November 2014
St. Mark’s News Volume 18/Issue 10
From the Rector November is a month devoted to gratitude and thanksgiving. At St. Mark’s we begin the month by presenting our pledges for the mission and ministry of St. Mark’s in the coming year. We are reminded during this season of giving and thanksgiving that we are meant to return to God a portion of what He has given us. The biblical standard for this giving back is a tithe: 10% of that which we have been given. Yes, these pledges support our parish but in the first instance they are meant to be a reflection of our faith and a recognition that all we have has actually come from God. Our tithes are meant to be reflections of our gratitude; our thanksgiving for all that God has given us. Towards the end of the month we celebrate our national holiday of Thanksgiving, when we give “thanks for the fruits of the earth in their season and for the labors of those who harvest them.” We pray that we might be In this Issue faithful stewards of God’s great bounty. From the Rector ......................... 1 Yes, this is a month for gratitude and thanksgiving. But we are not Vestry Highlights ........................ 2 meant to limit our gratitude to this one month of the year. Gratitude and Parish Life .................................. 4 thanksgiving are meant to be cultivated on a daily basis. If we were to Outreach .................................... 6 say the Daily Office each morning we would begin each day by saying Christian Formation ................... 6 either the Venite (“Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving Caffeine Ministry ........................ 8 and raise a loud shout to him with psalms”) or the Jubilate (“Enter his Parishioner Highlights ................ 9 Celebrations............................. 11 gates with thanksgiving; go into his courts with praise; give thanks to ROTA ....................................... 12 him and call upon his Name”). We would be invited to offer our own intercessions and thanksgivings, and we would conclude the service with The General Thanksgiving in which we “pray, give us such an awareness of your mercies, that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth your praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up our selves to your service, and by walking before you in holiness and righteousness all our days.”
Yes, gratitude and thanksgiving are postures and attitudes that need to be cultivated. They need to become habits of being because sometimes it is difficult to be thankful. Sometimes our lives are difficult. Sometimes the lives of the people we love are difficult and painful. Our daily prayer, our weekly worship, and the seasons of the year give us a framework for being thankful people. I am thankful to God for this St. Mark’s community of faith and for the privilege of serving God together. May we all sing the following hymn no matter what our immediate circumstances might be: Now thank we all our God, with heart, and hands, and voices, who wondrous things hath done, in whom his world rejoices; who from our mother’s arms hath blessed us on our way with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
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