Notices — Third Sunday of Advent — 13th December 2020

NOTICES: 

Singing in Church – We CAN sing!!!

We have been advised by the Bish­op that from 7 Decem­ber 2020 we are able to sing in Church again.  Alleluia!

There are a num­ber of changes to our Cov­id restric­tions, but this is what Bp Stead told us about singing:

Con­greg­a­tion­al singing indoors is per­miss­ible, but NSW health strongly recom­mends the wear­ing of face masks.

For the moment, the 1.5m rule as detailed below still applies.

Thank you all for your patient endur­ance in this.  We’ve done well!

 Fr Jeff

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Car­ols Ser­vice Rehears­al @ 11.30am:  For those who have registered to sing at the Car­ol Ser­vice.  Please see Jo Bur­ton in the church at 11.30am sharp for a rehears­al of the carols.

 

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Work­ing Bee — Sat­urday, 19 Decem­ber, from 10 am to 2 pm:  The war­dens invite parish­ion­ers to join them in a work­ing bee to tidy up the church grounds and car park [for ser­vice and car­ols the next day], and any oth­er jobs that need doing on the day.

 

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Next Sunday 20^th Decem­ber — 6pm Car­ol Ser­vice (in the church car­park):  Please note – The car­park will be closed to all vehicles on the night.  While we are able to sing, we still need to meet Cov­id-19 safety plan­ning restric­tions so RSVP’s are essen­tial – please let Jen­nifer know via par­ish email or on mob: 0409 049 442 if you intend to come. There will be a saus­age sizzle on the night.  Gold coin dona­tion please.

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Wed­nes­day 16^th Dec — Advent Stud­ies:  After 10.00 a.m. Euchar­ist and Morn­ing Tea and in the even­ing at 7.00 p.m.  We are using “Advent for Every­one – A Jour­ney with the Apostles” by Tom Wright.  It can be down­loaded instantly from Amazon via Kindle for a small cost.

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Beethoven’s 250^th:

This com­ing Thursday marks the 250th cen­ten­ary of com­poser Lud­wig van Beethoven’s bap­tism on 17 Decem­ber 1770 in Bonn, Ger­many.  Beeth­oven began to lose his hear­ing when he was 26 years old.  When he real­ised he could not be cured of his deaf­ness, he wrote the fol­low­ing pray­er: “O God, give me strength to be vic­tori­ous over myself.  O guide my spir­it and raise me up from these dark depths, so that I may fear­lessly struggle upward in fiery flight.  For it is you alone, Lord, who under­stands me and can inspire me.  Amen.”  Premiered in Vienna on 22 Decem­ber 1808, when he was troubled by his hear­ing loss, Beethoven’s Fifth Sym­phony begins with the fam­ously dis­tinct­ive “short-short-short-long” motif.

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Stan­more Nurs­ing Home Gifts:  Money can be donated via the offer­tory plate (placed in a sep­ar­ate labelled envel­ope) or the St Luke’s Church Work­ing Account (see back of Ser­vice book­let for details).  Please remem­ber to ref­er­ence your gift – S N Home.  We can­not sing Car­ols, we can still take chocol­ates etc.

 

Christ­mas Cards now for Sale:  New 2020 stock –- sup­port­ing The Lep­rosy Mis­sion, Australia-$10 per pack of 10.  Please see Stephan Gates at the Com­munity Resource Centre straight after the service.

 

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Christ­mas Eve/Day Ser­vices 2020:

Thursday 24^th Decem­ber — 11.00 p.m. Christ­mas Eve Mass

Fri­day 25^th Decem­ber — 9.30 a.m. Christ­mas Day Eucharist

 

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Attend­ance List: This is an essen­tial part of our Cov­id-safe plan which has been lodged with the State Health Depart­ment.  We request, once again, that you do respond, as it helps us with the plan­ning needed to ensure a safe envir­on­ment.  Please RSVP via stlukes.enmore@outlook.com, ring Church Office (Dur­ing office hours ONLY) or con­tact Jen­nifer Mob: 0409 049 442. 

 

Giv­ing: At the last Par­ish Coun­cil meet­ing I shared my atti­tude to giv­ing and mem­bers present asked me to share it more widely.   As each new year begins, I always increase my giv­ing just a little.  In this way, I play my small part in mak­ing sure that the par­ish keeps up with rising costs.  Not a huge increase but a little one. 1 or 2%.  This is my sug­ges­tion to all if that is afford­able.  Fr Jeff

 

Life-Sav­ing Phone num­bers: Life­Line: 13 11 14  Kids Help Line: 1800 55 1800  MensLine: 1300 789 978  Bey­ond Blue: 1300 22 4636 1800 RESPECT: 800 737 732

 

Lea MacNeal has jam to sell and vari­ous sauces; please email her lea.macneil@gmail.com if you would like to give her an order.  You may, of course, ask her what type of jam and/or pre­serve or sauces she has on hand.  Don­ald, her hus­band can deliv­er your spe­cif­ic order to the Opshop where you are able to pay for it.

