Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Photo by Rich Copley

Today in the Mission Yearbook: December 7, 2023

PC(USA) DELEGATION RIGHTS A HISTORIC WRONG TO MEMORIAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN JUNEAU, ALASKA - In March 2011, when a pastor called a long-serving community member right before his death, only God knew that conversation would be the beginning of a journey and a living example of restorative justice ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

In the News ... "H-E-B, Meals on Wheels of Odessa to distribute 700 holiday meals

• In conjunction with annual Feast of Sharing-Odessa, Friday, December 8

By Zachary Bordner, Reporter
• KMID-TV/KPEJ-TV

ODESSA, TEXAS - In partnership with Meals on Wheels of Odessa, H-E-B will be celebrating the holiday season by distributing more than 700 holiday meals to homebound neighbors as part of HEB’s annual Feast of Sharing celebration.

According to a release, H.E.B. partners and community volunteers will be passing out meals, bags of fruit and vegetables, and other food items and festive goodies to fellow Texans in Odessa ...

 • Read/watch the rest of this KMID/KPEJ report ...

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

On Freedom (and Predestination)

Witness the doctrine of Predestination which shows (truly enough) that eternal reality is not waiting for a future in which to be real; but at the price of removing Freedom which is the deeper truth of the two.

• From The Great Divorce
• Words to Live By

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

 

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Photo by Annabell William-Blegen

Today in the Mission Yearbook: December 6, 2023

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN KEWANEE, IL, STAINED-GLASS WINDOWS - PFor 120 years now, First Presbyterian Church of Kewanee, Illinois, has possessed two rare treasures that members and friends often took for granted ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

When we are praying about the result, say, of a battle or a medical consultation the thought will often cross our minds that (if only we knew it) the event is already decided one way or the other. I believe this to be no good reason for ceasing our prayers. The event certainly has been decided—in a sense it was decided ‘before all worlds’. But one of the things taken into account in deciding it, and therefore one of the things that really cause it to happen, may be this very prayer that we are now offering. Thus, shocking as it may sound, I conclude that we can at noon become part causes of an event occurring at ten a.m. (Some scientists would find this easier than popular thought does.) The imagination will, no doubt, try to play all sorts of tricks on us at this point. It will ask, ‘Then if I stop praying can God go back and alter what has already happened?’ No. The event has already happened and one of its causes has been the fact that you are asking such questions instead of praying. It will ask, ‘Then if I begin to pray can God go back and alter what has already happened?’ No. The event has already happened and one of its causes is your present prayer. Thus something does really depend on my choice. My free act contributes to the cosmic shape. That contribution is made in eternity or ‘before all worlds’; but my consciousness of contributing reaches me at a particular point in the time-series.

• From Miracles
• Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

 

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Today in the Mission Yearbook: December 5, 2023

CELEBRATE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ DAY - Oct. 12, 1792, was the first observance in the United States of America of what we now know as “Columbus Day.” The Columbian Order of New York, better known as Tammany Hall, held a commemoration of the 300th anniversary of his historic arrival in the “New World” ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

In the News ... "'Empty Stocking' needs your help"

• Empty Stocking Fund now in its 29th year

Staff Report
• The Odessa American

ODESSA, TEXAS - Times are tough out there and Odessan Sandra and her family are no exception.

Sandra is a single mom to a 10 and 3-year-old and is moving from place to place but working and looking to get her family settled.

Odessa families are in need this holiday season and can get help through the Empty Stocking Fund.

Many in our community, like Sandra and her kids, need help this year as a Merry Christmas meal and gifts for the kiddos are simply out of reach. Will you help the needy in Odessa have a Merry Christmas?

The 29th year of the Empty Stocking Fund has a $100,000 goal to meet the needs in our community. The Fund helps families who are struggling to make ends meet. Many are single moms and grandmothers trying to raise family in tough economic times. Funds donated to the Empty Stocking stay in Ector County and help local families like that of Sandra and the kids.

Empty Stocking Funds go for a good holiday meal and small gifts under the tree. Donations to the Empty Stocking Fund may be mailed or delivered to the Salvation Army Community Center, 810 E. 11th St., or the Odessa American, 700 N. Grant, Suite 800. ZIP codes for both are 79761. Call the Salvation Army at 332-0738.

The Empty Stocking Fund, an annual fundraising effort by the Odessa American and The Salvation Army, provides a good holiday meal and small gifts under the tree for needy seniors and children. Donations to the Empty Stocking Fund may be mailed or delivered to the Salvation Army Community Center, 810 E. 11th St., or the Odessa American, 700 N. Grant, Suite 800. ZIP codes for both are 79761. Call the Salvation Army at 332-0738.

