I’d like to begin my reflections today by thanking the Youth With A Mission (YWAM) Team for their ministry in our Worship Service last week.  The Team were able to share the vital and life changing experiences of living with Jesus in their lives.  Today they will present a message in the form of a drama that depicts some of the challenges that face many people today in their search for meaning, purpose and truth.  Next week the Team will be leaving the Gold Coast on their way to Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Thailand for the “outreach” phase of their DTS.  They will be away for two (2) months on outreach, before returning here to the Gold Coast (20/7/12) for their final time of consolidation and then a formal graduation ceremony.  We will pray for them today and in the months ahead.

On this Mother’s Day, we are focusing on two passages of scripture:- John 15:1-17 and 1 John 4:7-21.  Both of these passages are rich with meaning and beautiful evocative imagery.  Some of great themes of our Christian Discipleship come from these passages and I cannot do justice to either of them today.  Nevertheless, it’s worthwhile (may I suggest, even fruitful) to not pass up the opportunity in ‘drinking deeply’ from the nectar of God’s vine today.

When Jesus says that he is the vine and that we are the branches (John 15:5), and that we are to “abide” or “remain” or “dwell” (v.4,5,7,9,10) in him, if that were all he said then abiding in Jesus would be the end of the story of Christian Discipleship.  We are to cling to Jesus, as a vine clings to its support.  We are simply to “abide”, to be with Jesus.  But you will note that in today’s scripture Jesus continues, …..  He says that the Father will “prune” (v.2,3) the branches.  From this statement, we could get the message that abiding is not the end of the story – it is the beginning of the story.  The end of the story is fruitfulness, new growth, and productivity.  Why else would there be pruning if there were no concern for growth and fruitfulness?

As our Congregation enters into a time of refocusing on our Vision and Values in these next few months, we might find that some pruning will need to happen so that greater fruitfulness (v.8) will result. Sometimes we must let go of some activity in order to better focus ourselves, in order to better utilize the specific gifts that God has given us in order to be more fruitful.  The fruitfulness of the Church and of us as disciples is part and parcel of the way the Son glorifies the Father.  “My true disciples produce much fruit.  This brings great glory to my Father” (John 15:8 NLT).  Bishop Dick Wills said, “You shouldn’t evaluate people on the basis of their gifts but rather on the basis of their fruit.”   I find this to be suitably challenging and when I go to the Presbytery retreat next week (21-24 May), I will prayerfully consider the challenges that this presents to my ministry and to the fruitfulness of this congregation.

Today we are experiencing an aspect of fruitfulness as Tom Tucker shares a developing gift that he has been nurturing in the recent months.  Tom has taken to playing the guitar and on this Mother’s Day he wants to bless us with some songs that he’s found to be of encouragement and happiness throughout his life.  Here is another example for us of the fruitfulness of a life that continues to “abide in the vine”.

On Sunday 27th May (Pentecost Sunday) we are giving people the opportunity to publically state their connection to Christ through the Sacrament of Baptism and through Confirmation.  Several people have wanted to belong to the church by becoming members and by reaffirming their faith publicly. If anyone wants to respond to those opportunities, would you please contact me this week  (0409 261 337) to discuss how we can fulfill that commitment to your growing faith.

May your relationship with Jesus be fruitful……this week…….Rev. Brad Foote

What a wonderful JOY it is to come into the House of God for worship.  Today we are sharing with the Youth With A Mission (YWAM) students who are coming to the end of the first phase of their Discipleship Training School (DTS).  They have spent the past three (3) months in a lecture phase where their personal relationship with God has been nurtured, developed and radically transformed.  In two weeks time they will be heading off to Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Thailand for the “outreach” phase of their DTS.  They will be away for two (2) months on outreach, before returning here to the Gold Coast (20/7/12) for their final time of consolidation and then a formal graduation ceremony.

