All age engagement: Advent Connections
God of Abraham and Sarah,
and all the patriarchs of old,
you are our Father too.
Your love is revealed to us in Jesus Christ,
Son of God and Son of David.
Help us in preparing to celebrate his birth
to make our hearts ready for your Holy Spirit
to make his home among us.
We ask this through Jesus Christ,
the light who is coming into the world.
Amen
The worshipping community at St. Peter's celebrated Advent Sunday yesterday in different ways: orders of service changed: colours changed, the first candle was lit. Everyone from the youngest to the oldest found some space to think about what watching and waiting could mean for them.
The Advent CD was distributed to worshippers after the morning services. There are enough still available for this Wednesday's morning congregation and for those receiving communion at home. And if you missed out, please send an e-mail to advent.stpeters@gmail.com and we'll do our best to get a CD to you.
The December CORNERSTONE became available this weekend in an unexpected but seasonal green cover after a just-in-time print run. Make sure you have your copy: it's a good read! Thank you to Amanda and her team!
And the church Christmas Cards will now be dropping onto doormats throughout the parish letting all our neighbours know about the major services over Christmas.
'Experience Christmas' began this morning with Year 1 from Weston Favell Primary, and will continue this afternoon, welcoming children from Headlands Year 3. The team will be back in tomorrow morning at 9.00 a.m. after Morning Prayer at 8.30.
How do you experience St. Peter's? What don't you know about what's going on?
Advent by Pamela Cranston
Look how long
the weary world waited,
locked in its lonely cell,
guilty as a prisoner.
As you can imagine
it sang and whistled in the dark.
It hoped. It paced and puttered about,
tidying its little piles of inconsequence.
It wept from the weight of ennui
draped like shackles on its wrists.
It raged and wailed against the walls
of its own plight.
But there was nothing
the world could do
to find its own freedom.
The door was shut tight.
It could only be opened
from the outside.
(Pamela Cranston is an American Episcopal priest working in California. Our theme for Advent 2016 is 'Open Doors' so it seemed to fit neatly)
Perhaps you'd expect it, but there seem to be absolutely no Advent jokes (we started to riff around four candles, but of course there are five, so that doesn't work), and the Christian Christmas jokes are all terrible. So if you have some good ones, send them in...
CD's - what a lovely idea. Received mine from Dad but will be passing it into someone in need at this time. Such a talent we have in our church.....
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