Dear Friends,
Gosh – end of November – Feast of Christ the King &, next weekend, the beginning of Advent.
The Feast of Christ the King can be a bit ambiguous in our time. Monarchy and all that! Rather than try & imagine what the Kingdom of God might look like when, at an undisclosed time in the future, we get there – wherever ‘there’ is – we are focused here on what it means to try and help create God’s Kingdom in the here & now – co-creating with others and the Creator of all. I see that as what we are here to do. The attachments have that focus too & I hope that one or other of them they meaning for you.
The blessing this week is ‘May the Mind of Jesus’ from the CD ‘In Tune with Heaven’.
Details of our Advent programme are below – we would love you to join us for part or all of it,
Sending you all love & prayer, Margaret
Details of our Advent Reflections:
Meditative Reflection
at 5.30pm
on Zoom
Sunday 3rd December – “What is God doing this Advent?”
Sunday 10th December – “Lighting the Darkness”
Sunday 17th December – “Opening the Door of our Hearts”
Friday 22nd December – “Emmanuel”
And IN PERSON at Blessed Sacrament Church, Melbourne CM1 2DU
on Wednesday 20th December at 5.30pm
All welcome, no registration, just come!
Zoom link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81933736118?pwd=SHpUWlh2Yis1MzViMGNHNmVKN2Zndz09
Meeting ID: 819 3373 6118 Passcode: 257456
John 14. 15-21
If you love me, keep my commandments……… I will not leave you orphans.
World news rocks our equilibrium on a daily basis. Most of us suffer from overload of information. Hot on its heels can come compassion fatigue.
Because who can keep paying attention when we receive such saturation?
Overexposure often leaves us numb. We can so easily become overwhelmed, making feelings flatten and interest wane.
But if we pause and reflect, we are reminded of being Christ’s ambassadors in a needy world – His grace givers, light bearers and Truth sharers.
God’s heart never stops aching for wounded humanity.
His love encompasses the whole world.
His grace provides hope in every hurting place.
We live with one foot in the world and the other in God’s kingdom.
We are torn and made tender when we survey life as Jesus does.
We live with the birth pangs of a world crying for release and an earth aching to be renewed in the fullness of the kingdom-to-come.
We wonder how to live well without drowning under a world’s pain. As we ponder and pray and seek God’s wisdom, we discover just what our individual contribution might be.
Then we can help one another to see we are not as alone as we may feel.
We are not orphans.
To do justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with God – these may embody all that we need to know in order to be faithful and to be human. They are not three “virtues”. They are not “things to do.” Rather, they speak of three dimensions of a life of faithfulness, each of which depends on and is reinforced by the other two.
To love kindness means to enter into relationships of abiding solidarity. It means to make commitments and to keep commitments. And so the questions come:
With whom? And in what way? The New Testament struggles with the question of the limits of solidarity.
In Luke 10:29, the neighbour question is the overriding question of the community, as it still is… We learn how to practice solidarity by discerning the ways in which God practices solidarity… The solidarity of God’s kindness is not a powerful, overriding solidarity, but it is a patient, attentive, waiting, hoping solidarity.
Hungering to help…………
I hunger to be a voice for the voiceless – dispossessed, cast aside and marginalised; refugees, orphans and widows who long to find safe resting place, a home.
For the weary, wounded and weak and all who bear deep hurt and pain who live in shadowlands of shame.
Those who are guilt-ridden, captive, bound to a past they have ached to break free from for so long.
I hunger for the hungry to be fed, for this land to be led by righteousness,
for justice to rule and reign, so all can breathe freely again.
Those who are thirsty to be filled from a fountain’s never-ending stream;
for people of any age to still dare to believe and follow their dream.
I hunger for the sick to find solace, freedom from all that ails them as they sit with illness, distress.
I long to have an open, caring heart that is tender, rich in compassion and mercy, one that won’t stand apart from those who suffer and are in need.
I yearn to live as Jesus-with-skin-on for those who have never known him,
who ache to be shown His love and need to see how His mercy and grace
embrace and offer us all an open door.
If you love me, keep my commandments……… I will not leave you orphans.