• All services and functions at the Church remain canceled until further notice.
  This includes in-person worship services, Ladies' Auxiliary meetings, the Annual Mother's Day Smorgasbord, the Memorial Day weekend Yard Sale, and the CPR/First Aid Class (which might be rescheduled in the dall).
• We continue to monitor the church email and phone for any needs.  Scheduled Food Pantry hours are Cancelled; call 518-868-2868 to arrange for food pick up.
• I can report that the Joshua project is assisting with food at the area schools.
• If anyone knows of anyone that has any needs, please let us know and we will assist them during this time.
• New learning opportunity from Synod Faithful Learning And Teaching Together (FLATT)

Bethany Evangelical Lutheran Church
185 Church Street
P.O. Box 273
Central Bridge, NY 12035-0273
518-868-2868 (monitored daily)

bethanycentralbridge@gmail.com

Prayer and thoughts from Pastor Bert Mayne

Prayer for Times of Fear

Steadfast God, Your Son teaches us that when love is complete it casts out all fear. The world all around us is boiling over with concern that is legitimate and fears that are not. Help me to rely on Your Sovereignty and know that no matter whether I can clearly see it, You are in control.

Help me to put to rest the imaginings that the voices of fear put into my head, and help me to remember Your love, Your inspiration of all the dedicated researchers and care givers who are working to defeat the illnesses that challenge us, and the wondrous way You made us that enables us to fight off disease, and heal in body as You heal us in spirit.

Thank you for Your love in Christ that towers over all the noisy shallow fear-mongers and the useless wares they push. Thank you for making us part of Your own family, Your children, and hear our prayers for the rest of Your children who are suffering this day.

Help us to breathe deeply of Your Spirit and rest in the peace that is beyond understanding so that we may again rise up, refreshed, to serve Your will.

In Jesus' mighty name we pray. Amen.
 

Some thoughts about these times to my Bethany brothers and sisters…

There are so many voices shouting scary messages from every corner that it's getting hard to think some days. The news is full of bad-to-worse tidings and the internet is loaded with everything from government agency websites, sources of hard information backed up by all sorts of scientific research and medical studies, to sites with the flimsiest of rumor, and wild stories without a shred of truth at their center.

And, as happens when things seem too big, or too complicated for us fully to get our minds around, the biggest product of all the information overload is confusion and fear.

Fear has several forms. A sensible fear of things that can prove dangerous is a good thing. It keeps us from harming ourselves and others. The groundless fears that keep us up at night pointlessly rehearsing varied scenarios of things that could go wrong in our lives are bad for our health. But they can be defeated by a little sensible stock-taking. A friend of mine always said he'd take a deep breath and let it out slowly to relax, and then ask himself, “OK, what's really the worst that could happen?” It had a calming effect that led to a realistic look at whatever the problems were.

Panic is the nightmare member of the family. Panic has been defined as “unreasoning fear.” That's a good way to see it. Fear that is completely divorced from reason can't be worked through by a rational thought process. And as anyone who has experienced the grip of terror will tell you, tunnel-vision is one of the hallmarks of panic. The worse the fear, the tighter the constriction of one's view. The “big picture” has no chance in such a situation.

Without a complete picture we struggle for any bit of sense we can make of our situation. Often people will believe or follow foolish or false suggestions they'd never give a second look to if they were calm and not in the grip of fear. This has been used for ages by forces of both church and state who have sought to control a group of people. No good comes of the nastier members of the fear family running abroad among us.

The Bible tells us God is Love, and Jesus says that the love God teaches us has the power to banish fear. It should be expected that once this happens we can live better, fuller lives, undamaged by the designs of those ideas or people who seek control over us. We know greater freedom when, as it says on the dollar bill, In God We Trust. Let it be so, smile, and tell someone you're glad you know them. I'll bet your day is instantly better than it was. And then we can all work together to weather the storm and get back to life as it should be.