 

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Weekly Inter­ces­sions for our Community:

Sunday: John Dick­son; Kathy Drum­mond; Dav­id Dun­lop; and Michael Flem­ing, Eliza­beth Arm­strong, Thomas, Ellen­or & Nicholas.

Monday: Steph­en Gates & Andrew Eld­er; Mar­ilyn Gibbs; and Kev­in Green.

Tues­day: Peter Gil­bert & Alfredo Narnolo; and Stu­art Grigg & ‘Tri­cia Blomberry.

Wed­nes­day; Richard Hagen & Som Siritham­makij; and Ray­mond Heslehurst.

Thursday: John, Martha & Chris­toph­er Haly; and Selina & John Hardy.

Fri­day: Susan Hill, Janet Broady, & Alex; Moya Holle; and Noel Jeffs.

Sat­urday: Dear lov­ing Fath­er, please deliv­er us from the coronavir­us and lim­it its impact on Aus­tralia and the world. In your mercy bring a swift end to this crisis.  Please pro­tect with your lov­ing care those we love — our fam­il­ies, friends and neigh­bours. Let your fath­erly hand guide, shel­ter and strengthen them.  Cast out all anxious fears and doubts.  Give us an increas­ing trust in you and fill our hearts and minds with your peace.  Pro­tect and guide the health pro­fes­sion­als who are at the front line.  Please give wis­dom and cour­age to those who bear respons­ib­il­ity for con­front­ing this chal­lenge. We ask these things through the power­ful name of Jesus.  Amen.

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Pray­ers for the sick: Kristen Har­ley; Steph­en Thur­ley; Kev­in Tib­bey; Glen; Mary Middleton; Bar­bara Reyne; Fr John Bunyan; John Hardy; Louise Trott; She Kar Nair; Rev’d Val Tib­bey; Maur­een Clunas; Wolf Winter; Edna Cham­bers; Linda Mac­qual­ter; Esth­er Middleton; Peter Cinelli; John Dick­son; Rita Mus­cat & her fam­ily; Rob Lake; Tamara & Craig; John Can Pahali; Alex Regos; Gra­ham Wad­ding­ton; Aman­da Cow­ley; John Tonetti; Jean Boyd; Gra­ham Sadler; Fr Phil­lip Carter; Phil­lip Kuwert and Peter Knox.

 

Anniversar­ies of the Depar­ted: James Gav­in; Allan Wells; Oswald Coombs; Florence Thomas; Sarah Ket­tlewell; Sid­ney Smith; and Guiseppe Bruzzese.

 

Saints Com­mem­or­a­tion: 14^th Dec: John of the Cross, mys­tic and teach­er (d.1591).

 

Long Term Pas­tor­al Pray­er list: Andrew Reddy; Shir­ley, Bar­bara & Jade Allen; Br Noel Jeffs (SSF); Kiki Chun; Beth Arm­strong; Ann Jeffs; Rhi­an­non Henry-Edwards; Marissa; Jude, Isla, Meg & Al Don­nell; Lyn Car­ring­ton; Suz­anne Camp­ton; Pau­line Newell; Bar­bara Beec­roft; Ann Con­nolly; Fr Peter Carls­son; Day­alan Sam­inath­an; Grace & Han­nah Ashton; Anaisha, & her par­ents Anu & Digvi­jay; Ron Nath; Ron­an Nath; Veron­ica Nath; Rose­mary Brad­ford; Rev Laurie McIntyre; and Ver­ity Wright.

 

Read­ings for the com­ing week: Even­ing Prayer

Sunday	Isai­ah 60.15–22	Psalm 18.1–6, 48–50	Luke 7.18–28
Monday	Isai­ah 11.10–12.6	Psalm 119.105–108	Rev­el­a­tion 15
Tues­day	Isai­ah 12.14–14.2	Psalm 104.26–37	Rev­el­a­tion 16
Wed­nes­day	Isai­ah 14.24–32	Psalm 105.23–45	Rev­el­a­tion 17
Thursday	Isai­ah 54	Psalm 106.25–50	Rev­el­a­tion 19.1–10
Fri­day	Isai­ah 55	Psalm 107.23	Rev­el­a­tion 19.11–21
Sat­urday	Isai­ah 56	Psalms 112;113	Rev­el­a­tion 20.1–10

 

Read­ings for Next Sunday — Fourth Sunday of Advent:  First Read­ing: 2 Samuel 7.1–11, 16;  Song of Mary (APBA pp.9);  Second Read­ing: Romans 16.25–27;  and Gos­pel: Luke 1.26–38

 

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We appre­ci­ate things may have been fin­an­cially harder due to COVID-19,  but ask that you con­sider mak­ing a dona­tion to sup­port the Christ­mas Bowl and ABM this year.

