Dear Friends,
Advent begins today, the beginning of a new year for the Church. With new resolve we continue to gather together, day by day and Sunday by Sunday, to tell and celebrate the Christian story, the story that makes us the people of God. Over these four weeks of the Advent season, the austerely beautiful liturgy leads us to the celebration of Christmas. The progressive lighting each week of the candles on the Advent wreath is a sign of the waiting that characterises this season.
In saying this, we must acknowledge the terrible waiting endured by so many since the first explosion in the Pike River mine a week ago, and its tragic conclusion. We have been praying for all involved in that situation, and I have been in touch with our sometime parishioners, Barry and Lesta Smithson, who live at Runanga among those most affected. We continue to pray for them all.
Among our special services of this season are the Service of Advent Carols and Readings at 7:00 pm tonight, the School Carol Service at 5:00 pm next Sunday, and the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols at 7:00 pm on 19 December. This year we shall again have the Carols at the Crib Service for little children on Monday 20 December, at 6:00 pm.
Advent is a season for us to get in touch with our own longing, and to see it in relation to humanity’s perennial longing for the creation to be completed and all things to be well. Our deep yearning for justice and reconciliation and wholeness and peace, however it is expressed, matches God’s own longing for those things. Our longing and God’s coincide in Jesus Christ, whose birth as one of us we shall soon celebrate, and whose continuing work we participate in through the Holy Spirit.
The Scripture readings for today call us to be awake and alert, always prepared to face the coming of the One who is the end of all our longing. Achieving this readiness is the Advent task of all Christian disciples and people of good will.
May God bless you all.
Fr Peter Williams
The whole earth’s a waiting-room
(J.T. Nolan Let the earth rejoice!)
(J.T. Nolan Let the earth rejoice!)
We wait—all day long,
For planes and buses,
For dates and appointments,
For five o’clock and Friday.
For planes and buses,
For dates and appointments,
For five o’clock and Friday.
Some of us wait for a Second Coming.
For God in a whirlwind,
Paratrooper Christ.
All around us people are waiting;
For God in a whirlwind,
Paratrooper Christ.
All around us people are waiting;
A child for attention;
A spouse for conversation;
A parent for a letter or call.
The prisoner waits for freedom;
A spouse for conversation;
A parent for a letter or call.
The prisoner waits for freedom;
The exile, to come home.
The hungry, for food,
And the lonely, for a friend.
The whole earth’s a waiting-room!
“The Saviour will see you now,”
is what we expect to hear at the end.
The hungry, for food,
And the lonely, for a friend.
The whole earth’s a waiting-room!
“The Saviour will see you now,”
is what we expect to hear at the end.
Maybe we should raise our expectations,
he Saviour might see us now
If we know how to find him.
Could it be that Jesus, too, is waiting
For us to know he is around?
he Saviour might see us now
If we know how to find him.
Could it be that Jesus, too, is waiting
For us to know he is around?
