Love and Other Delights

What a weekend!  Today is Lincoln’s birthday, Sunday is Valentine’s Day and Monday Presidents’ Day.  Choose your celebration!  We’ve chosen ours carefully, and we’re going with Love this Sunday.  Smack in the middle of the Bible is a delightful and amatory love poem, The Song of Songs, a dialogue between a bride-and-groom-to-be which rather vividly anticipates the marriage couch.  It is an unusual biblical book (for those of a classical bent, it even includes the equivalent of a Greek chorus), and we will take a look at it during Sunday morning worship.
 
As we turn the page to next week, we see that Lent begins on Wednesday.  In observance, we plan to combine a hymn sing with our traditional Ash Wednesday service.  It will look a little different from past hymn sings, in that Karli and I have already chosen they hymns, in order to evoke the sense of penitence and solemnity the day deserves.  The service will begin at 4:00 Wednesday (February 17) on our usual Facebook Live platform, and will include the virtual imposition of ashes.  The service bulletin will be distributed Tuesday.
 
And as Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, remember we have Lent Devotionals for you, written by the UCC’s Still-Speaking Writer’s Group.  You may stop by the church to pick yours up, or call us to arrange delivery.  The writers always do a good job of opening up the biblical texts, and we will occasionally be borrowing from them for our Sunday reflections.

 
Here are the links to Sunday’s bulletin and service:
Sunday February 14, 2021 Bulletin
Link to Service