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Children's sermon
Object: 
a Bible and a piece of bread
Good morning! In the Gospel reading today, we heard about a
bunch of people coming to see Jesus. Now, Jesus wanted people to
come to him, but he wanted them to come for the right reason!
Some of these people were only coming because he had fed them
bread at another time. In other words, they were just coming to
get a free lunch. They were not all that interested in what he
had to tell them. If you had been living at that time, why would
you go to see Jesus? (Let them answer.) Well, I hope you would
UPCOMING WEEKS
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Advent 3
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2 – Pastor's Devotions
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36 – Sermons
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For December 29, 2024:

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Peter Andrew Smith
John peeked around the corner. “Daughter of mine, is there any chance that Ollie is in the kitchen?”

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Mark Ellingsen
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1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26
In the mid-1990’s, Wendy’s restaurants had a promotion win which they would “biggie size” your drink, your meal, almost everything but the Frosty! Wendy’s decided to discontinue this promotion after getting some criticism from those who claim the fast-food industry was contributing to the nation’s obesity problem.
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1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26

The Village Shepherd

Janice B. Scott
Call to Worship:

Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and men. Let us worship him today with dignity and love, remembering that he was once a child just as we have all been children.

Invitation to Confession:

Father God,

Lord, have mercy.

Father God,

Christ, have mercy.

Father God,

Lord, have mercy

Reading:

Luke 2:41-52

SermonStudio

James Evans
(Occurs in all three cycles of the lectionary; see Christmas 1, Cycle A; Christmas 1, Cycle B; and Easter 5, Cycle C, for alternative approaches.)

Mary S. Lautensleger
Each of us faces the choice of who and what we will become. Sometimes, we don't really know what we want to be when we grow up until we are forty-something. Our earliest models for making that choice are the people who raise and nurture us. Although we identify with the adults whom we admire most, each of us is unique and intended to become "our own person."
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Tradition is defined as an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought or action. Take for instance a cooking method. Sarah asked her mother, "Why do you always cut the turkey in half and put it in two small roasters?"

"Because my mother always did. It's a tradition handed down through our family," responded her mother.

"But Mom, did you ever think they didn't have big roasters back then?" Tradition -- a customary pattern or action. But who said traditions can't be changed?
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In his book What's So Amazing About Grace? Philip Yancey tells of a conversation he once had with two scientists who had just emerged from the biosphere near Tucson, Arizona.1 For those of you who aren't familiar with what that is -- several years ago, an isolation experiment was conducted, in which a team of four men and four women lived inside a glass-enclosed structure, entirely shut off from the outer world. The general idea was to see if humankind might one day be able to exist on another planet by recreating a portion of the earth.

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