Welcome to the online service of worship for the First Sunday of Advent
The YouTube playlist may be found here
Or view below.....
MAYFIELD SALISBURY PARISH CHURCH
EDINBURGH
Sunday Services of Public Worship: 10.15am
Worship Online from 8.00am Every Sunday
Sunday 29 November 2020
First Sunday
of Advent
O Emmanuel
O come, O come, and be our God-with-us
O long-sought With-ness for a world without,
O secret seed, O hidden spring of light.
Come to us Wisdom, come unspoken Name
Come Root, and Key, and King, and holy Flame,
O quickened little wick so tightly curled,
Be folded with us into time and place,
Unfold for us the mystery of grace
And make a womb of all this wounded world.
O heart of heaven beating in the earth,
O tiny hope within our hopelessness
Come to be born, to bear us to our birth,
To touch a dying world with new-made hands
And make these rags of time our swaddling bands.
Malcolm Guite
Printed with permission,
Sounding the Seasons
Canterbury Press
AS A DIVERSE PEOPLE, THE CHURCH GATHERS TO WORSHIP ALMIGHTY GOD
Notice Charles Garland Session Clerk
Intimation is hereby given that at a meeting to be held on line, on Tuesday 1 December 2020 at 8.15pm the Presbytery of Edinburgh will take up consideration of a Call from this congregation of Mayfield Salisbury Parish Church in favour of the Revd Dr Alexander Forsyth.
The congregation is hereby cited to attend for its interests. Revd Marjory McPherson, Presbytery Clerk
Welcome The Revd Helen Alexander
Welcome again to the members and friends of the congregation of Mayfield Salisbury Parish Church and others who may be joining us in our worship online for the 1st Sunday in Advent.
How quickly a year slips by - even this strange eventful year of 2020 that is drawing to a close. The Season of Advent that begins today marks the beginning of the church’s year. We might hope for better things to come – for hope is an Advent theme. Waiting is another one, and we’re being asked to wait with mindfulness and patience as the promised vaccine looks as if it will soon be delivered. Watchfulness too is a word for the season and this year we’re encouraged to watch out for one another, especially the most vulnerable in our society and throughout the world. Perhaps these very topical concerns will encourage us to enter more fully into the Season of Advent this time round.
Today we have more singing online than usual. We’ll have a song in the middle of the children’s talk, and at the end of it a special recording of a hymn sung and played by some of the young people of the congregation. I’m saying this now to encourage some of the older people who might otherwise skip the first part of the service to listen in today and support younger members. It’s good for us all to be young at heart.
For now, I invite you all to join me now in a short period of silence in preparation for worship.
Silence
Scripture Sentences
Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you….be filled with the Spirit…making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let us pray
Almighty God and Father of all, in this time of face masks and silent choirs, help us indeed to make melody in our hearts and from there to sing the songs of Zion in the strange land of restriction and fear.
Hear our fear for one another, for the world in which we live, and for ourselves. Help us to find comfort in friendship, in the courtesy of strangers, and in the faith of our fathers and mothers who endured their own difficulties in their lives and held fast to the eternal promise of grace and release.
Look kindly upon us all. Forgive our faults and failings; help us to forgive one another in the light of your favour to us, and lead us together in the paths of equity and peace.
For hurts we may have received or imposed upon another, grant to us and to them the healing power of sympathy and care.
For regrets in past days, past weeks, past years, grant the ability to mourn damage done to relationships and loss of peace of mind. If it is possible, help us to make amends. If too late for this, we seek support and encouragement that we may live more hopefully and well to the coming of your kingdom.
Restore our faith in ourselves, in humanity, and in your gracious quiet presence in our lives for your love’s sake.
Collect for the Day
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Children’s Address Revd Helen Alexander
Good morning to you all. I’m Helen, the minister at Mayfield Salisbury for a bit.
Today is special. It’s called the First Sunday in Advent. The word Advent is from a Latin word meaning ‘coming’. I wonder if any of you know what might be ‘coming’ in just over four weeks’ time…….? Who said Christmas? Yes! You’re right. Today we are starting to think about Christmas and to make our plans to celebrate Jesus’ birth on 25 December.
One of the ways we do this is to have the Advent candles in church. You’ll see we have the first one lit today. Then each Sunday until Christmas we shall light another candle until we have all the candles burning.
