Category Archives: Mosaic Series 2002

Mosaic Series – In God’s Image – “Treasure in Earthen Vessels”

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Written by the Rev. Doris R. Powell

I WAS THIRTY-TWO. I’d just been backpacking in Colorado and was painting my house when I began to experience mysterious symptoms: swelling and pain in my hands, then an elbow, soon my shoulders, knees, and ankles. I went to work swathed in ace bandages. Within two months, I’d been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis.
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Mosaic Series – In God’s Image – “Jabez: The Nobody, Somebody”

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Written by Patricia Williams-Long Franklin

Invocation

Wonderful and generous God, you created us in your image. Thank you. Help us to live into your hopes and trust. Help us to be somebody in your image even when we are ordinary people going about our lives. Help us in the time of trial and in the times of joy and all the in-between times. We ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.

1 CHRONICLES 4:9, 10

THE NAME JABEZ MEANS pain or sorrow. Is it just possible that he was less than perfect in appearance, presentation, or had some other form of “disability”? During the times of Jabez, names were representative of the “man” and hopes and aspirations of the parent for the child. You’ve no doubt heard of the boy named Sue? Now, here is the boy named Pain, for Jabez was born in sorrow.
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