One of the amazing aspects of the YWAM ministry is that none of these students knew each other three months ago.  They come from different countries across the globe and from February to May, each of these young people has learnt to love one another in a way that has transformed them from the inside out.  Today you will see how God has been at work in their lives as they share some of their journey with us.  Isn’t it great to see firsthand how God is at work in people’s lives?  As a congregation we are truly blessed to witness Jesus alive in us each and every day.  What a great testimony to the risen Christ in our midst.

Last week at our Annual General Meeting (AGM) we were able to reflect on the many things that God has been doing in the life of this Congregation over the past five years since we adopted our Vision, Values and faith Goals.  Jill Gray, who facilitated the initial process, five years ago, was on hand last Sunday to begin the next phase of growth for our Congregation.  Jill did a ‘score card’ on our initial plans and measured them against the intended outcomes.  The scorecard was mixed, but we were pretty happy with the achievements.  She listed more than 20 aspects of growth and ministry that people wanted to give thanks to God for.  Most of them fitted completely within the DNA of our Church’s Vision and Values.  In the coming months we will be evaluating and reviewing the mission of this Church and asking the question as to what the next step might be.  Part of that discussion will incorporate a long-standing desire to reassess the use of ourproperty and the possibility of some partnership or development in conjunction with YWAM.  This is a process that will require significant prayer and discussion in the coming months.  The Church Council wants the whole congregation to participate in this future ministry, so I urge you to get involved and be committed to prayer for wisdom and guidance.  This is God’s Church and as the body of Christ in this place we need to ensure that Jesus Christ is the head of His Body and we need to hear His voice leading us forward.

The Christian Churches on the Gold Coast have been asked to find ways of sharing “One Heart for The Gold Coast”.  I have accepted the invitation to host a Prayer and Praise evening on Friday 25th May from 7.30 to 9pm in this Church.  The local Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Baptist, Salvation Army, Spanish Church and a few independent Churches have been invited to join us on that occasion.  It will be 2 days before Pentecost Sunday, so I hope that we can live out the essence of what Pentecost represents as the “birth place of the Christian Church”.  Please put that date in your diary.   Acts 1:8 reminds us of our charter – “But when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you will receive power and will tell people about me everywhere  – in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth”.

Let’s be encouraged by the empowerment of God’s Spirit to be “Reaching out, changing lives” this week and into the future. ……Rev Brad Foote

Hallelujah Christ is Risen. He is risen indeed. This is the testimony of our faith. The living Jesus is with us. The texts this week invite us to explore what it actually means that Christ is present with us. We use this language all the time in the life of the church but we don’t often talk about what that experience of presence actually is for each of us. Each of the texts offers a different aspect of that experience. (Luke 24:36b-48, Acts 3:12-19, Psalm 4, 1 John 3:1-7)

In our Focus scripture Luke 24:36b-48, Jesus is back! Or is he? If things are as they always were Jesus and the disciples living and learning together on the road – why are things in Luke 24:36b-48 so strange? In some way we don’t understand how the Jesus who appears to his disciples does not seem to be the Jesus they, who had lived with him for three years, remember. Jesus had to convince the disciples that it is he. Later, in verse 44, Jesus speaks of a time when he was still with them. But isn’t he with them now? Or is he with them in a new and mysterious way?

What does Jesus’ resurrection mean? As we read the sequel to Luke’s gospel, which is The Acts of the Apostles, we see the story of God’s relationship with humanity developing in a new and vital way. What began in the deepest history of the foundations of the nation of Israel, begins to blossom out into the entire world. A new era is dawning. For that to happen, the disciples who are present with the resurrected Jesus need a deep and abiding experience of his presence. This they do by eating with Jesus. To eat with someone in the Ancient Nest East, to share their hospitality, is to be intimately connected to them, to be linked with them in a relationship of mutual responsibility, care, welcome, and support. In eating with his disciples Jesus offers this mutuality to his followers.

