
Here are the week’s announcements.
- First Sunday in Lent Worship
- Narnia Book Group
- Lenten Book Group
- Year-in-Review Meeting – date correction
- Lent Reflection: Day 3
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Sunday Worship – First Sunday in Lent, February 21st –10 am
Service of the Word, followed by Coffee Hour.
This service is on Zoom and the service bulletin is on our home page. You are welcome to join us. Please e-mail allstsmill@hotmail.com for the log-in credentials.
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Date Correction! Parish Meeting: Year in Review - Feb 28, 10:45 am (during coffee hour time). Join us to hear presentations form our Vestry and other ministry leaders. This is not an official Annual Meeting. NJ state statutes govern Episcopal churches in legal matters. Our diocesan Chancellor’s reading of the statute is that we can’t have an official Annual Meeting unless we are able to meet in person. But we can gather on Zoom and hear updates about our ministries and finances from 2020. Please join us for worship and this Year in Review meeting on Feb. 28
Narnia Book Group: The Silver Chair, Chapters 1 & 2 - this group will meet on Zoom Sunday afternoons at 4:00 pm starting on 2/21 and continuing for eight sessions (skipping Easter Day). The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis is the fourth book in The Chronicles of Narnia series. The group is open to anyone; you don’t have to have read the previous Narnia books, or been part of the group before. To sign up, please email Mother Vicki at allsaints_rector@hotmail.com.
Bible Study is on Wednesdays at 10:15 am. This week we’ll start our Lenten series. We’ll look at the Gospel reading for the Sunday to come (either from Mark or John) and also at the Collect (theme prayer) for the day and look at the way the Gospel and the Collect connect with each other. That means that we’ll be reading material for the First Sunday in Lent. To participate in this Zoom class, or if you have questions, please e-mail Mother Vicki.
Book Study - Love is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubled Times by Presiding Bishop Michael Curry. Wednesdays in Lent at 7:00 pm, starting Feb 24. This study is being shared by St. Peter’s, Livingston,St. Gregory’s, Parsippany, and All Saints’. This week we’ll be discussing the Introduction, Chapters 1 & 2. Join this Zoom group by sending an e-mail to allsints_rector@hotmail.com.
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Parish Schedule this Week
Sunday Worship & Coffee Hour – 10:00 am; Zoom, posted later to YouTube and our website
Narnia Book Group - Sun, 4:00 pm; Zoom
Compline - daily, 9:30 pm; Facebook Live
Bible Study - Wed, 10:15 pm; Zoom
Lenten Book Group - Wed, 7:00 pm; Zoom
Office Angels - Thu, 11:00 am; Zoom
Junior Choir – Thu, 5:30 pm; Zoom
Adult Choir - Thu, 7:30 pm; Zoom
Parish Office - Mon & Thu, 10:00 am-5:00 pm (usual hours).
Please call ahead if you need to do in-person parish business.
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Lent: Day 3
Learn – in the Way of Love the practice of “learn” is fundamentally about reading, studying, learning from, and absorbing the Scriptures. The center of that learning is Jesus’ story and his teachings.
The Bible was written long ago and over centuries, recording the experience that people in ancient Israel and the first-century followers of Jesus had with God. In many ways they had a different experience of life and asked different questions of the world than we do. That can make entering into the Bible’s story challenging.
But the Church’s witness for the last 2000 years is that the Holy Spirit can and does speak to us through the pages of Scripture, especially when we come to them in a curious, open-hearted, prayerful way.
We have resources to help us do this. The Forward Day by Day devotional lists the Bible readings for the day and then gives a brief reflection about some aspect of those readings. A contemporary translation like The Message can be helpful because it is more conversational in style than the translation we usually hear on Sundays. A book with the major stories from the Bible like The Path (https://www.forwardmovement.org/Products/2418/the-path.aspx) can help us get the broad outline of how the smaller stories go together.
And in this liturgical year when Mark is our primary gospel we can take in Jesus’ like and teachings by reading Mark from start to finish. It’s 16 chapters long, and you could read it in about an hour. Of course, you might want to break it up and take time to savor each chapter but reading it straight through at one sitting has its benefits.
The important thing is that if we don’t make the time and effort to read and learn from Scripture, we cut ourselves off from one of the primary ways God has chosen to communicate with us. It’s hard to follow Jesus if we don’t know his story and his teachings and make them our own.
Finally, here is a 3-minute video about the practice of Learn: https://www.episcopalchurch.org/way-of-love/learn/
May you be blessed in your journey with learning from the Scriptures this Lent.
Blessings, Vicki+