Monthly Newsletter — November 2013
Posted by colin on November 1, 2013 under Monthly Newsletter | 
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Family of Faith Christian Fellowship |
London Newsletter November 2013 / Issue 45 |
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In this issue:
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Upcoming Events:
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November Letter Dear Brethren, Last weekend we had a wonderful service with special guest, Elizabeth Deveau, leading our worship. We had forty-five people in attendance. Thank you to all those who worked so hard to make it a special service and lunch. October also saw us complete our two-and-a-half-year odyssey through the Discipleship 101 Course. I think we all felt that the discussion format of these sessions was a blessing to each of us and an opportunity to get to know one another better. We would like to continue with this format on a monthly basis. Each month we will select a different topic for discussion. This month the topic will be “prayer – how can we pray more effectively.” You may want to reread the chapters on prayer in the Discipleship booklet in preparation. If you have any particular topics that you would like to see discussed, please let me know. This month we will be continuing our sermon series in the book of Jeremiah. I would encourage you to read ahead in the book of Jeremiah as part of your personal Bible study. Thank you very much for your foodbank donations. Your faithfulness in supporting this cause is much appreciated. Finally, I would like to remind everyone that the clocks go back one hour on Sunday.
Warmest regards, Colin and Sue |
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The Great Giveaway Some things we have a choice, in some we don’t. In this we don’t. It is the kind of world into which we were born. God created it. God sustains it. Giving is the style of the universe. Giving is woven into the fabric of existence. If we try to live by getting instead of giving, we are going against the grain. It is like trying to go against the law of gravity – the consequence is bruises and broken bones. In fact, we do see a lot of distorted, misshapen, crippled lives among those who defy the reality that all life is given and must continue to be given to be true to its nature. There is a rocky cliff on the shoreline of the Montana lake where I live part of each summer. There are breaks in the rock face in which tree swallows make their nests. For several weeks one summer I watched the swallows in swift flight collect insects barely above the surface of the water then dive into the cavities in the cliff, feeding first their mates and then their new-hatched chicks. Near one of the cracks in the cliff face a dead branch stretched about four feet over the water. One day I was delighted to see three new swallows sitting side by side on this branch. The parents made wide, sweeping, insect-gathering circuits over the water and then returned to the enormous cavities that those little birds became as they opened their beaks for a feeding. This went on for a couple of hours until the parents decided they had had enough of it. One adult swallow got alongside the chicks and started shoving them out toward the end of the branch – pushing, pushing, pushing. The end one fell off. Somewhere between the branch and the water four feet below, the wings started working, and the fledgling was off on his own. Then the second one. The third was not to be bullied. At the last possible moment his grip on the branch loosened just enough so that he swung downward, then tightened again, bulldog tenacious. The parent was without sentiment. He pecked at the desperately clinging talons until it was more painful for the poor chick to hang on than risk the insecurities of flying. The grip was released and the inexperienced wings began pumping. The mature swallow knew what the chick did not – that it would fly – that there was no danger in making it do what it was perfectly designed to do. Birds have feet and can walk. Birds have talons and can grasp a branch securely. They can walk; they can cling. But flying is their characteristic action, and not until they fly are they living at their best, gracefully and beautifully. Giving is what we do best. It is the air into which we were born. It is the action that was designed into us before our birth. Giving is the way the world is. God gives himself. He also gives away everything that is. He makes no exceptions for any of us. We are given away to our families, to our neighbors, to our friends, to our enemies – to the nations. Our life is for others. That is the way creation works. Some of us try desperately to hold on to ourselves, to live for ourselves. We look so bedraggled and pathetic doing it, hanging on to the dead branch of a bank account for dear life, afraid to risk ourselves on the untried wings of giving. We don’t think we can live generously because we have never tried. But the sooner we start the better, for we are going to have to give up our lives finally, and the longer we wait the less time we have for the soaring and swooping life of grace. – Excerpt from “Run with Horses” by Eugene Petersen |
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Things to Pray for: Please pray for:
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Quotations Worth Thinking About “Through our union with Christ we share in his communion with the Father and in his mission from the Father to bring others into that communion. The mission of the church is the gift of participating through the Holy Spirit in the Son’s mission from the Father to the world.” – James Torrance “Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you. Don’t waste your pain; use it to help others.” – Rick Warren “It is partly because sin does not provoke our own wrath, that we do not believe that sin provokes the wrath of God.” – R.W. Dale |
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