The Empty Stocking Fund was created by the Odessa American in 1995 and has raised more than $2.24 million. Donate online at Donate online at https://give.salvationarmytexas.org/campaign/empty-stocking-fund-2023-odessa-texas/c529771

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

When the third day dawned—with a brightness you or I could not bear even if we had dark glasses on— they saw a wonder ahead. It was as if a wall stood up between them and the sky, a greenish-grey, trembling, shimmering wall. Then up came the sun, and at its first rising they saw it through the wall and it turned into wonderful rainbow colors. Then they knew that the wall was really a long, tall wave—a wave endlessly fixed in one place as you may often see at the edge of a waterfall. It seemed to be about thirty feet high, and the current was gliding them swiftly toward it. You might have supposed they would have thought of their danger. They didn’t. I don’t think anyone could have in their position. For now they saw something not only behind the wave but behind the sun. . . . What they saw—eastward, beyond the sun—was a range of mountains. It was so high that either they never saw the top of it or they forgot it. None of them remembers seeing any sky in that direction. And the mountains must really have been outside the world. For any mountains even a quarter of a twentieth of that height ought to have had ice and snow on them. But these were warm and green and full of forests and waterfalls however high you looked. And suddenly there came a breeze from the east, tossing the top of the wave into foamy shapes and ruffling the smooth water all round them. It lasted only a second or so but what it brought them in that second none of those three children will ever forget. It brought both a smell and a sound, a musical sound. Edmund and Eustace would never talk about it afterward. Lucy could only say, “It would break your heart.” “Why,” said I, “was it so sad?” “Sad!! No,” said Lucy. No one in that boat doubted that they were seeing beyond the End of the World into Aslan’s country.

• From The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
• Compiled in A Year with Aslan

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

 

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Rev. Carolyn Winfrey Gillette

Today in the Mission Yearbook: December 4, 2023

PREV. CAROLYN WINFREY GILLETTE PENS ‘WE HAVE A COMMON CALLING’ - On the heels of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) joining 28 other faith partners in the One Home One Future campaign, Presbyterian hymnwriter the Rev. Carolyn Winfrey Gillette has written a hymn to support the Creation care campaign ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Dr. Johnna Herrick-Phelps

Today in the Mission Yearbook: December 3, 2023

PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY - Princeton Theological Seminary is expanding its suite of flexible and accessible learning opportunities, executed by a growing team of education leaders with extensive experience in delivering engaging online education.

“Princeton Theological Seminary sits at the intersection of tradition and innovation, at a time when education — and theological education, in particular — is rapidly changing,” said the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Lee Walton, president of Princeton Theological Seminary. “We must accelerate the work underway to meet the moment to attract learners at every stage of their journeys and careers. This requires flexibility and a more inclusive approach to teaching and learning.”

Dr. Johnna Herrick-Phelps, the school’s first-ever Associate Dean for Online and Digital Learning, will lead this new focused effort ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

There was the charm, as we went on, of running out into evening sunlight, but still in a deep gulley – as if the train were swimming in earth instead of either sailing on it like a real train or worming beneath it like a real tube. There was the charm of sudden silence at station I had never heard of, and where we seemed to stop for a long time. There was the novelty of being in that kind of carriage without a crowd and without artificial light. But I need not try to enumerate all the ingredients. The point is that all these things between them built up for me a degree of happiness which I must not try to assess because, if I did, you would think I was exaggerating.

But wait. ‘Build up’ is the wrong expression. They did not actually impost this happiness; they offered it. I was free to take it or not as I chose – like distant music which you need not listen to unless you wish, like a delicious faint wind on your face which you can easily ignore. One was invited to surrender to it. And the odd thing is that something inside me suggested that it would be ‘sensible’ to refuse the invitation; almost that I would be better employed in remembering that I was going to do a job I do not greatly enjoy and that I should have a very tiresome journey back to Oxford. Then I silenced this inward wiseacre. I accepted the invitation – threw myself open to this feather, impalpable, tingling invitation. The rest of the journey I passed in a state which can be described only as joy.

• From Present Concerns

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Photo by Beth Waltemath

Today in the Mission Yearbook: December 2, 2023

CHRISTIAN FORMATION COLLECTIVE - “What does it look like for us to network?” the Rev. Larissa Kwong Abazia, the designated strategic director of NEXT Church and vice moderator of the 221st General Assembly (2014), recently asked a room full of leaders representing five independent nonprofits that support Christian educators, youth workers, older adult ministry, college campus ministry, and camps and conference centers ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

Aslan turned to them and said: “You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.” Lucy said, “We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.”

“No fear of that,” said Aslan. “Have you not guessed?” Their hearts leaped, and a wild hope rose within them. “There was a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly. “Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadowlands— dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”

And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

• From The Last Battle
• Compiled in A Year with Aslan

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Photo by Elizabeth Turk

Today in the Mission Yearbook: December 1, 2023

PRESBYTERIAN HIV AWARENESS DAY - During the past two years of Covid and other global crises, progress against the HIV pandemic has faltered, resources have shrunk and millions of lives are at risk as a result. This year, UNAIDS is challenging us to tackle the inequalities and inequities in HIV prevention and treatment. Inequity exists between countries and within countries. In Madagascar, only 15% of those infected with HIV know their status, while in the U.S.A., 87% of those infected know their status. Both countries are striving to reach at-risk populations.

The Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar (FJKM), the PC(USA)’s partner church, sees tackling the HIV problem as an important part of what it means to serve God ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

Where the children’s story is simply the right form for what the author has to say, then of course readers who want to hear that will read the story or re-read it, at an age. I never met The Wind in the Willows or the Bastable books till I was in my late twenties, and I do not think I have enjoyed them any the less on that account. I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children’s story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children’s story. The good ones last. A waltz which you can like only when you are waltzing is a bad waltz.

• From On Stories

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

The Rev. Shanea D. Leonard

Today in the Mission Yearbook: November 27, 2023

WHITE ALLY NETWORK - The Rev. Shanea D. Leonard, director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s Racial Equity & Women’s Intercultural Ministries (RE&WIM), has been doing the work of dismantling oppressive systems for more than two decades ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

The question then arises, “What sort of evidence would prove the efficacy of prayer?” The thing we pray for may happen, but how can you ever know it was not going to happen anyway? Even if the thing were indisputably miraculous it would not follow that the miracle had occurred because of your prayers. The answer surely is that a compulsive empirical proof such as we have in the sciences can never be attained.

Some things are proved by the unbroken uniformity of our experienced. The law of gravitation is established by the fact that, in our experience, all bodies without exception obey it. Now even if all the things that people prayed for happened, which they do not, this would not prove what Christians mean by the efficacy of prayer. For prayer is a request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted. And if an infinitely wise Being listens to the requests of finite and foolish creatures, of course He will sometimes grant and sometimes refuse them. Invariable “success” in prayer would not prove the Christian doctrine at all. It would prove something much more like magic—a power in certain human beings to control, or compel, the course of nature.

• From The World's Last Night

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

The Rev. Bronwen Boswell,

Today in the Mission Yearbook: November 29, 2023

BRONWEN BOSWELL, ACTING STATED CLERK OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY, REFLECTS ON HOW THE PC(USA) IS MOVING FORWARD POST-COVID - WPastors and leaders across the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) are still finding new, innovative ways to be church in a post-Covid world ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.

C.S. Lewis Daily - Today's Reading

Presented by Bible Gateway

Today's Reading

TO FATHER PETER MILWARD, sj: On the evil of Christian disunity; and on prayer and cooperation in works of charity as the means of reunion.

6 May 1963

Dear Padre,

You ask me in effect why I am not a Roman Catholic. If it comes to that, why am I not—and why are you not—a Presbyterian, a Quaker, a Mohammedan, a Hindu, or a Confucianist? After how prolonged and sympathetic study and on what grounds have we rejected these religions? I think those who press a man to desert the religion in which he has been bred and in which he believes he has found the means of Grace ought to produce positive reasons for the change—not demand from him reasons against all other religions. It would have to be all, wouldn’t it?

Our Lord prayed that we all might be one ‘as He and His Father are one’ [John 17:21]. But He and His Father are not one in virtue of both accepting a (third) monarchical sovereign.

That unity of rule, or even of credenda [things to be believed], does not necessarily produce unity of charity is apparent from the history of every Church, every religious order, and every parish.

Schism is a very great evil. But if reunion is ever to come, it will in my opinion come from increasing charity. And this, under pressure from the increasing strength and hostility of unbelief, is perhaps beginning: we no longer, thank God, speak of one another as we did over 100 years ago. A single act of even such limited co-operation as is now possible does more towards ultimate reunion than any amount of discussion.

The historical causes of the ‘Reformation’ that actually occurred were (1.) The cruelties and commercialism of the Papacy (2.) The lust and greed of Henry VIII. (3.) The exploitation of both by politicians. (4.) The fatal insouciance of the mere rabble on both sides. The spiritual drive behind the Reformation that ought to have occurred was a deep re-experience of the Pauline experience.

Memo: a great many of my closest friends are your co- religionists, some of them priests. If I am to embark on a disputation—which could not be a short one, I would much sooner do it with them than by correspondence.

We can do much more to heal the schism by our prayers than by a controversy. It is a daily subject of mine.

• From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis
• Compiled in Yours, Jack

Today in the PC-USA Mission Yearbook

The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study is a daily devotional with 365 inspiring mission stories that come from next door and all across the globe. It inspires thousands of Presbyterians daily as they uphold the mission of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in intercessory prayer.

Today in the Mission Yearbook: November 28, 2023

GIVING TUESDAY - Giving Tuesday, which is being observed today in more than 150 countries, exists for one purpose: to celebrate and encourage giving. We Presbyterians have a strong history of giving, and we see examples of this all over the world: schools, hospitals, beautiful churches and exciting ministries of justice, peace and mercy with the name Presbyterian attached to them have enlivened a world more like God’s realm in almost every place in God’s Creation ...

• CLICK HERE to read more.