Knox Presbyterian Church Walkerton morning worship
This Sunday is the 4th and final Sunday in Advent, the last Sunday before we celebrate Christmas! The theme of the 4th Sunday is "Love". Without Love, none of the other Advent "gifts" have any great significance. The New Testament is home to one of the greatest descriptions of love that one can find anywhere:
13 If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast[a] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.
As Paul says here in 1st Corinthians, of all of the gifts that Christ brings into our lives, "the greatest of these is love". This Sunday, we are going to spread the love in a couple of different ways ...
Firstly, we are celebrating with White Gifts! Our white gifts will be going this year to help support the Meal Mates Program at Walkerton District Community School. Things like the breakfast programs at schools help to feed kids throughout the week who need food, but Meal Mates helps kids get their proper nutrition throughout the weekend too! Children can take a backpack filled with items home with them for the weekend, and return the empty backpacks on Monday to be refilled again for use the following weekend. Join us as we bless the white gifts before we send them off to the school for use in this excellent program!
We will also be enjoying a presentation by the kids of our Sunday School program. We will enjoy "A Candy Cane at Christmas", the story of the shepherds of the Christmas story, the invention of the candy cane as well as its Christian significance.
This Sunday, let's finish off Advent together with love!
