Worship Opportunities

Volunteers are needed to be acolytes, for the 5:00 p.m. Saturday and the 9:30 a.m. Sunday worship services.  Please use sign-up genius to sign-up to volunteer. https://goo.gl/YdCDBJ  

We also need assisting ministers, and sound techs for the Saturday 5:00 p.m. and the Sunday 9:30 a.m. worship service. You can call the office 815 895 9171 to volunteer for those jobs.  

Those in need of Pastoral Care have two new options:

1) Call Sue during business hours at the Salem Office

2) Call or Text Salem's  Pastoral Care Line at 815-797-2441. Currently, this Google Voice number will call or text Pastor Preston's cell phone after hours. It may ask you to state your name before the call is connected, this will help weed out spam phone calls.

Non-emergency prayer requests may also be emailed to Pastor or at the Salem@slcsycamore.org address.

Pastor Preston

Prayer Corner

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.
Genesis 1:31a (NIV)

On Saturday May 13, my husband and I participated in a migratory bird walk with several other members of the SAM Classics group, which was sponsored by the Sycamore Library.  The leader (a retired professor of ornithology) was amazing and could identify birds right away by their calls, or would see birds that most of us might have  otherwise missed.  There was a particularly big group that morning  so I tried to stay close to her so I could hear her tips and insights.

At first, I was interested in the information she shared, which included a great birding app, and some tips on when and where to look for migratory birds.  As we started walking down the Great Northern Trail, I was hooked on the app, which had a recording feature that  listened for bird calls and would not only list the birds it identified but would highlight a particular bird if it was calling at that moment.  This made me stop and seek out the birds I may otherwise have overlooked.

But an hour into the 2-hour walk, I stopped using the app as often and began to step back and just appreciate the beauty of God’s creation. It’s nice to know exactly what birds are out there, but stopping now and then to listen, look, pause, and appreciate nature was the best part of the experience.

God has created an amazing world for us.  My prayer is that as the weather warms up and we are spending more time outdoors, that we will be attuned to the beauty of the earth, and will remember to thank God for the gift of creation.

Dear Lord, we thank you for Your creation,

which is filled with beauty and wonder. 

Help us to steward, appreciate, and treasure

all of your creation, whether in our backyard

or in the vastness of the universe. Amen.

(If you are interested in downloading the birding app:  it’s Merlin Bird ID by Cornell Lab.)

Melanie Chavin