Oct 22 2011
MUCKAROUND PROGRAM
21/10 Operation Christmas Child Boxes
27/10 THUR Dramatic Play – Covenant Players
4/11 OUTING to Hunts Dam
11/11 OUTING (Remembrance Day)
Older children to Military Museum
Younger children to Apex Park
18/11 Prep for Christmas
Bell Ringing
Make Ornaments/Cards
Bake cookies
25/11 OUTING
Bell Ringing
Taking gifts to Berringa
2/12 Prep for Christmas
Bell Ringing
Make Ornaments/Cards
Bake Cookies
9/12 Prep for Christmas
Parents’ Evening (5-6pm)
Oct 22 2011
Exodus 20:1-17
One day a rabbi was seated next to an atheist on an airplane. I know sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.… but it’s a good story.
Every few minutes one of the rabbi’s children or grandchildren would come to his seat to see if he needed anything – food, drink, something to read. They’d just come and check on him. The atheist commented, “The respect your children and grandchildren show you is wonderful. Mine don’t show me that respect. ”
“Think about it,” the rabbi said. “To my children and grandchildren I am one step closer to the God who created the Hebrews, the God who spoke to us at Sinai. To yours, you are merely one step closer to the apes.”
That story, in a not-so-subtle way, communicates an important message. Being the people of God has a profound impact on how we treat other people, especially the ones closest to us. It stands in stark contrast to the bumper sticker that says, “Be nice to your children; they’ll choose your Old Age Home ” Or the one that reads, “Honor your father and mother; they haven’t made their will yet. ”
The fifth commandment is unique for several reasons. It is one of only two positively stated commands. Last week we talked about the other, Remember the Sabbath day.
It is the only command that comes with a promise, that you may live a long and happy life.
And it stands in an important location in the list. The fifth commandment is a transitional command.
The first four addressed how human beings are to relate to God. The last six address how human beings are to relate to each other. Just as the first command is foundational for the other nine, so the fifth command serves as a basis for the last six. Its placement in the list suggests that the home is the primary source of values, ethics and morality. Just as a failure to honor God with exclusive allegiance keeps us from obeying the other commands, so a failure to honor our parents results in an inability to honor any other human being. In other words, if we don’t show respect and love to our families, we will struggle to show honor and compassion to our friends, neighbors and strangers.
There were three reasons that this command was needed.
1) Remember that the ones who were addressed by God through Moses were just released from 400 years of slavery.
They had lived in a culture that devalued age, as you got older it was harder to work and if you could not work, you were worthless. We do the same thing today. It’s called early retirement.
2) They lacked the social structure that would provide for people in need.
That’s why there are so many commands about how they were to provide for the poor and even for strangers who were living in their land. There were no retirement plans or pension funds; so older people had to rely on their children when they could no longer care for themselves. But God knows that we are inherently selfish, that’s why the New Testament is filled with Commands to Love one another, Care for one another, Give preference to one another, look out for the good for one another.
3) It is the first command with a promise.
God says that those of us who will honor our parents will have long life and health. Now I don’t believe that there is some king of mystic magical connection between long life and loving mom and dad. I have known scoundrels who have lived long lives and know people who loved their family dearly die at a young age.
But that’s not the promise. Guess where children learn to honor their parents? From their parents. If an adult doesn’t honor his parents then he is teaching his children not to honor him.
One of Grimm’s fairy tales is about a little boy who lived with his father, his mother, and his elderly grandfather. The grandfather was feeble and his hands shook. When he ate, the silverware rattled against the plate, and he often missed his mouth. Then the food would dribble onto the tablecloth. This upset the young mother, because she didn’t want to have to deal with the extra mess and hassle of taking care of the old man. But he had nowhere else to live.
So the young parents decided to move him away from the table, into a corner, where he could sit on a stool and eat from a bowl. The young mother said, “From now on, you eat over there.” And so he did, always looking at the table and wanting to be with his family but having to sit alone in the corner.
One day his hands trembled more than usual; he dropped his bowl and broke it. The young father yelled, “If you’re going to eat like a pig, you’re going to eat out of a pig’s trough!” So they made the old man a wooden trough, put his meals in it, and told him to eat out of it. And he did.
Not long after that, the couple came upon their four-year-old son playing out in the yard with some scraps of wood. His father asked him what he was doing. The little boy looked up, smiled, and said, “I’m making a trough, to feed you and Mamma out of when I get big.” The next day the old man was back at the table eating with the family from a plate, and no one ever scolded him or mistreated him again.