The Christ­mas Bowl Appeal — annu­al appeal of the Acts of Peace, the inter­na­tion­al aid agency of the Nation­al Coun­cil of Churches.  We encour­age parish­ion­ers to donate online via the dir­ect link: mycb.link/50145 to our par­ish page ‘Enmore-Stan­more Anglic­an Par­ish’, or call 1800 025 101.

 

ABM 2020 Advent and Christ­mas Appeal:  We encour­age parish­ion­ers to use QR Code on the digit­al donation cards  (in the church foy­er) or make a dona­tion online at abmission.org.au.

 

 

Please note: There are a lim­ited num­ber of dona­tion envel­opes in the church foy­er for those who do not use mobile phones or have inter­net access.

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From Justin Welby, Arch­bish­op of Canterbury

Love mat­ters more than ever in a time of crisis.  Dis­asters are always more inter­est­ing than suc­cesses. In a sense this is because it’s easi­er to learn les­sons from dis­asters: we see what went wrong and try to avoid the same thing ourselves. There is prob­ably also an ele­ment of schaden­freude, a relief that it happened to someone else and not to us. Man­aging dis­asters, turn­ing bad situ­ations around and hand­ling repu­ta­tion­al dam­age, is one of the key aspects of risk man­age­ment, if one is sensible.

The real­ity of a world that is full of human beings who are at best fal­lible, and often prone to mak­ing wrong choices delib­er­ately, is that there will be reg­u­lar dis­asters. In my days as a cor­por­ate treas­urer, my assump­tion was always that what could go wrong, would.

For me, the past year has been a remark­able edu­ca­tion. When I star­ted this very strange job, effect­ively on 21 March 2013, I com­mit­ted to vis­it­ing all of the oth­er 37 provinces of the Anglic­an Com­mu­nion (the group of churches of which the Church of Eng­land is a part, exist­ing in 165 coun­tries, with roughly 80 mil­lion mem­bers) by the end of 2014. Because these were pas­tor­al vis­its and not simply busi­ness over­views, my wife Car­oline and I went together.

The jour­ney has taken us from the riches of Wash­ing­ton, DC to the hor­rors of the South Sudanese civil war, in the midst of the fight­ing area, and to the Demo­crat­ic Repub­lic of the Congo. At the time of writ­ing this (the begin­ning of Novem­ber), I look back at a recent vis­it to the Province of West Africa, which includes Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liber­ia, as well as oth­er coun­tries in the region. They are strug­gling with ebola.

Wherever we have gone, we have found people deal­ing effect­ively with crises. It is immensely inspir­ing to see such large num­bers put­ting their lives on the line out of love for God and for their neigh­bour. Two examples cross my mind. In the South Sudan, the Anglic­an arch­bish­op called pub­licly for recon­cili­ation, des­pite the fact that this put him at high risk, both with his own people, some of whom felt betrayed, and with the enemy, who simply saw him as a fig­ure to be attacked. In Pakistan, the equi­val­ent of the arch­bish­op goes into Taliban-con­trolled areas, not only lov­ing oth­er Chris­ti­ans and his neigh­bours, but even his enemies.

I have had my share of crisis man­age­ment this year. At times it has been suc­cess­ful, and at oth­er times it has failed. As we all know, the real­ity is that the proof of the pud­ding is in the eat­ing, and in very large glob­al organ­isa­tions, the eat­ing and the diges­tion may not show res­ults for a dec­ade or two. Yet man­age we must, and many read­ing this will have faced unex­pec­ted crises themselves.

I go into Christ­mas with the know­ledge of the Chris­ti­an belief that in the greatest crisis of all, the sep­ar­a­tion of human beings from God, His answer was to make him­self as vul­ner­able as a baby, to come to us in human form, share our suf­fer­ing, bear the weight of our wrong­do­ing and offer us the hope of life. Whatever the crises are, in Christ they are transformed.

 

Dis­cus­sion Ques­tions for Today – from Work­ing Preacher.org — By Julie Selvig 1.    There is no short­age of oppressed, broken­hearted and cap­tive.  Who needs com­fort, liberty this week? (Isa 61:1–3) 2.    Can you remem­ber a time when your weep­ing turned to shouts of joy? (Ps 126:6) 3.    When have you taken the oppor­tun­ity to identi­fy with Christ when asked, “Who are you?”  (John 1:19, 22)