Blog
The season of Lent always seems to sneak up on us much faster than expected! Here are the details you need to be aware of for this year's season of preparation leading up to Easter: 1. Lent officially begins on Ash Wednesday (18 February) and we have an evening service (18h30) on that day where we will be marked with ash crosses on our foreheads as a sign of repentance and our longing to return to God.
This Sunday our gospel reading (John 15:1-10) has Jesus comparing us to branches that must remain connected to the vine if they want to experience life and bear fruit. The passage from John is the set reading for our covenant service (first instituted by John Wesley in 1755) which provides an annual opportunity to renew our commitment to the Vine and the Gardener who tends the vineyard.
At our leaders meeting this week, we prayed Paul's prayer in Phil 1:3-11, giving thanks for many years of fruitful "partnership in the gospel" for Westville Methodist, and asking God for wisdom that we "may be able to discern what is best" going forward.
Anglican theologian Urban Holmes wrote that although we think of the Desert Mothers and Fathers of the 3rd to 5th century as holy people who fled a corrupt society to find God in the wilderness, this is an over-simplification. He says that in reality, "they thought of themselves more properly as going out to fight evil" - to confront the demons in the desert.
All the very best for this new year - I hope it has started well for you and yours! The church office is open again and during this next week we expect to see most of the groups that meet on our property re-emerging. Small groups are getting going again too - maybe this will be the year for to join one if you haven't already? Youth and Sunday begin again on 18 January.
As we prepare for Christmas this year, with everything else on the go, here are some helpful thoughts: a poem by Barbara Doerrer-Peacock: In the midst of it all… a government tax, a burdened journey, a burgeoned town, no room in the midst of it all. In the midst of it all … each single life, here and now, walks the hard pavement of ordinary life, wading through the sinking mud or flash flood of waking tasks, worried racks of anxious unknowns.
I get to my office early on weekday mornings after dropping my daughter at school and my aim is to spend the first part of each morning in prayer. I've struggled to be consistent though - most mornings there is something more urgent that grabs my attention and so I put off praying until later in the day (and often don't get there at all). But on Wednesday morning this week, I came in to the office and sat and prayed for 25 minutes without being pulled away into something else.
There are two special events on our calendar this weekend. On Saturday morning our Christmas market takes place and there has been a flurry of activity on the property this week as final preparations have been made for this day. A huge thank you to Kerry and the team making this happen - including all of you who have contributed goods and eats for the day! Each year that we have held this market it has been wonderful to see funds raised for a worthy cause, but ultimately the real gift is our being together and all the shared conversation and laughter on the day. Hope to see you there!
Our lectionary makes an interesting choice for the first Sunday of Advent. In this season when we are mostly looking back at the coming of Jesus into our world (remembering the baby in the manger, the shepherds, the Magi ...), the lectionary gospel reading this Sunday has us looking forward to the second coming of Christ. And, in the words of Jesus, we are urged as God's people to live in a state of watchfulness, ready for his coming.
French author Charles Peguy once told the story of a man who died and went to heaven. He was met by an angel who said to him, ‘Show me your wounds.’ And he replied, ‘Wounds? I have not got any.’ And the angel said, ‘Did you never think that anything was worth fighting for?”