Dear parishioners and friends of Knockbreda,
Happy New Year!
‘On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.’ Matthew 2.11.
There are so many fascinating things about the story of the Magi. Who exactly were they? Kings, sages, astrologers? What was the significance of their gifts? Did they have other gifts, but Matthew wants to highlight these in particular? There are so many questions to explore. However, one thing that strikes me about these men is their determination. They travelled thousands of miles, in conditions we would never contemplate, to worship a baby prince they were convinced had been born in Judea. Perhaps, coming from ancient Persia, they had access to some of the ancient Jewish holy books, left there from the time of the exile. Perhaps these books in conjunction with their astrology and God’s overriding providence drove them in faith to worship the king of the Jews. We cannot tell for sure what lay behind their determination to make such a difficult journey. But they have left us an example that we too should have no higher priority than to worship Jesus and lift him up in our hearts and lives.
Church Services
As 2021 begins we all hope for better things. For the time being, however, Church services continue while other ministries are scaled back.
BCP Morning Prayer services resume tomorrow (January 6, Epiphany) at 11am (psalm 72). We will be reading through some psalms over the next few weeks.
Sunday morning services continue at 10.30am. This week we begin a short series considering CS Lewis’ Narnia books and how Lewis used them to communicate Christian truths. It should be something a bit different for the month of January!
YouTube services continue each Sunday from 10.30am on Knockbreda’s YouTube channel.
Chris and Lotta’s Prayer Letter
Dear friends and prayer partners,
“It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High” Psalm. 92:1
Happy and blessed New Year!
One of our yearly traditions on New Year’s Day is to summarize the previous year. Throughout the year we take a lot of pictures and notes so every month Lotta makes a collage of all the pictures and on New Year Day we look through the album and we share memories and all the good things God has done the previous year.
As we look back It has been a year full of happy moments and memories but with challenges as well. We are so grateful to the Lord for his goodness and faithfulness over this past year and for the ways he enabled us to serve in Emmaus church.One of the highlights of 2020 was that after years of praying and hoping to find an apartment, We finally moved to Åkersberga right before the Covid crisis started.
At the end of November we came up with the idea to do short devotions 5-7 min long, during the weekdays up until Christmas. The theme was “Christmas narrative in chronological order” with Matthew and Luke’s gospel. We decided to do one day each so that gave us both the time to prepare the material and sound record it. This project brought nice memories back, since we both have experience working on local Radio ministry many years ago. We were not quite prepared for the great response which we are both thrilled and grateful for. So if God is willing we’ll continue to do this in the spring and something similar for Easter.
Prayer Points:
- Pray for us as we are slowly starting up our one on one and other ministries in this covid crisis that God will give us wisdom and strength to persevere.
- For Lotta’s mother, who is seeing her Dr on January 15th to talk about her hip surgery. She is in such great pain that her wish is to be operated.
- For our upcoming workshop on February 1st on Marriage and MInistry.
Yours in Christ,
Chris & Lotta
Finally…
Work continues at the hall. Part of the project is to convert the heating system from oil to gas and we hope to have this completed soon.
God willing, and restrictions permitting, our next altogether Bible Study will be on Tuesday 19th January at 7.30pm in the hall.
Please keep in touch. We are doing our best to telephone parishioners as well as sending out these emails. There will also be an edition of the Breda messenger available later this month. If there is any way I can help please contact the rectory. We have a small team of volunteers who would happily run a message for you.
Also, a new year is often a time to reassess priorities. In particular I have been encouraging the church to get involved in a Bible reading programme. The notes I recommend are the Explore notes from the Good book Company. They now come in the format of an app so I would encourage you to look into getting the app and making 2021 a year of listening to God’s Word. If you know of anyone for whom Bible reading would be new, please let me know and I can help them get started with the ‘6 steps to reading your Bible’ course. We also have lots of personalised copies of John’s gospel to give away and if you would like one (or 10 to distribute to friends!) just let me know.
God bless,
Bill
