11-8-19

Meet the Pastor: Today
If you are new to FOL and want to learn more about our church, please join us in the cafeteria immediately after today’s service for a reception with Pastor John.

5000 Pies Christmas Cookies & Pies: December
5000 Pies is taking Christmas pie orders until Friday, December 20th. Pick up will be Tuesday, December 24th from 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm.
Looking for gifts for coworkers, friends, or teachers? Look no further than 5000 Pies’ assorted Christmas cookie boxes and bags.
Order forms for pies and cookies will be at the Info Table after service!

Children’s Law Center (CLC) Gift Drive: December 15
We are partnering with CLC to provide Christmas gifts for kids in the foster system. You can participate in two ways: Purchase new toys, clothes, or board games and drop them by the Family Center before 5pm on Thursday, December 12th, or purchase items online and ship them to Myranda by December 12th (email luongm20@gmail.com for her address).

Family Center Christmas Party: December 12
The Tutoring & ESL Programs will host their annual Family Center Christmas Party in the Stephens Cafeteria on Thursday, December 12th from 5:45 – 8pm. If you are available to help with the party, please email Emily.

Tamal Class & Sales: December 14 & 15
The Well will host a tamal class for anyone interested on Saturday, December 14th at the Family Center. All money raised will go toward the Family Center remodel. Please visit the Info Table to sign up for the class (spaces are limited) and preorder tamales.

Outreach Sunday and Christmas Cookies: December 15
FOL’s Christmas outreach service is next week! Please invite family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers to join us. If you would like to bring cookies for the Christmas cookie bar, please sign up during or after the service.

Youth Weekly Events
Our last youth event of the year, the Middle & High School Youth Christmas Party, will be on Friday, December 13th at 7:00 pm at the Training Center!

Enjoy the Story

by Heather Larson

A few years ago, I discovered that I had stopped reading fiction. Oh, not completely, I suppose, but all the voracious and fascinated fiction-reading of my childhood and young-adulthood had been replaced by books about how to do things (parenting, writing, art, cooking). How could I have changed so much, I wondered.

Last night I read a story by George MacDonald in which a character stops reading fiction (he had been a fan of Milton and Spenser). Then he stops reading history, and eventually reads only politics and current events. He finds that “he had been growing fonder of business” which the author tells us is a bad sign for a man like him. The story made me think of that year when I realized how little fiction I had read. I, too, had grown “fonder of business”—of figuring out how I could get things done well. Feeling very responsible as a parent of young children, I gave way to the American worship of productivity and the practical. After a time, it was only attractive to read or think about things that would make me feel competent, and books that I would do something with. 

So how did God rescue me from my growing narrowness? I made some efforts to change my patterns that year, but I was not very effective—when habits have become tastes they are hard to change. God’s rescue came from my desire to read to my children. I wanted to give them the joy I’d had in stories, and reading to children seemed a responsible, practical thing to do. I did it for the children’s sake, but God used it to work on my heart. Again and again, over the years since, I have found myself crying, worshiping, or convicted. I am more alive and open to the Spirit when I have set aside self and entered into a story.

How on earth does this relate to Advent? It relates because Christmas is, above all, a time to read and enjoy a particular story: the story of Jesus’ birth. On the other hand, it is also a time of year when over-allegiance to productivity becomes very tempting. There have been Decembers when I have spent more time reading my To-Do list than my Bible. In a “To-Do” mode, it is easy to start treating Bible reading itself as a kind of productivity: checking it off a list, or feeling the pressure to wring a daily application from a very familiar text. Jesus’ story is not like the parenting and cook books; it’s not a story to do something with. It is a story to be enjoyed. We need to open up the beginning of Matthew, and the beginning of Luke, and enter in like the child with a favorite storybook. We need to lay aside self, and let the story—and the Holy Spirit—do something to us.

12-1-19

The Well Christmas Movie Night: December 6
Women of FOL: Join us for a screening of “Elf” and Christmas goodies at the Training Center on Friday, December 6th at 6:30.

Family Center Christmas Party: December 12
The Tutoring & ESL Programs will host their annual Family Center Christmas Party in the Stephens Cafeteria on Thursday, December 12th from 5:45 – 8:00 pm. The party committee invites FOL to help set up, serve food, lead crafts and games, and connect with our many Family Center families. If you are available to help with the party, please email Emily.

