july 20, 2025

Guest Preacher: Abigail Hastings

Please use this Order of Service to easily follow the service online.

CLICK HERE FOR HYMNS (or scroll to the bottom)

For Your Meditation

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough”

— Mae West

“Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.”

― Doris Lessing

Prelude:   Debbie Deane

Chalice Lighting: A Prayer for Coming Home (excerpt) by Micah Bucey

Someone might have built this space

with their hands, but you have built

this place with your heart. …

May you always be returning,

Awestruck as a child,

Surprised to find that home is both

a remembering and a forgetting,

A setting and a letting go,

A believing and a receiving,

A building up and a tearing down,

A comfort and a cross to cast off.

May the corners always cradle you,

May the rugs always receive you,

May the ceilings always surround you,

But may you also always step back,

stretch out, look up,

And witness your world opening wider

every time you ask,

Where am I? Where do I want to go?

Who do I need to be in order to get there?

While home expands to hold

your ever-evolving answers. Amen.

Opening Hymn: “For Flowers That Bloom about Our Feet” SLT 76

Welcome and Announcements

Call to Worship: Psalm 139 translated by Stephen Mitchell in A Book of Psalms

One: Lord, you have searched me and known me; you understand everything I do;

you are closer to me than my thoughts.

All: You see through my selfishness and weakness, into my inmost self.

There is not one corner of my mind that you do not know completely.

One: You are present before me, behind me, and you hold me in the palm of your hand.

All: Such knowledge is too awesome to grasp: so deep that I cannot fathom it

Prayer of Invocation

Sacred Reading: Psalm 139 translated by Stephen Mitchell in A Book of Psalms (1993)

Where can I go from your spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I take the wings of the morning

and fly to the ends of the sea,

even there your hand will guide me

and your spirit will give me strength.

If I rise to heaven, I meet you;

if I lie down in hell, you are there:

if I plunge through the fear of the terrorist

or pierce through the abuser’s rage,

you are there, in your infinite compassion,

and my heart rejoices in your joy.

You fashioned my inward parts;

you knit me in my mother’s womb.

My soul was not hidden from you

when I was being formed in secret,

woven in the depths of the world.

How can I keep from praising you?

I am fearfully and wonderfully made,

and all your works are marvelous.

Your eyes saw all my actions;

they were written down in your book;

all my days were created

before even one of them was.

How measureless your mind is, Lord;

it contains inconceivable worlds

and is vaster than space, than time.

If ever I tried to fathom it,

I would be like a child counting

the grains of sand on a beach.

Search me, Lord; test me

to the depths of my inmost heart.

Root out all selfishness from me

and lead me in eternal life.

Passing of the Peace

Sharing of our Joys and Concerns: Open to the Congregation

Prayers of the People/Pastoral Prayer

Offering

Doxology: “Tis a Gift to Be Simple” SLT 16

Tis a gift to be simple

Tis a gift to be free

Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be;

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained,

To bow and to bend

We shan't be ashamed;

To Turn, turn will be our delight,

Till by turning, turning we come round right.

Reading I: from

“Wish You Were Here” by Micah Bucey

Judson Memorial Church, September 19, 2021

The very first question that God asks Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the first question that God asks any human being in our sacred scriptures, is encapsulated in the Hebrew word ayeka [ah-eh-ka],which in English means, “Where are you?” And this is a groundbreaking, earthshaking question from God, because God isn’t asking about a physical location.

In Hebrew, ayeka doesn’t mean, “Where are you physically?” In Hebrew, to ask someone where they physically are, one would say eifoh atah [eh-foh ah-tah]? But in this Garden of Eden story, God doesn’t say eifoh atah. God says ayeka—not Where are you physically, but Where is your spirit, where is your heart, where is your soul? Basically: How are you doing? Really? Actually? How are you doing? How are you feeling about what’s happening around you and what are you doing about it? And this is not only God’s first question to a human in our recorded sacred scriptures. I’d like to believe that it’s God’s first question to us every morning that we’re lucky enough to wake up and give life another chance.

Hymn of Reflection: “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” SLT 97

Reading II: Hill Country by Tracy K. Smith

He comes down from the hills, from

The craggy rock, the shrubs, the scrawny

Live oaks and dried-up junipers. Down

From the cloud-bellies and the bellies

Of hawks, from the caracaras stalking

Carcasses, from the clear, sun-smacked

Soundlessness that shrouds him. From the

Weathered bed of planks outside the cabin

Where he goes to be alone with his questions.

God comes down along the road with his

Windows unrolled so the twigs and hanging

Vines can slap and scrape against him in his jeep.

Down past the buck caught in the hog trap

That kicks and heaves, bloodied, blinded

By the whiff of its own death, which God—

Thank God—staves off. He downshifts,

Crosses the shallow trickle of river that only

Just last May scoured the side of the canyon

To rock. Gets out. Walks along the limestone

Bank. Castor beans. Cactus. Scat of last

Night’s coyotes. Down below the hilltops,

He squints out at shadow: tree backing tree.

Dark depth the eyes glide across, not bothering

To decipher what it hides. A pair of dragonflies

Mate in flight. Tiny flowers throw frantic color

At his feet. If he tries—if he holds his mind

In place and wills it—he can almost believe

In something larger than himself rearranging

The air. He squints at the jeep glaring

In bright sun. Stares a while at patterns

The tall branches cast onto the undersides

Of leaves. Then God climbs back into the cab,

Returning to everywhere

Sermon: Where Are You? Abigail Hastings

Closing Hymn: “Over My Head” SLT 30

Postlude:                   Debbie Deane

All Souls Bethlehem Church

An Open and Affirming Congregation

Pastor: Rev. Dr. Boon Lin Ngeo

Ministers: All Members of ASBC

Minister Emeritus: Rev. Bill Nye 

First Time Visitor?  

Please sign our red Guest Book (located near the entrance)

and be our guest at the gathering following the service!

Interested in “Official” Church Membership?  

Please speak with Council President Raquel Irizarry about our next New Member gathering!  

An All-inclusive, Welcoming Community of Faith

born from the traditions of the:

Disciples of Christ - www.Disciples.org

United Church of Christ - www.UCC.org

Unitarian Universalist Association - www.UUA.org 

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