In Your Presence Lenten Series Week 4

Welcome to Pocketful of Grace, a podcast of Grace Lutheran Church as we begin our Lenten podcast, “In Your Presence” which comes to us from Psalm 51. We say that in Lent we journey to return to God. Our returning is a lifelong ebb and flow in faith. As we travel, do we pause to remember that we are in God’s presence? Can we linger to receive the closeness of God’s love and mercy? In God’s presence we are renewed and empowered to walk with Jesus for our own wholeness and for the sake of God’s world. 

This podcast will work as a worship companion to the Year A gospels, our “All In” devotion and our Midweek worship series on trust. Each week we will offer breath prayer, Scripture, music and reflection to support your awareness of God’s presence, almost like a mini worship break whenever you listen.  

This week's music: "Just As I Am" arr. by Judy Nishimura. (© 2020 ALRY Publications, www.alrypublications.com, United Music & Media Publishers) is used with permission from ALRY and was recorded for use by Laurel Sanders, flute, for Grace Lutheran Church.

Prayers Reprinted by permission of Westminster John Knox Press from Feasting on the Word® Worship Companion. Copyright 2012. 

To learn more about our ministries at Grace Lutheran Church, visit glcpa.org. 

Transcript

Week 4: Welcome to Pocketful of Grace, a podcast of Grace Lutheran Church. Our Lenten podcast, “In Your Presence” comes to us from Psalm 51. Journeying with God is a lifelong ebb and flow in faith. Can we be filled with God’s presence? God’s love and mercy is overflowing. God’s presence renews and empowers our walk with Jesus for us and for the sake of God’s world. As we enter God’s presence in prayer. Breathe in: Jesus, living water. Breathe out: Flow through my life. Let’s do that three times. 

This week we journey with Jesus in the words of John 4:5-42 (paraphrase): 5 [Jesus] came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. 7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband,’ 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” 28 Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29 “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”… Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” … 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

Think about water- its symbolism, its qualities, its presence and its use in human life. How is Jesus like water? 

Music for reflection

Prayer: Saving God, you are the giver of living water, the source of deepest compassion, the fountain of eternal life, be our wellspring of mercy. We pray for those who thirst for a life of meaning, a word of grace, a drink of water. For all who are weary from life’s journey, from quarreling, from hard disappointment. Pour your love into our hearts and your healing into our world. 

                                                                           Music for reflection

Living God through the reading of your word, and by the power of your Spirit, may we hear for ourselves the good news and believe, because of your word that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. Amen. 

Breathing in we say: Jesus, living water. Breathing out, we say: Flow through my life. Let’s do that three times. 

OUTRO: Our Wednesday Mid-Week Lenten worship is at 12:15 or 6:15 pm in person.