17th After Pentecost- Paula Tobon

Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and blessed be God's family now and forever.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid.

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee and worthily magnify thy holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Please join me in the words of the Gloria.

Glory to God in the highest, and peace to God's people on earth.

Lord God, Heavenly King, Almighty God and Father, we worship you, we give you thanks, we praise you for your glory.

Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father, Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world.

Have mercy on us.

You are seated at the right hand of the Father.

Receive our prayer.

For you alone are the Holy One.

You alone are the Lord.

You alone are the Most High.

Jesus Christ with the Holy Spirit and the glory of God the Father.

Amen.

The Lord be with you.

Let us pray.

O God, because without you we are not able to please you, mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Amen.

A prayer for the anniversary of September 11th.

God, the compassionate one whose loving care extends to all the world.

We remember this week your children of many nations and many faiths, whose lives were cut short by the fierce flames of anger and hatred.

Console those who continue to suffer and grieve, and give them comfort and hope as we all look to the future.

Out of what we have endured, give us the grace to examine our relationships with those who perceive us as enemies.

Show our leaders the way to use our power to serve the good of all for the healing of the nations.

This we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord, who in reconciling love was lifted up from the earth that he might draw all things to himself.

Amen.

He had two wives.

The name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the second Panina.

Panina had children, but Hannah had no children.

Now this man went up year by year from his town to worship and to sacrifice to the sobran of heaven's vanguard at Shiloh.

There the two sons of Eli, Hopni and Phineas, were priests of the Holy One, one of old.

And it was on the day Elkanah sacrificed, he would give to his wife Panina, and to all her daughters and her sons portions of the sacrifice.

But to Hannah he gave a double portion, because he loved her, though the womb of life had closed her womb.

Her rival used to provoke her severely, to irritate her, because the wellspring of life had closed her womb.

After they had eaten and drunk at Shiloh, Hannah rose and presented herself before the Holy One of old.

Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat beside the doorpost of the temple of the Holy One.

Hannah's soul was embittered, and she prayed to the source of life, and she wept profusely.

And she bowed a vow and said, Holy one of heaven's legions, if only you would truly look on the affliction of your slave woman, and remember me, and not forget your slave woman, but will give to your slave woman me and seed.

Then I will place him before you as a Nazarite all the days of his life.

He shall not drink wine or strong drink, and a razor shall not go upon his head.

And it was, as she increased praying before the faithful one, Eli was observing her mouth.

Now Hannah, she was speaking in her heart, only her lips moved, her voice was not heard.

So Eli took her for a drunkard, and Eli said to her, How long will you remain drunk?

Put your wine away, woman, away from you.

Then Hannah responded and said, No, my lord, I am a woman whose spirit has hardened.

I have not drunk either wine or strong drink.

I've been pouring out my soul before the God who hears.

Do not rec do not regard your slave as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking from my great grief and vexation all this time.

Then Eli answered and said, Go in peace, the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to God.

And Hannah said, May your slave woman find favor in your eyes.

Then the woman went on her way to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband, and her countenance was sad no longer.

The word of the Lord.

Let the name of the Holy One of old be blessed.

From the rising of the sun to its going down.

She who is wisdom is high above all nations.

Who is like the mother of all, our God, who sits enthroned on high.

She takes up the weak out of the dust.

She sets them with the rulers.

She makes the woman of a childless house.

You all remember, sisters and brothers, our labor and our toil, night and day we worked, so that we might not be a financial burden to any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God.

You are all witnesses with God, now holy, just, and blameless, with our conduct toward you believers.

As you all know, we dealt with each one of you like a parent with children, urging and encouraging you, and pleasing that you lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into God's own realm and glory.

The word of the Lord.

And because I'm going to the Creator, they said, What does he mean by this, a little while?

We do not know what he's talking about.

Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, Are you all discussing among yourselves what I meant when I said a little while, and you all will no longer see me?

And again, a little while, and you will all see me.

Very truly I tell you all that you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice.

You all will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy.

When a woman is giving birth, she has pain because her time has come, but when her child is born, she no longer remembers the tribulation because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world.

So you all have pain now, but I will see you all again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.

The gospel of the Lord prays to you, Christ.

I'm grateful to invite Paul Atovin, who is the uh director of St.

Vincent's House down in Galveston, uh, to give us a word this morning.

Thank you.

Good morning.

I'm Paula and I understand y'all really enjoy long homilies.

No, just totally kidding.

Uh I am so happy to be here from Galveston to be able to uh first of all thank you.

Thank you for the support that you have uh given St.

Vincent's House in Galveston.

And uh and I'd again I'd like to thank this congregation, especially nearly new, for the support that you have given us.

In St.

Vincent's House, we have served this Galveston community for over 70 years.

We're actually an outreach ministry of the Episcopal Church, and it is a very, very busy ministry.

Just from 21 to 22, we grew over 58%, and this year we anticipate growing even more.

Last year we had over a hundred thousand duplicated individuals come through our door.

And what makes it so uh special is that we offer holistic wraparound services.

We have 30 clinics with UTMB, we are full of medical care, we uh offer immigration, food banks, there's lots of prayers, and it's a very special ministry that happens in St.

Vincent's House.

There's lots of tears and lots of hugs.

I have a saying that is you can't be well if you are hungry and need food and shelter.

If you think about it, it's the most basic of all needs.

You can't be well if your blood sugar or blood pressure is so high that you can't function, and we have our clinics to address those issues.

You can't be well if your anxiety or depression is so high that you can't function well, we have our mental health counselors, and you can't be well if you don't have the love of the Lord, and so that's really what we try to stress at St.

Vincent's House.

