Weekly letter from St Luke's - 16 December 2022

Dear Parish Friends

Our song for the lighting of the Advent wreath this year has been 'Advent Candles tell their story'. This week we come to the fourth verse:

Mary’s gift, beyond all telling, we recall today:

Son of God within her dwelling, born to show the way.

Who could guess the final story?

– cross and glory; Easter Day!

We are reminded that our Advent journey has been that of reminding us of the pointers to the Good News that Jesus came to bring to fruition God's plan of salvation for humankind. But even as we prepare to celebrate the incarnation, we are already looking at how God's story works out, with the events of Holy Week and Easter.

Despite singing this verse, the focus of the gospel reading this week is not on Mary, but on Joseph, who is often seen as taking a back seat in the nativity story. But we see that Joseph was caught up in God's dream of how the world could be, and he responded, taking his part faithfully in the unfolding plan, as each of us today are continually called to do.

Our services are as usual at 7am and 9am, with Zoom options at 9am. The liturgy for the 9am service and the weekly notice paper are available via the links below. Even though there will not be Children's church until the start of next term, there will be a children's message at 9am and some activity sheets will be available.

Yours in Christ

Rev'd Timothy