All Saints Gazette: Worship now at 17:30, and other cool things
Greetings from All Saints Amsterdam!
Worship is at Vrijburg at 17:30 (note new time)
This week's newsletter is brief because I (Kyle) fell while heroically rescuing a football that was about to fall into a canal and hurt my thumb, making typing rather difficult. Important notes for this week: Bible study Wednesday at 18:30 on Zoom (link below); worship on Sunday at Vrijburg at 17:30 (note place and and time)!
Vrijburg is located at Diepenbrockstraat 46, next to Beatrixpark. The nearest tram stop is Stadionweg, served by the 5. Europaplein and Amsterdam Zuid are also relatively close.
Abundance Inventory
Mpho offers this prompt for your reflection based on Sunday's reading from Exodus:
Rules, rules, rules. We might approach laws, regulations, and limits as a tangled mesh designed to thwart our freedoms. But that wasn’t the purpose of the Ten Commandments. They were a distillation of the rules of righteous living. (Conveniently packaged in a format fit for a finger game). Righteous living means living in right relationship with God and with one another.
I offer a modern translation:
You shall have no other gods before Me. PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST
You shall make no idols. DON'T WORSHIP WHAT DOESN'T MATTER.
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. WATCH YOUR MOUTH.
Keep the Sabbath day holy. GET SOME REST.
Honor your father and your mother. GIVE RESPECT.
You shall not murder. DON’T KILL.
You shall not commit adultery. RESPECT YOUR RELATIONSHIPS.
You shall not steal. DON’T STEAL.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour. DON'T LIE.
You shall not covet. DON'T HANKER AFTER WHAT ISN'T YOURS.
I love to paint portraits. Very often the difference between an image that resembles the person and one that does not is the right relationship. Is the nose in the right place in relationship to the eye? Is the mouth too big in relationship to the nose? The commandments advise us to put God first and build our lives from there. What happens when we do that? We have a secure starting point for creating a beautiful life with everything in the right relationship to everything else. We start noticing pockets of abundance that have been obscured by the relationship, the wrong perspective. What adjustments do you need to make to put God first? What pockets of abundance become evident when you do that?
Bible Study (Wednesday at 6:30)
We are on Zoom until Easter to see if this format works for more people. For this week, I am going to run it as Bible study instead of prayer lab. The text will be this Sunday's gospel reading, John 2:13-22.
Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88944038056?pwd=4ybNm7bmmD44bzCkAAdSaZ1ZNXM69N.1
Meeting ID: 889 4403 8056
Passcode: 817891
Note that starting at Easter, we will move Bible study to Thursdays.
Child-friendly Worship
Our first service at Vrijburg (you did get the note about date at and time? 5:30!) will be designed with easy participation in mind for children or others for whom prolonged stillness and attention is difficult. It will be a judgement-free zone, so tell your friends with kids. I could use a person or two to help with a short activity during the sermon. I'll share a sermon manuscript with you afterward, if you want. As usual, we encourage everyone who is able to bring a dish or snack to share afterward.
Roving Priest
Send Kyle a message if you want to meet up and talk on Thursday. He will be at the coffeecompany at Beethovenstraat 84 (close to Vrijburg from 10:00 until shortly before 12:00, will have lunch somewhere near Albert Cuypstraat shortly after 12:00, and then will go see the Our Lord in the Attic Museum. Happy to meet any of you, hear what is going on in your lives, or just eat and the museum together (and you help me practice Dutch if you want).
That's all for today!
Want to talk to a priest? We want to talk to you too!
Website: https://allsaintsamsterdam.church/
Mpho: mpho@allsaintsamsterdam.church
Kyle: kyle@allsaintsamsterdam.church
General: info@allsaintsamsterdam.church