Sharing a meal and hospitality together will be part of our Annual General Meeting next Sunday. As Jesus shared food and hospitality with his disciples after the resurrection, they recognized him. I hope that we too will recognize the risen Christ among us as we journey into a new era of life and witness in this congregation. In the months ahead we will share meals together in a number of different settings. One of those events will be “dinners for eight”. Keep an eye out for that.

Part of our Annual General Meeting will be given to Mrs Jill Gray who will introduce and launch us into a period of reviewing the Vision and Values that were adopted 5 years ago. Many new people to the congregation were not part of that initial process, so it is hoped that we can enfold everyone into a revitalized understanding of where God might be leading us in the future.

The reading from Acts 3:12-19 reminds us that it is the Spirit of God and faith in Jesus Christ that empowers healing and wholeness. Peter and John did not cure the lame man. “It was the power of his name that gave strength to this lame man. What you see and know was done by faith in his name; it was faith in Jesus that has made him well as you can all see” (Acts 3:16). Let’s be encouraged by the empowerment of God’s Spirit to be more trusting and faithful and great things will unfold. Please pray this prayer with me:-

God, your world is a place of wonder with much we do not understand. Yet we trust you, knowing that you are with us in all the mysteries of our lives together. We know that as we trust and open ourselves to your truths we experience revelation. AMEN

Grace filled recognition of Christ with Us…. this week. Rev Brad Foote  (22/04/12)

Hallelujah, He Is Risen.  He is risen indeed.

This is the cry of surprise and joy that is heard throughout the Christian Church today… and around the world.  This great message is real for us as Christians because we have had an encounter with the risen Christ at some point in our journey of faith.  It means something to us, it encourages us to live life with a fullness and a vigor that influences the people around us as light influences the darkness, as salt influences or seasons meat or a meal.

However there are many in our world for whom this Easter experience is quite meaningless and inconsequential.  I find my heart going out to those who “don’t seem to care” about God’s love for them.  I rehearse words in my head to say to people in different situations, but when the time comes, those rehearsed words don’t seem to come out as I had planned.  I find that to be quite frustrating, because I want people to know the “love of the Saviour”, the joy of being found, but many don’t even know that they could be lost!!

However, as my faith has grown over time, I’ve realised that this Christian life that I am part of is not about me at all, it’s about Jesus and the Easter Community that he formed through this resurrection experience.  Leslie Newbigin says in his book, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, “Jesus did not write a book but formed a community.  This community has at its heart the remembering and rehearsing of his words and deeds, and the sacraments given by him through which it is enabled both to engraft new members into its life and to renew this life again and again through sharing in his risen life through the body broken and the lifeblood poured out.  It exists in him and for him.  He is the centre of its life.  Its character is given to it, when it is true to its nature, not by the characters of its members but by his character.  Insofar as it is true to its calling, it becomes the place where men and women and children find that the gospel gives them a framework of understanding, the “lenses” through which they are able to understand and cope with the world.”

Now that is a huge quote, but I’d like you to reflect on Newbegin’s intent as we examine the way we represent the Christian faith as an Easter People at the Ashmore Uniting Church, in our weekly worship experiences and in our daily lives with our families and in the world at large.

Last Sunday (Palm Sunday) our Church was full with people of all ages sharing in our Messy Church Palm Sunday, Craft and Passover Meal experience.  I’ve had very positive feedback from some of the people who visited with us for the first time.  Thank you to those who lived out the values of this Church by offering “Welcoming Friendship” to the newcomers and their children.

They were pleasantly surprised and my prayer is that God may have used The Gospel through us in a ‘Pluralist Society’ to demonstrate that God’s love for the world is real and something that might be worth examining for themselves and their families.  A big Thank-you to all who contributed to the Messy Church experience.  We raised $421.00 from the Jam Club Market Day Stall, almost enough to buy two Sewing Machines ($250 each) for the empowerment of women through the Lent Event projects.

Hallelujah, He Is Risen.  He is risen indeed……Rev. Brad Foote

What is Your Donkey?