If we are going to truly honor our parents, there are three things we must do.
Respect Them
Paul said, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother.” (Ephesians 6:1-2a).
Children are to obey their parents. But honor or respect is more important than mere obedience. It’s possible to obey without showing respect. You can do as you’re told and still be rebellious at heart.
It’s like the little boy who was standing in the back seat of the car, riding down the road with his parents. His parents told him to sit down and put on his seat-belt because they were concerned about his safety. His father told him once, then twice, then a third time. His mother looked back and asked him to sit down. He defiantly said, “No, I will not sit down!” His father told him if he didn’t sit down he would give him the spanking of his life. So the boy sat down. But then he said, “I may be sitting down on the outside, but I’m standing up on the inside.”
There’s obedience, but there’s no respect.
We tend to honor people whom we think deserve it or earn it – we honor great athletes with awards, we honor successful politicians with positions of authority, we honor successful people with plaques. But God says that we are to honor our parents not just because of what they have done, but simply because of who they are. This may be a hard pill for us to swallow, but God didn’t say to honor your parents if they’re honorable. Nowhere does God say that respect must be earned before you have to give it. God simply calls us to honor our parents simply because they are our parents. Nowhere in this commandment does it tell us that we are to honor them because they are great parents, or even good parents. We are to honor them because of the position they hold in relation to our lives.
Value Their Advice
Another way we honor our parents is by valuing their advice. Proverbs 13:1 says, “A wise son heeds his father’s instruction…” That’s not always an easy thing to do because most of us have gone through a stage where we didn’t think their parents know much of anything at all.
I was like most teenagers; I believed that my parents were stupid. But I’ve learned something over the years. Just because I had more education than my parents it didn’t mean that I was smarter. There are some things that nobody learns except by living, having experience, failing at some things and bouncing back.
Let Them Know You Appreciate Their Efforts
There are some things that are just proper and right. One of those things is showing honor to the man and woman responsible for bringing you into this world, feeding you, taking you to the dentist, sitting up with you when you were sick, and doing the million and one other things that go with being a parent. So God says, “Honor your parents.” It’s the right thing to do. Even after children have grown up and have families of their own, they still have a responsibility to honor their parents.
There is a popular trend today in psychology to blame all of a person’s problems on the mistakes of his or her parents. “You can’t help the way you are,” the thinking goes. “It’s not your fault. Your parents messed you up. You’re the victim.”
The Bible doesn’t say that parents are perfect nor does it say that our honoring of our parents must be based on how much we approve of the job they did with us. In this commandment God is saying that we should make our parents feel treasured simply because they have done so very much for us.
They bought and cleaned our clothes. They made sure we got all the necessary shots and check-ups. They gave us a home and food. They provided us with transport and counseled us when we had a problem.
At birth we are solely dependent upon adults for nurture. The moment we came into this world our parents kept us warm and fed us and protected us and many years passed until we were old enough to care for ourselves – so of course we should be grateful! Think of the financial burden that parents bear. Its huge! Somewhere I read that it can cost up to one million rand to raise child today.
I heard about a boy who was talking to a friend at school. He said, “I’m really worried, my dad works hard to provide for the needs of our home. Mom washes the clothes, prepares the meals, and keeps the house clean.” His friend said, “Well, what in the world are you worried about?” The boy replied, “I’m afraid they might try and ESCAPE!”
We owe our parents a huge debt of gratitude. They deserve our honor for the simple reason that they have done so much for us!
I have no doubt at all that what has helped me more than anything else to honor my parents’ efforts is being a parent myself. This is the hardest job I’ve ever had. It’s difficult and it’s costly, not just in terms of finances, but of time, energy, and emotions.
If we can honor our parents for nothing else, we can honor them because they took on a difficult job. I encourage you to let your parents know that you appreciate what they’ve done for you.
I want you to see that this command of honoring your father and mother is so special that it has a promise attached to it. What is that promise? “…That your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you.”
Paul quotes this command and he says, in Ephesians 6, that this “is the first commandment with promise: ‘that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.’”
How we treat our parents not only impacts them, it also impacts us. There is a blessing or a curse for us based on our treatment of our parents. To honor or fail to honor our parents is a choice that takes us down one of two roads. The choice is ours.
