Happenings at Paxton Methodist Church

December 9, 2019 - Grace and peace from our brother and savior, Jesus, Amen. Thursday morning my four-legged friends, Sam and Gunter, went to the city park with me for our morning walk. On Wednesday, I was all bundled up, but that morning I didn’t even need a jacket. It is too good to last, so I will just enjoy it while I can. On Saturday Sue and I went to the Arbor Assisted Living in Nacogdoches and had Christmas Brunch with Sue’s mom, Dixie. We enjoyed visiting with Dixie and Amy, Sue’s sister. We also met some very nice folks sitting with us at the table. Later that day we went to the Joaquin Christmas Festival. Downtown Joaquin was bustling, and we saw many friends there including many from our old church, First United Methodist Church of Joaquin. 

Christmas will be here before we know it: Sunday is the Second Sunday of Advent. The Paxton Community Christmas Program and Dinner is Tuesday, December 17th at 6:00. We have had to alter our schedule for our monthly programs to area nursing homes due to the holidays. Our Focused Care ministry will be this Thursday at 2:00. We hope that you can join us as we will sing Christmas carols and listen to stories of faith and this special season. During this month, Paxton Methodists are collecting cans of soup to take to Community Christian Services. Each month we collect a different non-perishable item for the food bank at CCS. 

Fannie had a really good Sunday School lesson for us today. The main focus was how faith and hope are tied together. Our author says that when our childish ways of religion are stripped away, two things that remain to us as adults are faith and hope. Our author said, “It is with confidence, as Fredrick Buechner put it, that we can say that the “worst thing” isn’t the “last thing”—the last thing is always hope.” 

Two of the Gospels have genealogies. Matthew and Luke both have a miraculous birth story, and both have family trees tracing Jesus back to Father Abraham and to the royal house of David. The two are different from each other, however. We are in a year of Matthew in the Common Lectionary, so I decided to preach on Matthew’s genealogy. I usually stay far away from those strange-sounding names. But this is how Matthew begins his gospel, so it is obviously very important to him. An odd feature of his lineage is that he includes four women in his list—and controversial ones at that. This is peculiar for the time period; yet I think it is quite telling of the early Jesus movement and what Jesus thought was important.

Whoever you are, in whatever faith you were born, whatever creed you profess; if you come to this house to find God you are welcome here.” Paxton United Methodist Church is an inviting church that takes to heart the idea of “Open Doors, Open Hearts, and Open Minds.” Sunday School starts at 9:30 and Worship begins at 10:00. Our email address is paxtonumc@yahoo.com. If you would like the weekly email newsletter about Paxton Methodist you can send me your email address to the Paxton email address and I will add you to the list. God’s Speed.

Randy & Sue Smith/Paxton United Methodist Church