Welcome to this Special day of worship, a service that we are calling “Messy Church”.   We hope that if this is your first time visiting us here that you will find a place of welcome and that God’s presence is experienced throughout the morning.  There are many reasons why today’s worship experience is being expressed in a multifaceted way.  One o those reasons is that we are a Church that wants to provide a place where everyone can have a chance to be involved in life with God in a way that’s real to them.  That being said, Ashmore Uniting Church is a “loving church, focused on the gospel of Christ: reaching out, meeting needs, and equipping people for service”.

So here we are today, Palm Sunday, standing on the precipice of Holy Week.  We have a sense of foreboding, a sense of anxiety, a sense of breaking relationships: we know what will happen, but our challenge is to stay with the events that are about to unfold. It is a story not just to be heard, but a story to be lived through. Let’s not jump to Resurrection Sunday too soon!

Palm/Passion Sunday provides a great opportunity for an intergenerational experience of worship – it opens the possibility to feel the tides of emotion, of spiritual energy, and physical encounter.   There is much for the children, young adults, and older people to connect with; the story has important things to teach us about each other and the way our world operates.   Today however we are only taking up one of many, many, themes that emerge out of this aspect of the Gospel.  Approaching this in an intergenerational way in the context of a safe space with older mentors, offers an opening for children and young people to explore some of the themes that call us to discipleship. I hope that it can offer older people a fresh lens to look at stories of pain, instead of just approaching it as a familiar, well-worn story.

This Sunday has early historical roots, and has traditionally been a day to move through the events of the forthcoming Holy Week. We can experience the story through the events recorded by Mark. Mark presents the bare essential elements of Jesus’ last pre-crucifixion days. Those hearing Mark’s account in the first century would have had living memory of the political context and social setting, filling in the links of the story. Let’s hear the story for ourselves, and see what and where it leads us in our own political context and social setting.

Through the Lent Event journey we’ve been engaging with people in our world who experience extreme poverty and disadvantage.  As the children show us what they’ve learnt through Lent, may we play out part and support their efforts in their market stall as they raise $250.00 to purchase a sewing machine for some women in a village who are trying to be self sufficient and support their family and community.  Today you’ll be asked What is your Donkey…….this Palm Sunday?  I hope that becomes more meaningful as the service unfolds.

I was encouraged by this prayer on Thursday 29^th March from our Lent Event Prayers:-

Heavenly bridge builder,

Connect your people across divisions of race,  of wealth,  of belief,  of power,  of age and gender.

Heavenly bridge builder,

connect, our families, communities, cities, countries and continents

connect, our resources, languages, ideas, creativity and technologies

connect , our smiles, friendships, dreams, prayers and hands.

Heavenly bridge builder,

dancing across waters of division, creating pathways of harmony, linking us all back to you, reconcile us.

Through your grace and the power of your cross

build bridges between us and all around us

take away barriers of fear and hopelessness

until all creation is renewed.

Amen.

May you give your Donkey to Jesus for his purposes ….this Holy Week…..Rev. Brad Foote

A New Covenant On Our Hearts 

Welcome to worship today.  Ashmore Uniting Church is a “loving church, focused on the gospel of Christ: reaching out, meeting needs, and equipping people for service”.

Firstly, I’d like to thank Chris Alton for leading our worship service last week while many of us were away on our inaugural Ashmore Uniting Church Family camp at Burleigh Heads.  From all reports, Chris led very meaningful and worshipful service.

Secondly, I’d like to thank Vanessa Neideck for the tremendous effort that she put into planning and making the Family Camp such a successful experience for all who attended.  Vanessa really had thought of everything for that occasion.  THANKS VANESSA.  We had a marvelous time of relaxing, developing community and sharing life and faith together.  There were children and adults sharing together in God’s creation.  We even tried “tracing around an invisible wriggling God”.  It was fun.  Praise the Lord.