Now we’re going to hear the first verse and chorus of a song: ‘Christmas is coming!’ Each Sunday till Christmas we shall add a new verse until we have the full song on Christmas Day.
Today I’m joined by a friend who has been staying with me for a month or two. He’s called Leonardo which may seem a strange name for a hedgehog, but that’s the name on the label and so Leonardo he is!
Actually he’s a door stopper, but as you can see he also likes to climb onto my shoulder. He takes quite an interest in what I’m doing at my desk. He looks at the computer and has even joined in the occasional Zoom staff meeting we’ve had for Mayfield Salisbury. He looks over my sermons and talks too, and sometimes gives advice.
Leonardo is going to leave me in just over three weeks’ time to go to another home. I wonder if you know why…………….? Yes! Leonardo is a Christmas present I’m going to give to a friend.
He’s a bit nervous about this especially because he’s going to be wrapped in Christmas paper. But I’ve told him I’ll make a hole so he can stick his long nose out for air, and that he’ll be just fine. Sometimes you’ve just got to trust, Leonardo!
This Sunday in church we are going to give thanks for Christmas gifts that people have brought to Mayfield Salisbury during the past month. As you can see, members of the congregation have been very generous and we’ve collected a lot already. These aren’t for us, but will be given to children and young people who won’t have many presents this year.
This may be because their fathers or mothers are in prison and can’t buy presents for their families themselves.
Or perhaps things have become so difficult and unhappy at home that some children and their mothers have moved to a safe house that is run by an organisation called Women’s Aid. We help them to have a happy Christmas too.
Mayfield Salisbury gives some of our gifts to the Salvation Army. They care for lots of people all year round and try to make Christmas special for lots of people including children by playing carols, cooking meals and delivering presents to people who are having a hard time.
These are some of the Christmas presents Mayfield Salisbury is going to give: dolls, footballs, toys, playdoh, colouring books and pencils, jig-saws, kaleidoscopes and spinning tops. Imagine the faces of children who’ve been unhappy or frightened when they unwrap these presents on Christmas morning and begin to play! There will be lots of smiles and laughter.
We also support the Stopover Hostel in Edinburgh for homeless young people in their teens. Imagine how sad it would be not to be at home with a loving family especially at Christmas! The teenagers get some new clothes, cosmetics and toiletries, and games and books.
It can be just as good to give presents at Christmas as well as to receive them. As I tell Leonardo, he’ll feel really good when he gives great joy to my friend by going to live with her.
Now we’ll say a prayer:
God, thank you for all that gives us happiness and joy.
Be with us all as we prepare for Christmas.
We pray for children everywhere who are poor and sad.
Cheer them up with the presents we will give them;
for Jesus sake. Amen
By the way, Leonardo would like you to know that he’s feeling a lot happier now about being a Christmas present himself this year. He’s learning that when you talk about problems and worries with someone you trust, often things don’t seem quite so bad. Bye from us both for now.
HYMN 180 Give thanks with a grateful heart
Give thanks with a grateful heart,
give thanks to the Holy One,
give thanks because he's given
Jesus Christ, his Son.
Give thanks with a grateful heart,
give thanks to the Holy One,
give thanks because he's given
Jesus Christ, his Son.
And now let the weak say, 'I am strong!'
Let the poor say, 'I am rich
because of what the Lord has done for us!'
And now let the weak say, 'I am strong!'
Let the poor say, 'I am rich
because of what the Lord has done for us!'
Give thanks with a grateful heart,
give thanks to the Holy One,
give thanks because he's given
Jesus Christ, his Son.
Give thanks with a grateful heart,
give thanks to the Holy One,
give thanks because he's given
Jesus Christ, his Son.
Coda:
Give thanks.
Sung and played by the Mayfield Salisbury Parish Church Youth
Henry Smith (b.1952)
Words and Music: (c) 1978 Integrity's Hosanna! Music, Sovereign Music UK
WE LISTEN FOR THE SPIRIT OF GOD IN SCRIPTURE
Reading Isaiah 64: 1 – 9 NRSVA Lucia Garland
1 O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
so that the mountains would quake at your presence—
2 as when fire kindles brushwood
and the fire causes water to boil—
to make your name known to your adversaries,
so that the nations might tremble at your presence!
