tsuut’ina Nation. We also recognize the Metis people of Alberta region 3 who call Treaty 7 their home. Wîcîspa , Guts’ists’i , and Moh’kinstsis , which describes the gathering place where the Bow and Elbow rivers meet. We respect all people who share, celebrate, and care for the Treaty 7 territory of southern Alberta and we honour the original caretakers of the land who remind us of the ongoing histories that precede us. We recognize our shared responsibilities going forward to help bring everyone together on this journey of Truth and Reconciliation.
Lighting of the Christ Candle
Call to Worship
This is the day that our God has made! Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Then the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he placed the human ones to till it and to keep it.
In the cool of the evening, Adam & Eve walked with God.
Come let us worship. Come let us enter into the Spirit of God’s creative moments.
Come let us sow the seeds of new life.
Opening Hymn: When Seed Falls on Good Soil VU 530 (A:625)
Opening Prayer:
Gracious God, open our eyes that we may see the abundance of your creative love in all that surrounds and sustains us. Enable us to become people of hope and life, who plant the seeds of your earthly garden for the benefit of all. Help us to be gardeners and caregivers for the earth that is home for all life. Fill us with your gentle love, that we may walk tenderly on the earth, cooperating with your intention of abundant love and life. Amen.
Hymn: Take My Life and Let It Be VU 506
Scriptures: Psalm Reading Psalm 119 Part Five VU p841
Sermon: The Sower, the Seed, & the landscape of our Hearts -Angela Wigglesworth
– Listen to sermon here
Special Music: You Raise Me Up -R. Lovland/V. Graham
Solo: Michelle Johnston – Listen to solo here
Offering
Dedication of Gifts: O God, you have sown your seed in our lives and you have nurtured us and cared for us. We offer to you now the fruit of your labour within us. Use us and the gifts we offer on these plates in the work of your Kingdom – both here in this place – in our communities – and in the church around the world. Grant that through what we say and do a rich harvest of peace and praise may bring glory to your name. We ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Pastoral Prayer followed by the Lord’s Prayer:
The seed of Your kingdom is forever being sown into our lives, our world, O God. But it doesn’t always take root. Sometimes it fails to find a place to grow.
And so we pray…
For ourselves and others when life makes us hard and resistant like a well-trodden path where old habits, old systems and old patterns of thinking keep your message from growing;
(time of silent prayer)
For ourselves and others when we become so immersed in the short-lived, shallow, rock-hiding soil of the moment where Your life too easily gets blown away by the wind;
(time of silent prayer)
For ourselves and others when our fears, insecurities, desires and self-absorption tangle like thorns around Your grace and choke it into silence….
(time of silent prayer)
God, we pray these and the silent prayers of our hearts, and we say the prayer that Jesus taught us. Our Father…
Closing Hymn: Holy Spirit, Come Into Our Lives MV 6
Commissioning and Benediction
Seeds are a miracle of life. They are the sign of what is possible. They speak to the abundance that God intends for creation- for each of us. Go forth in the name of Christ, who sowed the seeds of transforming love. Amen.
-Seeds of Life The United Church of Canada/L’Église Unie du Canada 2
Postlude: We’re Marching to Zion -arr. M. Ha
