By Rev. Daniel Sack

Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25

What decisions did you make this morning? Did you decide what to have for breakfast? What to wear to church? Whether to come to church? Whether to get out of bed? Did anyone decide whether to believe in God this morning? Do any of you remember ever consciously deciding to believe in God? I’d like us to think and talk a bit this morning about making decisions–about choosing, and about being chosen. But

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Rev. Ellen Jennings

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
Romans 14:7-9

To everything (turn, turn, turn), there is a season (turn, turn, turn), and a time to every purpose under heaven.

Reassuring, right? And this morning’s reading from Paul’s Letter to the Romans proclaims: “If we live, we live to the Lord. And if we die, we die to the Lord.” Which is also reassuring…

But, still we grieve. We suffer. For we all experience loss. In fact, this may be the one thing

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Isaiah 25:1-9
Philippians 4:1-13

How many of you have ever seen or heard a TED Talk?

Good! Then I don’t have as much explaining to do.

TED Talks began (surprisingly) way back in 1984 as a conference focused on the convergence of Technology, Entertainment and Design (hence, T-E-D!). The first TED included: demos of the compact disc and e-book, cutting-edge 3D graphics from Lucasfilm, and mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot demonstrating how to map coastlines using his developing theory of fractal geometry.

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Psalm 62 (Psalms for Praying)
Mark 6:30-32

[Silence for one minute]

That was one minute of silence. And it was kind of uncomfortable, wasn’t it? I mean it was for me. I kept thinking, “I wonder what they’re thinking?” And, I imagine you were thinking, “what is she doing?” Of course, you knew it was a sermon on silence, so I’m guessing it wasn’t a complete surprise, but still…

Silence just isn’t something to which most of us are accustomed—certainly

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Psalms 8 and 96:11-13

How many of you have read “The Lorax,” by Dr. Seuss? Or perhaps you’ve seen the wonderful animated movie with the same name?

I, for one, have very fond memories of both the book and the original animation (I predate the recent movie!) with their fabulous Thneeds, Swammee Swams, and Barbaloots… But, if you recall, it’s a sad little story. For the beautiful and bountiful Truffula trees, which populate the landscape at the beginning of the

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