3 When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect,
you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.
4 From ages past no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who works for those who wait for him.
5 You meet those who gladly do right,
those who remember you in your ways.
But you were angry, and we sinned;
because you hid yourself we transgressed.
6 We have all become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.
We all fade like a leaf,
and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
7 There is no one who calls on your name,
or attempts to take hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us,
and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.
8 Yet, O Lord, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
9 Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord,
and do not remember iniquity for ever.
Now consider, we are all your people.
Reading St Mark: 13: 24 – 37 NRSVA Kay McIntosh DCS
The Coming of the Son of Man
24 ‘But in those days, after that suffering,
the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
25 and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
26 Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in clouds” with great power and glory. 27 Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.
The Lesson of the Fig Tree
28 ‘From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. 29 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 30 Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. 31 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
The Necessity for Watchfulness
32 ‘But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33 Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. 34 It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. 35 Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, 36 or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 37 And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.’
Reflection Revd Helen Alexander
On a mid-afternoon walk recently when the light was just beginning to fade, I suddenly heard a bird singing its heart out somewhere high in a tree above me, as if full of the joy of life. I imagined him ruffling his feathers as he perched on a twig, wordlessly reminding me of wonder and hope even at the beginning of winter.
I thought of Thomas Hardy’s poem The Darkling Thrush. You’ll remember that as Hardy surveyed a dry and desolate winter landscape that seemed to match the desolation of his soul, he heard the sound of ‘an aged thrush in blast-beruffled plume’ flinging his soul in joyous bird-song into the ‘growing gloom.’ Here’s the final verse of The Darkling Thrush.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
Blessed hope is one of the great themes of Advent. In any other year we’d have sung our Advent carolings of hope together in church.
Come thou long-expected Jesus,
Born to set thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us;
Let us find our rest in thee.
Israel’s Strength and Consolation,
Hope of all the earth thou art,
Dear Desire of every nation,
Joy of every longing heart.
Hail to the Lord’s Anointed,
Great David’s greater Son!
Hail in the time appointed,
His reign on earth begun!
He comes to break oppression,
To set the captive free,
To take away transgression,
And rule in equity.
He shall come down like showers
Upon the fruitful earth,
And love, joy, hope, like flowers,
Spring in his path to birth…….
Christ is coming! Let creation
From her groans and travail cease;
Let the glorious proclamation
Hope restore and faith increase:
Christ is coming! Christ is coming!
Come, thou blessed Prince of Peace…..
With that blessed hope before us,
Let no harp remain unstrung;
Let the mighty Advent chorus
Onward roll from tongue to tongue:
Christ is coming! Christ is coming!
Come, Lord Jesus, quickly come!
These are words that beg to be sung. We might envy the hopeful song-birds that the coronavirus cannot silence.
Despite the virus, or perhaps in the face of it, some thoughts about hope on the First Sunday of Advent:
It strikes me that you can use the word ‘hope’ in different ways.
There’s hope that may sound encouraging but actually carries little substance. It’s as if this spurious kind of hoping acts as a protective shield that keeps reality at bay and stands in the path of the possibility of real change. ‘Some day life will get better’ someone might say with a sigh, the emphasis being on a fading future that’s more hope-less than hope-full. One can imagine The Sleeping Beauty settling down for an hour or two with these words, only to slumber on for a hundred years: no activity, no passion, no life! You can dismiss this as a fairy tale, and yet it contains important truth, as all good tales do. The Sleeping Beauty’s hopeless surrender is a mark of passivity, and possibly of despair, for she was unwilling, or unable to wake herself up to the business of daily life.
“Keep awake!” St Mark’s Jesus warns his disciples in our Gospel today. While we might acknowledge the importance of keeping our wits about us and paying attention, we might formulate our words a little more gently especially towards those who are in the throes of grief or despair. It might be tempting to offer to people afflicted in this way apparently hopeful comments like: “Cheer up; it can’t be THAT bad!” But to this person, whatever ‘it’ is may indeed seem hopelessly bad. It might be even worse to say: “You must have hope!” How doubly difficult is that for someone to be told they must have what they just as surely know they don’t possess.
If we fall into the slough of deep despair what we need most is not advice or to be jollied or bullied along, but friends who are able quietly and consistently to hold their own sense of hope without any demand that we should have it too; to hold hope for us until the day that we might emerge from darkness ourselves.
