Worship Connection for January 2, 2022

Good morning!  This page is intended to both serve as a continuing worship option for those participating in our worship service from home, and to serve in place of print resources during our in-person worship.  Following the worship service on Sunday, one or more video recordings from the service will be placed on this page, including the sermon.  This may take several hours, due to the time needed to process the videos.  We will email the congregation when the recordings have been posted.  If you would like to be added to our congregational email list, please contact pvcob.alive@gmail.com.

• If you have previously ordered weekly giving envelopes, your box of envelopes for 2022 is in the church narthex. If you do not wish to continue with the weekly envelopes, or, if you have not previously used these pre-assigned envelopes for tracking your giving and would like to start, please contact Sharon Reich.

• Backpack Pals are accepting donations of Pudding Cups and Ramen Noodles! Pudding cups are especially needed. Please leave any donations in the blue bin located in the Narthex.  Thank you!

• Pastors Daniel and Rebecca will be back in the Office this Tuesday morning. Please remember that as Pastor Rebecca moves to working part time, she will only be in the office on Tuesdays and Friday’s of each week.

• The second information session for the Refugee Resettlement program will be Saturday, January 8, from noon to 1pm.  The link to register and participate is https://forms.gle/wLQ58AKfzU479EH67

  Please be praying for the refugees being resettled in our area by Church World Service, and also for those working to help them.

• LIFE Groups are beginning! Leaders will be contacting those who have already signed up to set up first meetings. To join a group, sign up sheets are available in the Fellowship Hall, or visit www.pleasantvalleyalive.org.
• The Church Board will be Meeting for our Annual Planning Retreat on January 15 starting at 8AM.
• Get your high-tops and Jordans laced back up! Pleasant Valley is back at it again for 2022 – an Adult Men’s Basketball Team. Games will be played twice (2x) a week from March through May at Eastern Mennonite High School. If interested, please contact James Hall by February 1st, 2022 at the following: jehall8084@gmail.com or call/text (540) 569-6263.

Esther 4:1-14 NRSV

When Mordecai learned all that had been done, Mordecai tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes, and went through the city, wailing with a loud and bitter cry; he went up to the entrance of the king’s gate, for no one might enter the king’s gate clothed with sackcloth. In every province, wherever the king’s command and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting and weeping and lamenting, and most of them lay in sackcloth and ashes.

When Esther’s maids and her eunuchs came and told her, the queen was deeply distressed; she sent garments to clothe Mordecai, so that he might take off his sackcloth; but he would not accept them. Then Esther called for Hathach, one of the king’s eunuchs, who had been appointed to attend her, and ordered him to go to Mordecai to learn what was happening and why. Hathach went out to Mordecai in the open square of the city in front of the king’s gate, and Mordecai told him all that had happened to him, and the exact sum of money that Haman had promised to pay into the king’s treasuries for the destruction of the Jews. Mordecai also gave him a copy of the written decree issued in Susa for their destruction, that he might show it to Esther, explain it to her, and charge her to go to the king to make supplication to him and entreat him for her people.

Hathach went and told Esther what Mordecai had said. Then Esther spoke to Hathach and gave him a message for Mordecai, saying, ‘All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that if any man or woman goes to the king inside the inner court without being called, there is but one law—all alike are to be put to death. Only if the king holds out the golden sceptre to someone, may that person live. I myself have not been called to come in to the king for thirty days.’ When they told Mordecai what Esther had said, Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, ‘Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.’

Romans 8:28 NRSV

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.

Wondrous God, we know there is injustice in the world;
we know there is poverty;
we know there is greed;
we know there is violence.
Yet, we also know your love and grace is more powerful than all the evil.
We give our resources and our lives
toward continuing your work of peace and justice.
May all that we have given encourage the blossoming of your mercy and grace
in the lives of those who are in need.
Even in the hardest and darkest of times,
may your loving presence be made known through our living. Amen.

We gather this morning, summoned by God to a journey
We will walk this day with you, O God. Come and walk with us.
Gather us into a community to pray for one another in all things.
We will walk this day with you, O Christ. Come and walk with us.
Call us to follow you; help us to set aside all that holds us back.
We will walk this day with you, O Spirit. Come and walk with us.
Send us out, side by side, to be servants for the healing of your creation. Amen.