On this Fifth Sunday in Lent, the shadow of the Cross is now in view and next Sunday we will see Jesus riding on a donkey into Jerusalem to the loud shouts of the crowd:- Hossanna!, Hossanna!, Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.  But halt!!  Dare we race ahead of ourselves – we are not there yet!!  First we must hear what Jesus has to say to the people around him, to the disciples and to the religious leaders of the day, before the emotion and the reactions to His words and actions take us to their climax.  In his last public dialogue in John 12:20-33, Jesus speaks of his imminent death.  When people ask to see Jesus, his response is to tell them that they must risk even death, as he does.  But this is not the ending – a seed planted in the ground yields a rich harvest.  So Jesus’ own death will yield new life for all.

Our text from Jeremiah 31:31-34 continues and develops the “covenantal theme” that has been guiding us through the preaching during this Lenten season.  As we get closer to Easter, the scriptures show us that God’s plan is to “make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah where He will put a new law within them and write it on their hearts.” God says, “I will be their God and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:32).  We are people of the new covenant and this has benefits and responsibilities attached to it.

One of those benefits and one of those responsibilities is to be people who live an authentic Christian life.  At the beginning of this Lenten journey I said that ‘living an authentic Christian life is one of the most important questions for people of faith today’.  In the Christian faith, authentic living has to do with experiencing God’s Spirit and living in God’s grace.  I hope that through Lent you are letting God guide you into some deeper thinking and life practices that are helping you respond to such questions as:- How can we live authentic lives that honor God with the transformational love Jesus showed?  How can we adopt lifestyles that are good for the whole earth? These are practical questions that individual Christians and Christian Communities are facing through the Lent Event program:- This One Life – Lent Event Journey Guide.  I hope that the weekly ‘prayer guide’ is stimulating your journey of an authentic Christian life.  Please go to www.lentevent.com to see some of the projects that your lent monies will be supporting.  Next week you may wish to begin bringing your moneyboxes with your “lent monies” in them.

Next week (Palm Sunday) will be a special “Messy Church and Family Service with a Passover Meal and Lunch together”.  Come for some of the time or stay for the morning from 9am to 12.30pm.  What a wonderful time it will be.  May you experience authentic Christian living through Lent…..….this week. .

Rev. Brad Foote

Economic Empowerment

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Living Legacy

Good morning and welcome to worship on this Second Sunday in Lent.  Last week in my Foote-notes I said that one of the most important questions for people of faith today is how to live an authentic Christian life, a life that is faithful to Jesus Christ.  In the Christian faith, authentic living has to do with experiencing God’s Spirit AND living in God’s grace.  I hope that we will take time over these 40 days of Lent to give some time to really asking God to guide us into some deeper thinking and life practices that will respond to such questions as:- How can we live authentic lives that honour God with the transformational love Jesus showed?  How can we adopt lifestyles that are good for the whole earth? These are practical questions that individual Christians and Christian Communities can address as we take time out in this period of reflection and preparation.  This week and in the weeks leading up to Easter we have included the daily prayers from This One Life – Lent Event Journey Guide.  Please make time to allow God’s Spirit to change and transform your thinking and your practice through this season.

Last week (1^st Sunday in Lent) we focused on promise and remembering.  All four passages of scripture took us back to re-membering what it is to be in covenant with God and for God to be in covenant with us.  (God’s Covenant with Noah [Gen 9] and the reminder of being God’s beloved and baptized [Mark 1] people was one of our foci).  The readings for this second Sunday in Lent focus on another covenant: the promise God made to Abram and to Sarai.  Again, we are reminded that such promises of faithful relationship are initiated by God, not based on merit or worth, with the purpose of bringing blessing to all the earth, all peoples everywhere.  Therein lies our theme for today, Living Legacy.

So in Genesis 17:1-7,15-16 we find God making a covenantal promise with Abram.  It’s called The Abrahamic Covenant.  History has shown us that Abraham is the ancestor of “a multitude of nations” and Christians share the Abrahamic tradition with Jews and Muslims.  All three faiths count Abraham as their literal or spiritual ancestor, and all three recognize Abrahams’s line as a legacy of divine grace.