Not long ago I heard someone angrily declare that he was sick of people telling him he should have hope: about politics, about the climate crisis, about coronavirus. He wasn’t hopeful at all about the world we live in now. I wondered about the personal despair that may have led him so decisively to dismiss all hope for the future of the world.
But I also wonder what might enable some of us at least to sing in our hearts the Advent song of genuine hope for ourselves, as well as for others who just at this moment may find it difficult or even impossible to hope?
It may be impossible to find the answer to why some people are able to hold onto a solid kind of hope, just as we don’t know what kind of innate impulse enables a fragile thrush to burst into song in winter.
We might simply give heartfelt thanks for people who genuinely offer a robustly hopeful view of the world, while refusing to minimise or dismiss the bleakest of circumstances. The best of the Jewish prophets whose writings we hear in the Season of Advent were like this, sharing situations of deepest suffering and need with the nation: hardship, defeat, exile and despair, at the same time declaring their robust and hard-won sense of faith and hope.
“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” So begins the prophet’s anguished prayer for deliverance in today’s First Lesson from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. Yet in the very next chapter we find a glorious vision of the restoration of the city of Jerusalem, of the wiping away of tears, of a reconstituted community of old and young living peacefully and productively together in renewed harmony with the rest of creation.
It’s poetry, of course. But surely we respond to the poetry because it opens up the deepest hope of the human heart: the dearest freshness deep down things (*) that Gerard Manley Hopkins knew, writing just a couple of decades before Thomas Hardy. Hopkins also knew a thing or two about deep despair.
One evening last week I listened to the British academic historian and broadcaster David Olusoga interviewing Barack Obama on the first volume of his Presidential memoirs entitled A Promised Land.
Obama spoke of the United States of America’s being what he called “an experiment that matters” for itself and for the world in that its multicultural population is made up of people from “everywhere”. Despite pressing socioeconomic issues, the racial divide, the “truth decay” and breakdown of convention in public discourse, and now the pandemic, the former President declared that he was not “pollyannaish”.
Rather he said that he remained “cautiously optimistic” despite the ever present possibility of the country’s “pulling backwards” in its zig-zagging trajectory into the future. He maintained that his persistent hope for the future lies mostly in the younger generation throughout the world and its open acceptance of multiculturalism which has left many older people behind. Obama declared: “The world can change but you have to be part of that change.”
Ah yes! I thought: the call to us all whatever our age to be part of change: the call to activity, in thought if not in deed, rather than soporific defensive withdrawal from the world and its reality.
As St Mark’s Jesus said: “Keep awake!”
*Gerard Manley Hopkins God’s Grandeur
RESPONSE TO THE SPIRIT OF GOD WITHIN
Thanksgiving and Intercession Revd Helen Alexander
For the coming of your kingdom
We pray in hope, O Lord.
For the work and service of those of every faith and none we make our prayer: for hope for all in prayer and practice; for kindness and liberty in creed and conduct; for light in dark places and the spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation.
For the church throughout the world: people joining in spirit in worship with us now wherever they may be; those who are beside us and those who pray alone; those who worshipped as we slept last night and those who will take up the chain of prayer when later we take our rest; for all we make our prayer.
For the coming of your kingdom of equity and peace
We pray in hope, O Lord.
For all churches represented here online we make our prayer; for the congregation of Mayfield Salisbury and all who will receive the gifts we have collected: families of prisoners, and those who have been abused; people who are homeless, isolated and afraid; children of poverty; teenagers lost and alone: for all we make our prayer, seeking blessing on our gifts and on those who will enjoy them.
For organisations that seek to help: the Stopover Hostel, Women’s Aid, CrossReach Simpson House Flower Garden, Saughton Prison, The Salvation Army we make our prayer, even as we remember the work of Christian Aid throughout the world.
For the coming of your kingdom of equity and peace
We pray in hope, O Lord.
For our nation and the nations of the world we make our prayer:
for Scotland this St Andrewstide: her pride, her joys, her hopes and fears; for the United Kingdom: Westminster and the Parliaments of Stormont, Holyrood and Wales in their planning together in these times of restriction and fear; for the European Union in times of challenge and disruption; for the United States of America: the President, the President Elect and their divided people.
