Welcome to The Prime Timers Adult Bible Fellowship Web Page!

Please join us for coffee, refreshments, fellowship and Luke during the month of August. We now meet in rooms 207-207 in the Payne Education Center, every Sunday from 10:00am to 10:50. Hope to see you there.

Prime Timer teacher Skip Maryan, leading the class for the month of August, makes a contribution to our good news chicken.

The Prime Timers were moved!

The Prime Timers and the Seekers swapped rooms starting this week, August 7.

Meeting Human Needs 

Our studies this month are from the gospel of Luke. Skip Maryan began with some history. Luke is not signed by anyone, but it is presumed to be written by one person due to its consistent style of writing.

We have been following a lesson plan that began back in September 2004 with readings from Genesis and now concludes for the rest of this month with readings from Luke. The plan is part of the Uniform Series from the National Council of Churches, and we will be continuing in September with the next in the series "You Will Be My Witnesses" concentrating on the book of Acts. Remember that the Bible verses published on this site are for next week, but you can quickly refer back to last weeks material by clicking the first of the "Past Issues" links on the left side of this page.

Getting back to the reading for today, from Luke 4:16-30, we find Jesus back in Nazareth, being honored in the synagogue with a scroll containing the words of the prophet Isaiah 18 "The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
   because he has anointed me
   to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
   and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
   19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Jesus then proclaimed that the words of the prophet are now fulfilled, by Jesus. The people in the synagogue were full of praise for Jesus, calling him Joseph's son, but things were about to change for the worse. Jesus message about Isaiah's words was that the "prisoners" to be freed were everyone bound to the restrictive Jewish Law. And the "blind" were people who did not see or understand Jesus' message.

Our readings stopped at verse 24 and pick up at 28, where the people in the synagogue are ready to toss Jesus off a cliff! Here are the verses left out of the readings:

Luke 4:25-27
   25 I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. 27 And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian."

In other words, great misery had come and their prophets were elsewhere. The reading finishes with the people driving Jesus' to the edge of a cliff, determined to throw him off, but Jesus simply (Luke 4:30) "walked right through the crowd and went on his way."

Max Kech then concluded our session with our healing prayer.

Prime Timers Contact names and numbers

Mentor

The Rev. Maurice L. "Rusty" Goldsmith. D.D.
713/985-3831
rgoldsmith@stmartinsepiscopal.org

Leader

The Prime Timers are now in the room the Seekers used, and vice versa. Now if we can fill all those seats...

Skip Maryan discusses this weeks lesson with the Rev. Rusty Goldsmith.

Henny Penny found her way to the Prime Timers new room. How about you?

This is a view of the new church from the back at the baptismal fount.

 The Lesson for Sunday, August 14th is titled "Hope for Healing"

Key Verse:  Luke 8:48

Focus of the Lesson:  When people desperately seek healing and wholeness they may simultaneously experience both hope and despair. How can people sustain hope and find healing and wholeness? The close relationship between faith and healing can be found in Jesus' response to the faith of a woman who took the risk of reaching out to touch the fringe of his clothing and in Jesus' challenge to Jairus to have and maintain faith in the crisis of a dying daughter.

The reading is Luke 8:40-56. This text is from the New International Version.

   40 Now when Jesus returned, a crowd welcomed him, for they were all expecting him. 41 Then a man named Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, came and fell at Jesus' feet, pleading with him to come to his house 42 because his only daughter, a girl of about twelve, was dying.
   As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him. 43 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. 44 She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped.
   45 "Who touched me?" Jesus asked.
   When they all denied it, Peter said, "Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you."
   46 But Jesus said, "Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me."
   47 Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. 48  Then he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace."
   49 While Jesus was still speaking, someone came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. "Your daughter is dead," he said. "Don't bother the teacher any more."
   50 Hearing this, Jesus said to Jairus, "Don't be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed."
   51 When he arrived at the house of Jairus, he did not let anyone go in with him except Peter, John and James, and the child's father and mother.  52 Meanwhile, all the people were wailing and mourning for her. "Stop wailing," Jesus said. "She is not dead but asleep."
   53 They laughed at him, knowing that she was dead. 54 But he took her by the hand and said, "My child, get up!" 55 Her spirit returned, and at once she stood up. Then Jesus told them to give her something to eat. 56 Her parents were astonished, but he ordered them not to tell anyone what had happened.