Tamale Class & Sales: December 14 & 15
The Well will host a tamale cooking class for anyone interested on Saturday, December 14th at the Family Center. The class will be $10/person and the tamales will be available for sale at FOL on Sunday, December 15th. All money raised will go toward the Family Center remodel. Please visit the Info Table to sign up for the class (spaces are limited) and preorder tamales.

Outreach Sunday and Christmas Cookies: December 15
FOL’s Christmas outreach service will be held on Sunday, December 15th. Please invite family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers to join us. If you would like to bring cookies for the Christmas cookie bar, please sign up at the Info Table.

11-24-19

Fostering and Adoption Resources: November
Are you interested in learning more about fostering or adopting? Please visit the Info Table this month to pick up local resources and chat with a FOL foster/adoptive parent.

Family Center Christmas Party: December 12
 The Tutoring & ESL Programs will host their annual Family Center Christmas Party in the Stephens Cafeteria on Thursday, December 12th from 5:45 – 8:00 pm. The party committee invites FOL to help set up, serve food, lead crafts and games, and connect with our many Family Center families. If you are available to help with the party, please email Emily (emily@folcov.org).

Tamal Class & Sales: December 14 & 15
 The Well will host a tamal cooking class for anyone interested on Saturday, December 14th at the Family Center. The class will be $10/person and the tamales will be available for sale at FOL on Sunday, December 15th. All money raised will go toward the Family Center remodel. Please visit the Info Table to sign up for the class (spaces are limited) and preorder tamales.

Outreach Sunday and Christmas Cookies: December 15
 FOL’s Christmas outreach service will be held on Sunday, December 15th. Please invite family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers to join us. If you would like to bring cookies for the Christmas cookie bar, please sign up at the Info Table.

Youth Weekly Events

  • High school youth meet on Wednesday evenings.
  • Middle school youth meet on Friday evenings.

His Name is Jesus

An Advent reflection by Pastor Dan Palomino

I meet people of many different backgrounds in my ministry as a hospice chaplain, people from all walks of life — different ethnicities, races, religions, upbringings, jobs, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Some are surrounded by a loving family and some have nobody at all. Some people live in lavish homes while others live in very meager surroundings. It is obvious that life on planet earth is not fair and we don’t all have the same experiences in life. Despite these differences, there is one thing that places us all on an even playing field. We all die.

And, by the same token, we all are born. We may be born into different circumstances and we may even die under different circumstances. But we ALL enter this world and take our exit in the same manner. No matter where we are now or where we come from, we are ALL equal in this way.

Maybe this is one of the reasons why it amazes me that the God and Creator of the universe would choose to do the same. We could never be elevated to the level of God so God chose to lower himself to us, being born of a woman, entering this world in the very same way as you and I. He humbled himself so we can relate to him (Philippians 2:6-8). He did not enter this world in any form of pageantry or regalia. He was born in a stable that was filled with farm animals and reeked of manure. His crib was a feeding trough. When he was older and entered Jerusalem for the last time in his earthly life, he did not choose to enter the city on a steed or stallion but on a little donkey.

Even the family lineage into which he was born had “common” folk as well as people of stature, comprised of men AND women, adulterers, prostitutes, heroes, and Gentiles. While there are kings in the lineage, some were godly and some were evil (Matthew 1:1-16).

And, of course, as a human being just like us, Jesus experienced physical death. The beauty of this is that he rose from the dead. Just as the Lord has taken on the frail form in which we exist, we have now received the gift of resurrection through faith in Jesus and the power of the Spirit. The only difference between us and Jesus is that our resurrection happens on the other side of Heaven rather than this side of Heaven. Jesus’ resurrection demonstrated that we have inherited power over sin and death.

While we celebrate Advent and Christmas this year, may we reflect upon the gift of Jesus and the fact that God would humble himself, putting himself on the same lowly human level in which we exist this side of Heaven, so that he can show us himself and the possibility of life everlasting with him. The fact that he was willing to go through birth just like us so that he could go through the pain of death — just like us AND FOR us — is CRAZY! Who would do that, given the choice? What kind of God would do an amazing and extravagant thing like that?

His name is JESUS.