It is important for us to honor our parents and the time to do it is now. The day will come when we will be unable to show them the honor that we would like to give.
Some of you don’t have your parents with you any longer. I hope you don’t have to look back and say with regret, “You know, I never told my father how much I loved him. And as many times as I was in her house, ate her delicious cooking, and received her unfailing love, I never told my mother how much I loved her.”
If you still have your parents but have been reluctant, embarrassed or simply thoughtless about giving them explicit statements and expressions of your love, don’t make the mistake so many others have lived to regret. Spend time with them. Drop them a note or call just to let them know you are thinking of them.
One last word — a challenge, really — to those of us who are parents: be honorable. Even though our honor isn’t based on our worthiness, we still need to live a life that makes it easy for our children to honor us.
We are to be teachers of what is good and right. We’re to teach our children the values that build character and the God that defines those values. And we’re to model for our children God’s values and his integrity and unconditional love. If we take our role as God’s authority in the home seriously, we have reason to hope that when our children leave home they will always choose to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with their God.
The principle at the heart of this fifth commandment is this: make family a priority.
Oct 22 2011
Our focus this morning is on the 5th commandment – Honor your father and your mother. This commandment is unique for several reasons. First, it is one of only two positively stated commands (ie without a “thou shalt not”). The other is the 4th command – the keeping of the Sabbath. Second, it is the only command that comes with a promise – “that you may live a long and happy life”. Third, it is a transitional command between focussing on God (the first four commands); and focussing on other people (the last five commands). The first command (no other gods) was foundational for all the rest of the commandments, and this one (respect for parents) is the basis for all human relationships. It tells us that the home is the primary source of values, ethics and morality – if we don’t show respect and love in our families, we will struggle to show honor and compassion to our friends, neighbours and strangers.
I addressed this issue of connectedness and respect for one another last week when I wrote about the Bible Study at Bruce Rock – the way the curtain around the Court of the Tabernacle is held up by the poles (each of us) and the stays (our prayers for each other). This certainly seems to be an issue which God is revealing to us (me?) at the moment. Three times this past week I have overheard conversations which were critical (even damning!) of other Christian groups/denominations. I wonder where this comes from? In one case it was a preacher who was planning a sermon which was aimed at demonizing a Christian author. The author is in fact quite well known but this preacher couldn’t even remember his name and didn’t really know what he stood for – he had yet to do the research and then he was going to throw verbal stones at him. I chided him gently and asked him if we shouldn’t rather preach positively about Jesus than negatively about men.
This critical spirit is not of Christ. To be sure, Jesus spoke strongly against the Pharisees, but He also said that “whoever is not against us is for us”. (Mark 9:40) His opposition to the Pharisees was because they had put themselves up as being superior because of their supposed relationship with God. The one thing which Jesus really got angry about was this attitude of superiority but He loves the servant heart.
My prayer is that we, as a congregation of God’s people, will never think of ourselves as being “better” than anyone else. We are saved by grace (we did not deserve it!) and out of that grace we should look to others with the same attitude of grace. Paul, in telling us to have the same attitude as Christ Jesus, says, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” (Phil 2:3,4)
Be as Christ towards others, loving them with grace unto salvation.
Shalom
David
Oct 22 2011
HOLY DAY
Let’s begin again tonight by reading the 10 Commandments found in Exodus 20:1-17.
And God spoke all these words:
2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
7 “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. 11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you. 13 “You shall not murder. 14 “You shall not commit adultery. 15 “You shall not steal. 16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
The 4th Commandment.
“Remember to keep the Sabbath holy…. the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.”
What does the Sabbath mean?
In verse 11 we read that God rested on the Seventh day and blessed the Sabbath, so we assume that the Sabbath day was Saturday or the Seventh day. But Sabbath doesn’t mean seven; Sabbath means “to rest from labor.”
God commanded that the Jews observe this day of rest every week.
And God was very serious about this commandment – “you Jews need to take a break, prop your feet up, and rest for a while. I don’t want you doing ANYTHING on this Sabbath day.”
It doesn’t sound as serious as “Thou shalt not commit adultery” or “Thou shalt not murder.”
When God says, “I want you to take it easy for a while” what would you suppose would be the penalty for not doing that?
Probably nothing..
But as with every command God wasn’t joking. In Exodus 31:14 it says, “Observe the Sabbath, because it is holy to you. Anyone who desecrates it must be put to death; whoever does any work on that day must be cut off from his people.” That’s pretty scary! If you don’t stop and rest one day a week, you will be put to death. That’s pretty heavy!