If we look at today's reading, especially in Psalms and then the first reading that we heard, we heard, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, you his servants, praise the name of the Lord.

And of course, I couldn't be a good speaker if I didn't give you a definition of what one of the words means.

So if we look up the word servant in the Bible, there's actually two meanings to it.

One is the deacon, and basically the servant can be one who ministers to the needs of others, or a servant is somebody in the Bible who voluntarily chooses to serve another.

And that's really why I'm here.

It's about the servant's heart and what we can do in that.

We are at St.

Vincent's House, we call ourselves a beacon of hope and healing for all of God's people.

We're serving all of God's people.

Basically, we serve your friends and neighbors.

Uh, and then as we take that, we also go to the next word, which is hope, right?

When you serve somebody, you help give them hope.

And hope, again, is a noun.

It's a feeling of expectation or a desire for something to happen.

There's lots of synonyms that go with it.

It's an aspiration, a wish, a desire, a dream, a yearning.

It's a feeling of trust.

And many people that come through our doors actually experience initially the opposite of hope.

It's hopelessness, which I think is probably one of the saddest emotions that you can feel.

That's when you feel desolate and that there's no way out.

And like I said, many of our families or people that come through our threshold come in with that feeling.

Imagine being a young mom with kids and you're hungry, and you're coming to get food.

And again, food is the most basic of all.

Every month we have 130 families that come through, brand new families that have never asked for help a day in their life, are coming to ask for help.

Well, we like to take hope as a noun and turn it into a verb.

We all hear the word hope a lot, but there is a way to turn it into a verb, an action.

It's turning into the why not into a possibility when you want something to be happened.

So if we look in the scripture, hope is mentioned and it means a strong and confident expectation.

It's mentioned in the Bible 167 times, and it's in 159 verses.

It gives us protection, it gives us strength, courage, and boldness.

If we look at Romans 5.13, and this is one of my favorite verses, may the God of hope fill you with all the joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you can overflow with the hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Hope is never static or passive, it's dynamic, active, directive, and intentional.

It's life-sustaining, it's what keeps us going.

It's also very, very healing.

And if we look at hope and healing, there's one thing that is probably the most healing, and that is perspective.

I always talk about perspective is what keeps us, keeps us on the optimistic side to look at the positive.

Um, and how can you get this perspective?

And I always talk about volunteerism.

Uh I I formerly uh used to work at the School of Public Health, and data and studies are something that is very important.

You know, we have these amazing stories, but to have some statistical data to go with it.

There was a study done at the University of Pittsburgh, and it looked at two people's brains.

It did all these kind of uh brain scans, and one person was the brain of a volunteer, one type of person was a volunteer, the other was a non-volunteer, and they found that the brain scans were very different.

The person that was a volunteer showed a very noticeable difference, and it was really a fascinating study.

And then from the statistics that they did and all the surveys, they found that the person that volunteered had a body, their body had a physical response to stress and their blood pressure and depression and inflammation.

They had less depression, less inflammation, and uh they tended to live longer and had a higher self-esteem than somebody that didn't volunteer.

And I think a big part of it is it got yourself out of the bubble because when you live in the bubble, you're only thinking about yourself and and maybe your own issues.

But when you do volunteer, it steps you out of that.

Uh, for example, I we have a volunteer at St.

Vincent's house that she actually moved out of town, but she comes once a month to still volunteer in our pantry, and I was thanking her for that.

And uh her quote was, I get much more than I will ever give.

She's a perfect example of that volunteer.

Um that's how we have hope and provide healing.

It's the little things.

I think Mother Teresa made a great uh said a great quote.

She said, Never worry about the numbers, help that person one at a time and always start with the person nearest you.

You know, that is a great way to give hope and healing.

You never know what that person next to you is going through.

So start with that one person.

And when you look at how you can help, how can you make a difference within your community, please never forget the power of prayers.

You know, pray for those that are having a difficult time.

Um prayer is what can change things.

Um, there's so much that can be done.

There's so many organizations near you that can use volunteerism.

For example, at St.

Vincent's House, we're 100% philanthropic.

We have 15 staff people, but we're able to do amazing things through our volunteers.

We couldn't do what we do without our volunteers.

We have volunteers that come once a week and help us uh stock food or help us with food drives.

Uh we have other uh churches that help us with hygiene drive or diaper drives.

We're the only organization we run the Galveston County Diaper Bank.

Last year we gave out over two million baby and geriatric diapers.

We're the only non-for-profit that gives out geriatric supplies.

And that is something that is a very big part of our mission now.

We have volunteers in our pantry that help us with these hygiene cleaning supplies and diaper drives.

We also have volunteers that help us stock the shelf, but also we deliver food to 200 families a week, uh families that cannot get out, senior citizens that lived on fixed income and can't get out for food, and they're making that tough decision of prescriptions or food.

Um there's a lot that can happen.

There's also special events that happen.

Um and like I said, we are we are supported, and so are many other non-for-profits by the opportunities, and you can be that helping hand of God.

Um there's a great, you know, music is has a way of getting into our soul, and sometimes I feel like this Holy Spirit communicates things through the words of the music.

There is this great uh song that I think is one that really I think through my mind when I think, no, I'm not gonna do that.

And it's uh one and it says, I woke up this morning and I saw a world full of trouble now, and thought, how did we ever get so far?

How's it ever gonna turn around?

I turned my eyes to heaven and I thought, God, why don't you do something?

Well, I couldn't bear the thought of people living in poverty, children sold into slavery.

The thought disgusted me.

So I shook my fist to heaven and said, God, why don't you do something?

And he said, I did.

I created you.

If not us, then who?

If not me and you, it's the time for us to do something.

That song is by Matthew West and it's called Do Something.

Thank you so much.