And for people and places anywhere that claim our attention and our concern we make our prayer:
for troubled places of the world;
for nations suffering from natural disaster and people who live with its threat;
for people anywhere who suffer and die because of want or disease, neglect or war;
for all victims of ignorance and hate, prejudice and fear;
for people seeing business fail and savings lost; securities vanish and hope failing;
for all who seek a better way of life for themselves, their families, their communities and nations.
For the coming of your kingdom
We pray in hope, O Lord.
And we remember those we love the most:
those beside us now and the many more who are far away;
those from whom we may be separated by difference or misunderstanding; sickness or its threat;
those who are frightened or in trouble;
those who mourn great loss;
those who delight our hearts;
those who come into our minds now without our quite knowing why;
For all such, and for all people everywhere, we make our prayer, remembering with thanksgiving those we have loved and lost and love still and whom we have committed to the care of almighty God in the Communion of the Saints.
For the coming of your kingdom
We pray in hope, O Lord.
The Lord’s Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
HYMN 273 O come, O come Emmanuel
O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
shall come to thee, O Israel.
O come, O come, thou Lord of might,
who to thy tribes, on Sinai’s height,
in ancient times didst give the law
in cloud and majesty and awe:
O come, thou Rod of Jesse, free
thine own from Satan’s tyranny;
from depths of hell thy people save,
and give them victory o’er the grave:
O come, thou Key of David, come,
and open wide our heavenly home;
make safe the way that leads on high,
and close the path to misery:
O come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer
our spirits by thine advent here;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
and death’s dark shadows put to flight:
18th century, based on the ancient Advent Antiphons
Translated John Mason Neale (1818–1866)
Sung by the Mayfield Salisbury Chamber Singers
BENEDICTION Revd Helen Alexander
Deep peace of the running wave to you
Deep peace of the flowing air to you
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you
Deep peace of the shining stars to you
Deep peace of the Son of peace to you
And the blessing of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit be with you all.
HYMN 825 Amen
Amen! Amen! Amen! Amen! Amen.
INTIMATIONS
CITATION OF CONGREGATION Intimation is hereby given that at a meeting to be held online, on Tuesday 1 December 2020 at 8.15pm the Presbytery of Edinburgh will take up consideration of a Call from this congregation of Mayfield Salisbury Parish Church in favour of the Revd Dr Alexander Forsyth. The congregation is hereby cited to attend for its interests. Revd Marjory McPherson, Presbytery Clerk
YOUTH NEWS
Family Service on 20 December at 10.15am: This will be a special morning service for our families and young people which will have craft, music, prayers and time to reflect on Advent and Christmas together in the sanctuary. There will also be a few opportunities for our young people to help lead and take part in the service. While it won’t be the Christingle service from years’ past, it will have elements of the Christingle service we know and love, as well as some new traditions that we can cherish this year! We’re very excited to see many of our families and young people together in the church to celebrate Christmas this year. Our young people and families will be getting priority booking for attending the Family Service. We hope to see you there!
Youth Worship: Tonight, 29 November we will meet on Zoom for a Youth Worship service at 7.00pm. Please bring some colouring and writing supplies as we gather together with music, prayer and time for an Advent reflection! For Zoom log-in information, please contact Hillary.
Youth Fundraiser: Our Youth Group is joining forces to fundraise for Social Bite over the months of November and December. Due to the current covid restrictions, we are unable to attend or host a sleep out this year, and instead will be setting our own individual or family challenges and goals. For more information please go to our Justgiving team page here: www.justgiving.com/team/MayfieldSalisburyYouth
PASTORAL CARE Do you now feel that you would like to have your own pastoral visitor? Or would you like someone to phone you over the winter months? Please get in touch with me and I will organise an appropriate match for you with one of our pastoral care team. Kay McIntosh. Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Phone: 0790 326 6307
THE READINGS NEXT WEEK are Psalm 85: 1 – 2, 8 – 13 (in church) and Isaiah 40: 1 – 11 and St Mark 1: 1 – 8 (both services).
GIFT SERVICES 2020 Today is Advent Sunday and the traditional date of our Christmas Gift Services. The team has been collecting from you throughout November and this morning's collection is the final one.
