may beacon 2020 - sunrise presbyterian church
TRANSCRIPT
The Beacon Sunrise Presbyterian Church May 2020 Newsletter
From the Pastor’s Desk Rev. Vance PolleyA Communion Sunday in a Virtual Worship Service A new normal has become a common phrase for all of us. At Sunrise, we have been exploring ways to continue our worship life while maintaining necessary physical distancing. Your worship staff has been gathering each Sunday in the sanctuary to live-stream worship at 10:00 a.m. on Facebook. It looks as if we will be continuing our live-stream worship for the foreseeable future. In light of the need to continue our virtual worship, we are trying three new approaches. Family Service on Zoom On Sunday, May 3rd the Family Service will resume, using Zoom. Reece and Andy are hosting this gathering. For a Zoom invitation, please email: [email protected]. Return of New Dawn Worship With a single Sunday morning worship service, your worship staff has been combining New Dawn Worship with 11:00 a.m. Worship. Matthew, Heidi and Kent have provided worship music leadership, while Reece, Layton, and I have preached. Looking ahead, we are going to try breaking the 10:00 a.m. hour into two parts. Heidi, Kent, and Layton will open with 20 minutes. We will then transition into the format that is more familiar at 11:00 a.m. with Matthew taking the lead with the music and hymns. The plan is to have two meditations, one given by Layton in the first part of the worship service and a second one given by Reece or me during the second part of the service. We are going to try the idea of using the same scripture lesson for both meditations. Virtual Communion On Monday evening, at a Zoom Session Meeting, the Elders agreed to try a virtual communion service, using Zoom gatherings. During the live-stream worship service, Elders and former Elders, will host Zoom gatherings. You may personally contact one of the Elders or email: [email protected] to be connected with a Zoom group. To prepare for sharing communion at home, you will provide your own bread and grape juice. In this way, we can share the Lord’s Supper, even though we must remain physically separated. Layton put it beautifully in her Daily Prayer on Tuesday, describing the Real Presence of Christ at the Lord’s Table: I've been taking great comfort in this theology lately because what it tells us more broadly is that we do not need to be physically present with one another in order to be genuinely, spiritually present with one another. When we gather in worship, when we break bread, when we lift our hearts in prayer, whether in person or digitally, we are bound up together as one community in the love of God. God’s loving presence is truly amazing! Even in this time of physical distancing, we have been provided opportunities to share our spiritual lives with each other. In God’s grace,
Sundays at 10:00 a.m.
The church’s expenses and bills continue. Since we are not gathering in the sanctuary, we’d like to remind you that you may continue your financial support of the ministry and mission of Sunrise through the following ~
Mailing a check to: Sunrise Presbyterian Church
PO Box 517, Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482
Or Give Securely Online at
https://www.oursunrise.org/give/
Give Thanks
With A
Grateful Heart
Through June 30, 2020, Sunrise Church has permission to download the Upper Room Daily Meditations. Go to https://www.upperroom.org/special-editions/?path=covidblog to download the meditation.
We're Going Virtual!
We will have VBS this summer during the week of June 22-26 from 9:30 am - 11 am with Irene Rose leading music, again! In an effort to proactively protect our VBS kids and volunteers we've decided to hold a virtual VBS!
• Using Zoom for live music concerts with Irene Rose, special appearances from a real pirate adventurer, Bible stories, and packets of easy to do at home crafts for the entire week (with all supplies included) will be mailed to you.
We are asking for a $20 donation per family or $5 a day (if you cannot make the whole week) which will cover the cost of our singer Irene. Register online at vbspro.events/p/sunrisechurch . Please be sure to enter your correct mailing address so we can send the craft packets. For any questions, please feel free to contact [email protected]
Pooky’s TriumphLike a struggling butterfly,
my grief will emerge into something beautiful and new
My mother, Marguerite Bretscher, died suddenly on July 4, 1998, at an airport
as she and my father were returning home from vacation. Just 16 hours earlier she’d called to tell me of my niece’s birth—her 22nd grand-child. When our conversation ended, I didn’t know that I had told my mother good-bye for the last time.
The months following her death were filled with disbelief, emptiness and utter despair. Despite my upbringing in a Lutheran parson-age, I found that I desperately needed repeated reassurances of God’s love and promises. As the Easter following my mother’s death ap-proached, I yearned for a visible metaphor of resurrection.
During Lent, our Sunday school youth raise mail-order caterpillars that are timed to enter into the chrysalis stage and emerge as but-terflies for an Easter morning release. Maybe I should join them? Our family had released butterflies at my mother’s burial service. So I brought home three caterpillars and named two of them Dot and Mildred in memory of my great-aunts. The third one I called by my mother’s nickname, “Pooky.”
On Holy Saturday morning, my children dis-covered Mildred, now a butterfly, hanging be-side her chrysalis. Later that day we watched in awe as a newly created Dot appeared. By Eas-ter morning we could see Pooky’s orange and black wings within a transparent membrane breaking through her chrysalis. We hoped she would emerge soon so we could release her with Dot and Mildred in the Sunday school butterfly ceremony.
But on the long ride to church, traumatized perhaps by the moving car, Pooky violently trembled and struggled to break free. During Sunday school she became very still, and the chrysalis that entombed her blackened. She remained motionless as we drove home after
Copyright © 2001 by Bethel Bretscher Crockett. Reprinted with permission. Originally published in The Lutheran, May 2001.
by Bethel Bretscher Crockett
“I found that I desperately needed
repeated reassurances of God’s love and
promises.”
church, quite in contrast to the way she had writhed on the trip earlier that morning. It weighed on me that the reassurance I so des-perately sought was not forthcoming.
