Dear Reader,
A reminder that this coming Sunday 13 October are the Village Pet Blessing Services 9.30 and 10.30am. Bring your pet, or a photo on phone or print!
This is Baby Loss Awareness Week, and our Baby Loss Service is coming up 7pm on Thursday 17 October - please invite friends and family. The Service is for anyone who’s lost a baby before or after birth, however it has happened, whether by miscarriage, abortion, stillbirth or sudden infant death.
Wondering what’s on? Please check the online calendar at stmarysmarston.org or the printed calendar on the table by the door for latest events and service information.
Final Call! join the online Guided Retreat beamed from Luton beginning Sunday evening:
Subsidised places available if you need one - just let me know.
Enjoy your week,
God bless,
Andrew+
Genesis 2:18–24 NIV The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”
Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.
But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
The man said,
“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘Woman,’
for she was taken out of Man.”
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
Mark 10:2–16 NRSV Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife,and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.