Many, many thanks for the donations of toys, games, books, drawing and art supplies, Christmas wrap and cash. The response has been generous indeed and Christmas will be brightened for so many as a result.
The overall collection will be distributed to our recipients in the coming week. Women's Aid have a dedicated Christmas JustGiving page which will attract Gift Aid if you're a tax payer. It may be found here: www.justgiving.com/campaign/EWAChristmasAppeal2020
With warm thanks from the whole team of Santa's Helpers - we couldn't do it without you. Anne Graham 667 6331
MIDWEEK PEACE AND PRAYERS ***NEW***
10.00am – 11.00am every Wednesday in the Sanctuary, commencing 18 November.
- Have you been considering visiting the sanctuary for Five Minutes’ Peace on a Wednesday evening but are deterred by the dark and the cold?
- Are you missing Tuesday Morning Prayers?
If so, then we have good news! Mayfield Salisbury are launching a new midweek daytime initiative which will combine these two activities! During the winter months, members of the congregation will have the opportunity to spend a time of silent prayer/meditation in the sanctuary during daylight hours and also participate in worship and fellowship in communal prayers led by our Pastoral Assistant Kay McIntosh.
- 10:00 - 10:30am Prayers led by Kay McIntosh
- 10:30 - 11:00am Sanctuary open for silent meditation and private prayer
If you wish to, please feel free to bring along your own bible and pew cushion. Come along for either or both this Wednesday.
FRIENDS OF WESM 2021 WILDLIFE CALENDAR NOW ON SALE! The Wildlife and Environmental Society of Malawi (WESM) are delighted to announce that their beautiful 2021 calendar is now available for purchase.
WESM have been supporting schools and community conservation in Malawi for more than 70 years. Buying their high quality, full colour 2021 calendar which is packed full of stunning photos of Malawi wildlife, will help support WESM's vital work. The calendars, which include an extra month, would make ideal Christmas gifts as well as being a great idea to treat yourself, cost £11 or £13.20, including p+p.
To purchase a calander, please contact Hilary Watkinson by email at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
THANK YOU FOR OUR PRESENCE AT THE SERVICES The church will be open at 10.00 on Sunday mornings for those who have booked to come to the service.
Please note that there may be member(s) of the congregation who are exempt on health grounds from wearing a mask. If this applies to you, it would be helpful if you wear a lanyard or badge. If you would like to bring a cushion to place in your pew, please feel free to do so but do take it home with you.
At the close of the service, please remain in your place until stewards invite you to leave at the end of the closing voluntary, and maintain social distancing as you leave the church premises. If you wish to speak to Helen Alexander or Kay McIntosh, you are asked to indicate this as you pass. Helen will join you on the pavement once everyone else has left.
Booking system:
Phone: On Wednesdays, from 11.00am to 1.00pm, you may reserve a space by phoning the Church Office (0131 667 1522).
Internet: We would encourage anyone with internet access to use the Eventbrite booking system, which will be open from 4pm on Wednesdays. The system can be accessed from our website via this link: www.mayfieldsalisbury.org/attend
ONLINE OFFERING / DONATION The Church is very grateful to all those who give by standing order enabling us to maintain a large portion of our income through these difficult times. We now offer the ability to contribute to our work electronically through the ‘give.net’ facility which appears on the home page of the Church’s website. This provides the possibility of adding Gift Aid to donations. There is also a direct link to the new system which is: give.net/20311853 Hugh Somerville, Free Will Offerings Treasurer
CORNERSTONE BOOKSHOP
Recommended Daily Meditations: Fr Richard Rohr at www.cac.org Also, see www.pray-as-you-go.org
Books for the Journey
Riders on the Storm: The Climate Crisis and the Survival of Being by Alastair McIntosh, Birlinn Ltd 2020
Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald, Jonathan Cape 2020
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Forthcoming Deadlines
Order of service for next week: Thursday at 6.00pm.
Next Grapevine: Friday 29 January 2021 at 6.00pm.
Please send submissions to the Church Manager, William Mearns.
Phone: 0780 801 1234 or email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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Copyright Notices
SCRIPTURE QUOTATIONS are from New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission.
All rights reserved worldwide.
Mayfield Salisbury Parish Church holds a CCLI Streaming License: #88916
Images – Some courtesy of Pixabay
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Social Media
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Scottish Charity Number SC000785