The Abrahamic Covenant reminds us that God owes us nothing: the favour we receive comes undeserved.  In the Romans 4:13-25 we find Paul struggling to put this grace/favour into words.  He makes a distinction between “law” and “faith” as though the law brings no goodness.  Yet in the Jewish tradition, they recognized Torah law as the way that brings life.  It (the law) was meant to be a gift of divine grace.  But history shows that human failure and sin continued to separate us from our creator.  The law could not/did not save us.  What then can we do??  God has found a way.  God has provided a Living Legacy in Jesus.

Jesus is God’s supreme and final redefinition of God.  In Jesus, the Christ, God became apparent, openly revealing who God really is.  This Sunday’s Gospel Mark 8:31-38 is a pivotal point in Mark’s testimony to Jesus.  From this point (chapter we are seeing Jesus expressing himself, as a ‘suffering servant’, rather than the ‘miracle worker’ that we’ve seen up until that point. Now the drumbeat changes and we walk with Jesus down the perilous path that shall lead him to Jerusalem and death on the cross.  It’s in today’s Gospel that Jesus shocks his disciples by forecasting his suffering, death, and resurrection.  Jesus’ talk about ‘resurrection’ is the first hint of a Living Legacy but it comes at a very high cost.  The cost is His very life.

As we come to communion today we are asked to remember Him – “This is my body, which is given for you.  Do this in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11:24).  As the risen Christ, he is living.  We (The Church) have been commissioned to be the body of Christ.  We then are the living legacy with Christ as the head.

May you re-member again the covenant of grace … as we follow Jesus …. this week …. towards the cross.

Rev. Brad Foote

Re-member again the Covenant of Grace
Good morning and welcome to worship on this First Sunday in Lent. One of the most important questions for people of faith today is how to live an authentic Christian life, a life that is faithful to Jesus Christ. In the Christian faith, authentic living has to do with experiencing God’s Spirit and living in God’s grace. I hope that we will take time over these 40 days of Lent to give some time to really asking God to guide us into some deeper thinking and life practices that will respond to such questions as:- How can we live authentic lives that honour God with the transformational love Jesus showed? How can we adopt lifestyles that are good for the whole earth? These are practical questions that individual Christians and Christian Communities can address as we take time out in this period of reflection and preparation.
This first week in Lent is about promise and remembering. All four passages of scripture today lead us back to remembering what it is to be in covenant with God and for God to be in covenant with us. The story of Noah in Genesis 9:8-17, reminds us that the great sign of the rainbow that can be seen for miles around is a sign that God will not forget the promises that God has made. And yet the promise comes after hard and dangerous times. Psalm 25:1-10 also brings out the point that sin and stumbling bring consequences, but God can be reminded to forgive “Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for your goodness sake”. (Psalm 25:7) 1 Peter 3:18-22 remembers the Noah story and links it to the waters of baptism by saying “The waters of baptism do not symbolize washing off the dirt of everyday life: they are a sign of our return to God from a clear conscience” (1 Peter 3:21), our “original blessedness” out of chaos and into solidarity, by the remembering grace of God. In the Mark 1:9-15 reading we have Jesus being baptized by John in the Jordan and God’s words of promise and affirmation “this is my beloved Son, and I am fully pleased with you”. The very next step though, was that Jesus then immediately was compelled by the Spirit, into the wilderness where he experienced a time of testing, and when it concluded, “the fullness of God drew near.” (Mark 1:15)
This journey through Lent should bring us to a point where ‘the fullness of God draws near”. Now that (the fullness of God drawing near) is going to look different for many of us because God works in a multiplicity of ways through a multiplicity of people in a multiplicity of churches and situations. BUT what excites me is the FACT that God ACTS and God uses US to bring about this transformation in HIS WORLD.
The prayer on Ash Wednesday in our Lent Event 2012 Journey Guide has been inspirational for me in my Lenten Journey:-
On this journey you call us to leave our zones of comfort and privilege to seek your wisdom, your guidance and your healing. Speak to us as we journey with Jesus toward his destiny, and ours. Redirect us that we may not fall back into lifeless patterns. Open us as we journey in ways that shake us from our stubbornness and reveal new possibilities. Take all that we bring, as we set out today:?our brokenness, our failures and neglect of your beautiful world and your people. Take all that we bring today: the hurtful and selfish things we have thought and said and done. Take all that we bring today: thoughts of all the times our backs have been turned away from you. Take all that we bring, that which holds us back, and unleash your Holy wind and fire and storm upon it all. Refine, re-imagine and re-deliver us this day. Send us out with ash upon our face, marked to bring your life and light and hope to this darkened world, for we know that we were created to declare your praise with our lips and by our lives. With you, our journey begins again. Amen” (page.50)
May you re-member again the covenant of grace, as we follow Jesus, this week, towards the cross.
I’d love to see you this afternoon for our first Lent Event Study from 2-4pm in the Atrium.

