First Sunday in Advent

A wonderful morning at church, celebrating the first Sunday in Advent. The church was decorated with the crèche, Advent and Christmas banners, Christmas decorations on the window ledges and of course the Advent candles. Our handbell choir played the prelude, an Advent Meditation, and some of the handbells accompanied the choir singing an arrangement of Ding Dong Merrily on High. The Praise band (lower right) sang several pieces, including during Holy Communion. The first Advent candle of Hope was lit, and David, our pastor started a series which he’s calling the original Christmas Playlist, starting today with the song of Zechariah, in Luke 1: 65-79. We all need to cling to Hope in these times when our newsfeeds are filled with the horrors of war, natural disasters, man’s inhumanity to man. Our Bible study, which followed, is also beginning to look at Luke, so the service and study complemented themselves very well today.
It was a dismal grey day, so we did our exercise inside this afternoon - I swam (40 lengths today) while R went to the gym.
Step count: 5,416