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Spreading Love & Hope...
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Welcome to our Christmas Week devotion. May this devotion and the links shared provide opportunity for reflection and prayer this Christmas.
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Blessings & joy, Ana & Tod
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Friday 24 December - Christmas Eve Communion 19:00
Saturday 25 December - Christmas morning 10:00
Sunday 26 December - 10:30 morning worship
Sunday 2 January - 10:30 Morning worship with 2 baptisms!
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Holy Season
by Thandiwe Dale-Ferguson
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This is indeed a holy season.
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This is a season of light shining in the shadows.
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And the shadows will not overcome it.
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This is a season where we allow God to light hope, peace, joy and love
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on the wicks of our lives.
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This is a season of thin spaces
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where the distance between holy and mundane,
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and you can almost reach through and touch the divine.
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Or maybe it's not a matter of almost.
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Perhaps, really, the divine is already reaching through and touching us.
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With tenderness and truth,
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with courage and compassion,
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May you, too, feel the holiness of this time.
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Olive wood Nativity, Graham & Barbara
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by Ted Loder, Guerrillas of Grace
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God of all seasons and senses,
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grant us this Christmas, the sense of your timing
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to submit gracefully and rejoice quietly in the turn of the seasons.
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In this season of short days and long nights,
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of grey and white and cold,
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teach us the lessons of endings;
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children growing, friends leaving, loved ones dying, grieving over,
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grudges over, blaming over, excuses over.
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O God, grant us a sense of your timing.
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In this Christmas season of short days and long nights,
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of grey and white and cold,
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teach us the lessons of beginnings;
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that such waitings and endings may be the starting place,
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a planting of seeds which bring to birth what is ready to be born
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—something right and just and different,
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a new song, a deeper relationship, a fuller love—
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in the fullness of your time.
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O God, grant us the sense of your timing. Amen.
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Used with permission from Christine Longhurst, editor of re-worship.blogspot on which the prayer is posted.
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Musical Inspiration
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Ring in Christmas with these three renditions of the
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Carol of the Bells...
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composed by the Ukrainian composer Mykola Dmytrovych Leontovych.
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Christmas trivia:
Throughout the composition, Leontovych employs a four note motif as an ostinato taken from an ancient Ukrainian New Year's chant known in Ukrainian as "Shchedryk", meaning 'the Generous One'.
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First, Berea College's Blue Grass Rendition (USA)
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Second, a Ukrainian Bell Choir
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Third, Jennifer Thomas' arrangement from her 2015 performance at Benaroya Hall in Seattle, with the Ensign Symphony & Chorus, with choral arrangements by Sheila Bateman.
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Lastly, Jakub Jan Ryba's 1796 Christmas Choral Mass shared by Leslie S.
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45 minutes of angelic music!
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Ryba was a Czech teacher and composer of classical music.
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Wishing you Peace and Christmas Blessings
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Andover, Broad Chalke & Salisbury congregations
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of the United Reformed Church gather on Zoom for united worship service.
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Click on the blue button above to visit Worship Words for prayers and reflections for Christmas.
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Salisbury URC church copyright license CCL License B 430662
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As this is an email newsletter, and not a publication or post on a website, the one-off use of certain items is allowed, as for a Sunday service sheet.
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If you catch an error, let us know so we can rectify it.
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Contact us by email and visit (and join) Salisbury United Reformed Church on Facebook and our website.
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