That afternoon, as we drove our two children back to college, I couldn’t stop thinking about the dark, motionless chrysalis. “It’s only a cater-pillar. It doesn’t matter that its name is Pooky,” I told myself. “There will always be other cater-pillars that you can name Pooky. Just pretend Dot or Mildred was Pooky. What difference does it make? It doesn’t change anything.”
Still, despair overwhelmed me on the ride home. “I killed this butterfly,” I thought. “Why did I take it to church and upset it with the car ride? Whatever made me think it was a good idea to name it Pooky anyway?”
And then, “Why did God have to do this to me this Easter? Doesn’t God understand what I’m going through right now? Couldn’t God take care of one stupid little butterfly?”
I decided that in the morning I would take the chrysalis into the woods and leave it. Perhaps the butterfly was still alive and would emerge? I would never know, but I could always cling to that hope.
That evening I was reluctant to look in the but-terfly cage, but some movement caught my eye. There sat a butterfly, triumphantly fanning her wings.
Instantly I was struck by more than just the but-terfly. Pooky was perched over her empty chrysa-lis, which was split open and withering. Under the chrysalis were red bloodlike stains of waste material from the hatching. Yet above these signs of death and struggle—a living butterfly!
That image remains a powerful metaphor, reassuring and resurrecting in its own right: the suffering, the pain, the hopelessness, the empty tomb, the exhilarating joy, the new and glorious life. I began to see my grief as the traumatized struggling butterfly in the hands of a loving, merciful Father. I learned to trust that through God’s grace something beautiful and new would emerge even in the face of my weakness, tears, pain and hopelessness. I, too, would live again, now and forever.
The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed! (And so has Pooky.)
Pooky’s Triumph
“I learned to trust that through God’s grace something beautiful
and new would emerge even in the face of my weakness, tears, pain and hopelessness.”
To receive more ideas and resources like this one, subscribe to CareMail at stephenministries.org/subscribe.
Thank you for your generous contributions to the Remembrance Garden…
~ Shirley Joyner in memory of great grand-daughter “Maddie” ~ Lizabee and Chuck Ciesar in memory of Donna Graham Rone (Lizabee’s step-mother) and Roxie and Jack’s “Nonna”
Sunrise Church has been sending out daily prayers via email and on Facebook. If you’d like to receive these during this difficult time of uncertainty we are facing, you may subscribe on our website at https://www.oursunrise.org/resources/signup/ or by emailing the church office at [email protected]. Please also continue to pray for those on the prayer list below:
Recent Prayer Concerns (Names are listed for a month): Bonnie and Jim Watts, Anne Tansantisuk (Pat Bigelow’s sister), Matthew Fullwood, Ann Reaser, Linda Hawkins, Norma Joyner (family friend of Shirley Joyner), Evelyn (9 yr old w/ medulloblastoma, friend of Ted & Barb McKnight), Les Smith (friend of Eric Lavender). Continuing Prayer Concerns (Names are listed for 3 months): Lynne Smith, Patricia White (friend of Connor Kern), Mike McCarty (Pat Odom’s brother), Patty Swanger (John Wertz’s sister), David Johnson (friend of Cal McRae), April Towry (Billie McRae’s niece), Melissa Mitchell (friend of Shirley Law), Joe Davidyock (friend of Judy DiSalvo), Chuck Westall, Scott Sawyer (friend of Kurt & Jayne Nendorf), Frank Godfrey, Maryanne Oldham (aunt) of Andi Reagan, Eva Sherbondy, Sandra Pratt (friend of Pam & Tim Kane), Victoria Jones, Peggy Wolford, Dorothy Rhyne, Nancy Butler, Kerry Hardy and Linda Scott (Shirley Joyner’s friends), Betty Imsande, Lou Bovie, Shauna Nelson, Nelson Durand, Bob Roeder (Nancy Waller’s cousin), Devin McDavid Jones.
LET'S STAY IN TOUCH WITH ZOOM!
May Calendar Adult Sunday School ~ Sunday evenings at 5pm Family Service ~ Sunday May 3rd, Time to be determined Women's Evening Bible Study ~ 3rd Tuesday of the month at 5:30 pm Sunrise Choir ~ Wednesdays at 5pm Men's Breakfast Group ~ Monthly Gathering, we are currently exploring the possibility of a monthly “gathering"
Please contact the church office at [email protected] if you'd like a ZOOM Invite.
May Birthdays
5/18 Bonnie Burton
5/19 Mattie Smith
5/19 Ariel Lavender
5/20 Dottie Ashley
5/21 Peggy Wolford
5/24 Shelly White
5/26 Ross Heaton
5/26 Nicole McKee
5/27 Neila Cary
5/28 Carol Dawson
5/28 Bob Hooper
5/29 Jackson Naylor
5/31 Esther Bast
5/31 Kathy Jordan
5/3 Brandon Clark
5/4 Nancy Dean
5/6 Korey McDavid
5/8 Cydne Abernathy
5/9 Marian Schmelter
5/9 Matt Norton
5/10 Chris McKee
5/10 Cyndi Kunkle
5/13 Jean Campbell
5/14 Bill Casey
5/14 Malin Allard
5/15 Karen Schmelter
5/16 John Petzold