Taking action next week

We've been putting together the leaflet to hand out and use at the First Sunday Thing next Sunday. In it we are providing a link with two websites people might want to follow up. The first is for Action of Christians Against Torture because people might want to use their scheme to send Christmas cards to those in prison. The link is http://www.acatuk.org.uk/. The second is for Operation Christmas Child because people might want its guidelines about how to put together a shoebox of gifts in the first two weeks of November. It is http://www.operationchristmaschild.org.uk/.

Get ready for Christmas

Our next First Sunday Thing on 1st November will be based on the way in which we get ready for Christmas. Among many stalls for those arriving before or at 10.30 we'll offer how we prepare the Advent Ring rather than just how we buy chocolate bearing calendars. We'll offer stillness in the Lady Chapel rather than just the busy rush to be ready. We'll offer Action of Christians Against Torture's scheme to send Christmas Cards to those in prison rather than just to those we know. We'll offer preparing a prayer to hang on our trees rather than just decorations. And so on. We'll bring all these things together by 11.00 for a simple short act of worship.

More St Francis

And this is the version of St Francis which people got to take home after the First Sunday Thing last week.

Celebrating Francis

We enjoyed our celebration of St Francis' Day this morning. He didn't look like this, but this is one of several of the young people who came who did.

4th October

Plans are now in place for next Sunday. We will be back in St Michael's. Having had the six summer months in St Nicolas', we will have the six winter months in St Michael's. As usual there will be a quiet half-hour Communion service at 9.30. This is for those who appreciate this instead of or in preparation for the First Sunday Thing. At 10.30 we will have a market place of different things for people to call at including egg painting, rap learning and discovering things about modern Franciscan Friars. At about 11.00 will bring all this together for an informal half hour service on a St Francis' Day theme.

St Francis' Day

We look forward to the next First Sunday Thing being on St Francis’ Day. But a warning: the two best known things about St Francis’ aren’t true. He wasn’t an eco-warrior. And he didn’t write ‘Make a channel of your peace’. There is a story of his preaching to the birds, and he wrote about the whole creation praising God, but then he would talk with absolutely anyone about putting the message of the Gospel into practice. And ‘Make me a channel of your peace’ is a nineteenth century song written in the spirit of St Francis. We’ll see what more we can share when we plan for 4th October tomorrow evening.

Love your neighbour

Those who visited the Bible Study corner at the last First Sunday Thing saw how a text for the day appears in three different places in the Bible. 'Love your neighbour as yourself' is tucked away in an obscure corner of Leviticus, somewhere between the insightful 'don't spread slander' and the suprising 'don't wear clothing woven from two kinds of material'. But Jewish people in Jesus' time had already picked it out as a key verse in the Old Testament. So Jesus quotes it as a key text in Matthew's Gospel, and our reading for the last First Sunday Thing from the letter of James near the end of the New Testament does so too: 'if you really keep this royal law, you will do right'.