Why the Command is necessary
1. God knows how important it is that humans rest.
In a recent study several soldiers were observed in various conditions to determine at what stage they achieved the maximum level of output. It was discovered that after seven consecutive days of hard work, each soldier’s performance dropped. But the most interesting thing was that even though the soldiers’ performance level dropped, the soldiers themselves were unaware of it. They thought they were still operating at maximum level.
Many of us think we don’t need to rest, we think that it would be lazy to take a break every now and then. But God knows the importance of rest. God made us. He knows how much this body can handle. And he knows that if we don’t take time to recharge our batteries, that we will very quickly destroy ourselves.
2. God knows how much humans don’t want to rest.
Parents fully understand this, because we see the same resistance with our children. Have you ever watched young children fight sleep? They whine and cry; keep themselves busy, running and playing so they can’t fall asleep. But whatever they’re doing, no matter how frenzied their efforts to stay awake, they’ll insist they’re not tired. There are times when a mother or a father simply has to make a child rest.
God knew that man needed rest from his labor, and he also knew that man would resist it. And if God had said, “You know, you guys really ought to take a break every now and then,” there’s not a single one of us who would have taken Him seriously. But we tend to listen when God says, “Either you stop and rest for a while or I’ll kill you.”
God had promised to provide for Israel, and they had promised to be obedient to God.
There were two things which stood as symbols of that covenant – Circumcision, and the keeping of the Sabbath.
When other people living around the Israelites noticed that the Jews didn’t do any work on the Sabbath, it would provoke questions in them. Everyone else worked seven days a week. You had to if you were going to survive, or at least that’s what they thought. “Why do you Jews only work six days a week and refuse to do any work on the seventh day?” To which, they could respond that they did this as a testimony to the fact that they belonged to Almighty God and that they were trusting in Him to provide for their needs.
4. The Sabbath was a test of the Israelites’ faith in God
The Jews were farmers and so God, knowing how crucial timing was to a farming culture would surely make an exception to this rule for those times of the year when the crops were being planted and harvested. Surely they could work right through the Sabbath and then make up for it later when they were just sitting there watching the crops grow. Right? …..Wrong!
This law was a test of their faith. Was their faith in their own ability to get that crop in the ground and then harvest, or was their faith in God, the one who made the crops grow in the first place?
In my previous congregation, a man came to see me. He owned a nursery but his life was falling apart. Business was bad, his fiancé had left him and he had turned to booze. I spoke to him about Jesus and he was baptized. He joined the worship group and came to practice every Thursday evening but couldn’t come to church on Sundays. But then one Sunday he was there with his guitar. After the service I spoke with him and he told me that he was closing the nursery on Sundays. He had been reading the Bible I gave him when he was baptized and felt convicted. I told him that he was crazy –Sundays are the best days in the nursery business. I suggested that he take Mondays off instead but he was adamant. It was a turning point for him –the business picked up dramatically, his fiancé came back and they were eventually married. He passed that personal test of his faith!
The problem is that we sometimes don’t have enough faith in God to really believe that He is going to meet our needs, protect us, and carry our burdens. If we don’t work those extra hours, then we’re just not going to be provided for. So we work and we wear ourselves out seven days a week because we just don’t believe that God can take care of us.
But God is serious about this commandment. He’s not just messing around.
By the time of Christ, the Sabbath day was kept with a vengeance by the Jews. By then it had become such a distinctive feature of the Jewish religion that anyone who knew anything at all about the Jews were aware of their strict refusal to work on the Sabbath day.
However it came to symbolize legalism at its worst. The Jewish rabbis had taken God’s command to absurd extremes.
The Mishnah, which gives us a written record of Jewish tradition in the time of Christ, includes 1,521 rules on how a person could break the Sabbath. Among these are such things as separating two threads, writing two letters of the alphabet side by side, tying a knot, reading by candlelight, and so on. As if that weren’t enough, each of these prohibitions generated debate as to what constituted an offense of its kind. For example, could you put in your false teeth or was that considering carrying a burden? Some rabbis said you could, but others said it was wrong.
But the command was never intended for such absurd purposes. Jesus tried to put things back in their proper perspective by saying in Mark 2:27, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” God meant for the Sabbath to bring peace and rest.
