Faith in Action 2022
Thanksgiving Celebration
Sunday, November 20th
Message at 10:00 AM
Lunch at 11:00 AM
Join us as we end our celebration of Faith in Action with a hearty soup and bread meal. We’ll have a few different types of soup to choose from, as well as a vegetarian chili option.
This humble meal as a community is the true meaning of communion.
The early Christians would meet together to break bread and have a meal together. This Sunday, we celebrate our journey through Faith in Action and move into the week of Thanksgiving with a light meal and breaking of bread together as a spiritual family.
Before the early Christians would eat, they would say a prayer of Thanksgiving. The following prayer was found amongst the documents at Nag Hammadi that helped to shed light on the lifestyle and literature that was written by early Christians during that time.
As you read the prayer, take time to embody the Christ consciousness that was awakened during this time of communion as One body.
The Prayer of Thanksgiving
Translated by James Brashler, Peter A. Dirkse and Douglas M. Parrott
We give thanks to You! Every soul and heart is lifted up to You, undisturbed name, honored with the name ‘God’ and praised with the name ‘Father’, for to everyone and everything (comes) the fatherly kindness and affection and love, and any teaching there may be that is sweet and plain, giving us mind, speech, (and) knowledge: mind, so that we may understand You, speech, so that we may expound You, knowledge, so that we may know You. We rejoice, having been illuminated by Your knowledge. We rejoice because You have shown us Yourself. We rejoice because while we were in (the) body, You have made us divine through Your knowledge.
“The thanksgiving of the man who attains to You is one thing: that we know You. We have known You, intellectual light. Life of life, we have known You. Womb of every creature, we have known You. Womb pregnant with the nature of the Father, we have known You. Eternal permanence of the begetting Father, thus have we worshiped Your goodness. There is one petition that we ask: we would be preserved in knowledge. And there is one protection that we desire: that we not stumble in this kind of life.”