Rev Brad Foote

Hope Restored

Good morning and welcome to worship.  This is the third Sunday in Advent: – the halfway point of our Advent season.  Have you slowed down yet?  Have you begun to let the wonder and mystery of Christmas speak to you in the midst of the “stuff” that seems to take over at this time of the year.  The Season of Advent tends to be one of growing anxiety generated by demands for time, energy and resources that may be limited.  We seem to find ourselves caught in a quandary: – trying to give time and energy to our families as well as fulfilling all of the commitments we have to the other pastimes and social engagements that keep us busy and occupied throughout the year.

This, the third Sunday in Advent is sometimes known as “Rejoice Sunday”.  To rejoice is to affirm our confidence that God is present in our lives, even when we do not see evidence of God’s presence.   Today’s Psalm (Psalm 126) calls us to rejoice all the time and to “come home with shouts of joy” (Psalm 126:6).  That may be a challenge for some of us, don’t you think?

I’ve been saying that this season of longing, waiting and hoping… is a helpful and necessary preparation for Christmas.  Take some time to read the lectionary readings for today (Psalm 126, Isaiah 61:1-4,8-11, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-26 and John 1:6-8,19-28) and you will find that they are full of JOY, encouraging us to remember the abundant grace of God.  In reflecting on ways in which we have experienced God’s abundance when all we could see was scarcity, hope is restored.  Even the secular theme for the Xmas season is one of dreams to be fulfilled and hope to be satisfied.  The challenge is one of being faith-filled – dreamers even when the world seems hopeless.

But God’s hope for the world is not isolated to fulfilling our ‘selfish whims and fantasies’.  On this third Sunday in Advent we are reminded that God calls us to be part of the healing of the world – to bring real joy.  How can we do this??  I find this to be a very challenging question.  I feel that I am a small fish in such a huge pond.  But there are ways that TOGETHER as the BODY OF CHRIST we can and do provide hope for people in many and varied ways.  I have heard it said that “The Church is the hope for the world.”  Think about that statement for a while and you will begin to see how true it is.

Thank you to those who gave gifts to those in prison for Christmas.  Beatrice collected them last Sunday and was very grateful for your generosity.  We give thanks to God for the Community Carols last week with over 400 people attending.  This Tuesday we will have our Children’s Fun Day, on Wednesday we share in a community Carols Service at Elston Lodge.  Next week there is a “Blue Christmas Service” and delivery of 40 food hampers and a Christmas Day lunch for people who are on their own at Christmas.  Our Op Shop Volunteers have their break-up this Friday.  Play group families have connected with the Church throughout the year.  How are these “hope” filled experiences?

Hope Restored….come home this Christmas with shouts of joy, come home  to The Father who loves you so much that He gave His whole life (in Jesus) for you and the world.

Take a moment to use the “contemplative/reflective” picture, Pathway Home, on the front of the bulletin to assist you in your Advent journey.

Rejoice….on you way HOME this week ………Rev. Brad Foote