The Jewish legalists had taken a beautiful commandment and turned it into a harsh and hateful ritual. They took a day of rest and turned it into a burden. From the start, God had intended it to bless his people. It was a time when families and friends could be together, a time when devotion to God could be shared, a time when the spirit and body could be refreshed. But instead, the Pharisees made the Sabbath something that absolutely wore people out trying to follow all their guidelines.
Like all of God’s laws, the Sabbath was designed not to be a burden, but to be a delight. It was designed not to inhibit freedom, but to protect.
So today let’s close with the three things the Sabbath law protects.
First, ironically, it protects the dignity of work.
Notice that vs. 9 of Exodus 20 says, “Six days you shall labor and do all your work.”
Contrary to what many of us think, work is not a result of the sin of Adam and Eve. In the garden, God gave Adam a job to do. He was to tend the garden and keep it. Work was a part of the world God called good. So when God gave the Sabbath regulation, he wanted to be sure we understood that he was not condemning work, but rather he was giving us a way to protect the dignity of it.
It doesn’t matter what you do, it always seems that your work is never done. And after awhile, if we aren’t careful, our work becomes toil. There is all the difference in the world between work and toil. Hard work gives us that good, tired feeling at the end of the day. Toil just makes us tired. Meaningful labor leaves us satisfied. Toil leaves us drained.
The Mishnah says that even if you can’t get all your work done in six days, on the Sabbath, you should live as if all your work was done. The Sabbath was a way of dignifying labor. And imagine what those people felt when they heard God decree this command. They’d been slaves for 400 years.
And slaves don’t get days off. Taking one day out of seven to rest and focus on God protects the dignity of work.
Second, it protects the dignity of human beings.
Did you notice that the command includes slaves? “On the Sabbath you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.” Everyone and everything was to take a break from work.
Why? Human beings have always judged themselves and others by what they produced. They did it then. We do it now.
We equate busyness with importance. The busier you are, the more important you are. We virtually celebrate our crowded schedules and unavailability to our families and our early mornings and our late nights because we have come to believe that an idle person is a worthless person. If you aren’t out there burning the candle at both ends then you can’t be a very important or successful person.
Our dignity is determined by busyness.
So God said, “One day a week, stop it. Just sit down and stop trying to prove how big you are by how much you have to do. Even I, who created the world took a day of rest. And you are not more important than me.” God wants us to realize that who we are is not the same as what we do. He wants us to understand that our worth as human beings isn’t tied to our productivity. We are valuable because we exist in his image.
I once heard that Busy was an acronym for Being Under Satan’s Yoke. And as I see my diary fill up each day I believe that’s right. And I have no excuse to say that I’m doing God’s work –He won’t let me do that.
Third, and most important, the Sabbath was designed to protect our relationship with God.
If all we ever do is work we not only lack the time to reflect on the nature and glory of God, we begin to lose our need for him. If I, by my skill and energy and power and knowledge can carve out of this world a life of ease and comfort and success, why do I need God?
Soon I begin to imagine that God is dispensable, and that I am indispensable. They need me, the people at the office or at the hospital or at the church or at the school. If I’m gone, what will they do? We become seduced by our own sense of importance.
Taking a day away from the world of demands and deadlines and expectations is God’s way of saying, “Dip your hand in a bucket, then pull it out and see what an impact you made.”
It isn’t that we aren’t important to the people who count on us and to whom we are responsible. The point is that the most important responsibility we have is to God. The Sabbath is a holy place in time where we remember our need for him, the unquenchable necessity of his presence.
That’s why taking a Sabbath from work has to include God. Rest without spirit is the source of corruption. A Sabbath is more than a day off. It is a day away from the world. A day in which we remember who God is and who we are. A day in which we get our priorities back in line. We recognize that God is the indispensable one, not us.
There is a story about a meeting between Satan and his minions. He asked them, “What’s the most effective thing we can do to wreak havoc and pain on the earth?”
One said, “Tell them there is no God.” Another said, “Convince them that they’ve wandered too far from the right path to ever return.” Still another said, “Convince people that there are no consequences to their behavior.” They all agreed that these were great ideas. But a voice came from the back and said, “What if we convinced them that there is plenty of time.” And Satan loved it.
Time is the first thing God ever declared as holy. If we think that attending to our relationship with God is something we will get to someday then we treat time like one more commodity among all the other things we think we control. We de-sanctify it.
