Advent 2019
December 10, 2019
Dear Friends,
We wish you all a blessed Advent and happy Christmas!
As three congregations in one parish, we are learning together what it means to answer this season’s exhortation to watch, anticipate, and celebrate the many and diverse ways that Christ is arriving in our midst.
It has been a joy to watch our churches draw closer together this year through shared worship, hospitality, learning, and service: combined services at Christmas, Easter, St. Lawrence Day and the Induction on All Saints Sunday; participation in each other’s social and fundraising events; exploring the dimensions of our faith through the Pilgrimage Speaker Series and Living Into Community book study; volunteering together at Centre 105 and the Trinity Food Cupboard; and serving Christ in each other through our personal hospitality, prayer quilt ministries, nursing home services, hospital visitations and much, much more!
There is so much to be thankful for! In the midst of any number of changes and challenges that play out in the advent of this new reality we call The Area Parish of the St. Lawrence, we encourage you to keep watch for the arrival and movements of God’s grace in this place – to prayerfully expect God’s mercy and to celebrate it when we see it. As our parish book study on Living into Community taught us this Fall, “Our capacity for gratitude is not connected with an abundance of resources but rather with a capacity to notice what it is we do have.” We believe that our attentiveness to God’s love and mercy is itself an act of gratitude to the Giver of all good gifts, a practice that builds up and strengthens the community God is shaping us to be.
We encourage you to take some time to reflect on the past year, to name your experiences of God’s grace at Christ Church, Trinity, and St. John’s, and to tell one another about them. With gratitude, we also ask you to consider our churches in your plans for Christmas giving this year. Most of all, we pray that you may experience the wonder of Christ’s arrival in new and unexpected ways in this holy season of watchfulness, anticipation, and joy.
With thanksgiving,
The Rev. Patrick Stephens, Incumbent
The Rev. Colin McFarland, Assistant Curate