I know that the Sabbath day isn’t binding on us any more. But the principle is. We need to redeem the time we have, because we never have as much as we think.
Today I wonder how do you spend your time? Do you fill your time BUSY – Being Under Satan’s Yoke or do you take time to be still and know God?
Today Jesus’ invitation is still offered. “Come to me, all of you who are tired and heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. Accept my teachings and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in spirit, and you will find rest for your soul.”
Oct 22 2011
Its been a full weekend, so far!!! A great Men’s Breakfast with the Full Gospel
Businessmen’s Fellowship, the Emmaus Gathering (for the first time in
Merredin), a wedding at the Emmaus Gathering (also, I think, a first!
Congratulations to Bob Burbridge and Sue Johnson). This morning Kay Eva
will share with us some of her work in Cambodia. Thank you Kay.
Kay’s testimony and sharing this morning comes at an opportune time as we
prepare our planning for next year. One of the areas which we are looking at is
the LentEvent program of the Uniting Church. The program started from a
congregation in South Australia and has now been adopted by Uniting World
(the Missions arm of the Uniting Church). It had been also been adopted
specifically by the WA Missions Group to replace the previous Missions
program held in September.
LentEvent is a planned devotions program held through the 40 days of the
Lent period (the time that leads up to Easter, commemorating Jesus’
preparation for ministry in the desert temptation; and the 40 years of the
Exodus). The devotions are designed to help us reflect upon and identify with
those who live in spiritual and physical poverty. One of the “traditions” of Lent
is to “give up” something and to donate the money saved to mission. (At
school I always gave up pumpkin and spinach, which I disliked intensely).
However the idea is to rather give up something which is special to you. This
may be your Foxtel, or daily coffee, or something else which is a part of our
First World life. One of the suggestions is to follow Wesley’s practice of a
Friday Fast (Thursday evening to Friday evening) and to set aside the cost of
the three meals. This money would then be given to Missions, either through
Uniting World or to one or more of the Mission activities which we support as a
congregation. Watch this space for more news, or you can go to the LentEvent
website at www.lentevent.com
At our Bible Study at Bruce Rock we doing a study on the Tabernacle. Last
week we were looking at the “curtain” which surrounded the Outer Court of the
Tabernacle area. The symbolism and relevance for us today is quite amazing.
The curtain was made of fine woven linen (probably white) held up with
(probably crooked) acacia poles fixed into brass bases and topped with silver
capitals. To keep everything standing up there were stay ropes connected to
the capitals fixed with pegs to the ground. Our study suggested that the poles
represented the believers (crooked, because we are still sinners) but covered
with the righteousness of Christ (the white linen curtain). We are standing on a
solid foundation of the Word and crowned with the helmet of salvation. But
most important was the suggestion that we only remain standing against the
desert winds because we are connected together by the righteousness of
Christ (the curtain) and the supporting prayers of the people (the stays). It
might be a stretch of the imagination but it certainly challenged us to think
more clearly about our role as believers together in the Body of Christ.
This year our congregation is responsible for the Carols by Candlelight service
which is part of the Churches Fraternal program. It will be the closing event of
the Shire’s Christmas Gala Day on Saturday December 17th at the Leisure
Centre. I have found a delightful Christmas Play called “The Dream” which
mixes a modern day story with the birth of Jesus and involves all the
townspeople in the whole message of Christmas. We need a Director/
Producer and 14 people of all ages and genders to play the parts. I am trusting
that our Reparatory Team will put their hands up (if they are not too involved in
the production of “A Christmas Carol”) but we will also need a whole bunch of
others. If you are interested please put your name on the list in the tea room.
The Operation Christmas Child boxes will be taken to Perth this week so
please get yours to the church as soon as possible, or phone me 90411117
and I will collect from you on Monday.
Shalom
David
SPECIAL REMINDERS
For those involved, the next Parish Council Meeting will take place in Merredin
on Saturday November 5th. Please mark the date in your calendar.
The Gideon’s Faith Fund Dinner will take place on Wednesday October 26th
at 6.45pm at the Senior’s Centre. Cost is $25, funds raised are used for
purchase scriptures for placements around the world. All welcome – RSVP
Colin Chapman 90411230.
Ride for Life are hosting a Quiz Night Fundraiser at the Seniors Centre at 7pm
Friday November 4th. Cost is $10. Call Jen Adley on 0458673643 to book.