Last Wine Before Breakfast of 2010!

Last Wine Before Breakfast of 2010!

Guns, Death, and Advent

There are some events that you remember exactly where you were when you heard the news.

The assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Tiananmen Square.
The 911 attacks.

For me, I know exactly where I was when the news came over the car radio that a man was shooting students at the École Polytechnique in Montreal on December 6, 1989. As the news kept coming out of Montréal it became clear that this attack was directed towards women.

Twenty-one years ago today fourteen women were murdered. Their crime was that they were women.

I don’t know what Advent was like for the friends and families of those women and the others caught in the violence, but I’ll bet that their Christmas was awful.

Violence has a way of wrecking Christmas, doesn’t it.

And gun violence continues to destroy lives in our country, and in our city. But in Toronto it isn’t women who are the prime targets of this kind of violence. It is Black men and they tend to be turning their guns on each other. This year we have seen thirty-eight deaths, thirty-eight murders, in the Black community.

Last week, our WBB sisters, Jacqueline and Sky, led a service to remember those deaths and to pray for hope.

This week we bring some of the prayers from that service to WBB.
This week we pray for hope in the face of such violence.

Remembering the Montréal fourteen.
Remembering the Toronto thirty-eight.
Remembering all whose lives have been scarred by such violence.

And we pray against the odds that some new life would sprout from the stump of these cut down lives.

We pray that One will come with a spirit of wisdom and understanding,
a spirit counsel and of strength,
a spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

We pray that following such a Messiah, we too would judge not by what our eyes see,
nor by what our ears hear,
but with righteousness and justice.

We will pray, “Come soon, Lord Jesus.”

Wine Before Breakfast
Tuesday @ 7.22am, Wycliffe Chapel

David Neelands presiding,
Brian Walsh preaching,
The WBB Bandhood leading our music,
Jacqueline Daley leading our prayers.

Festive food, including hot apple cider, will be served for breakfast. Why not bring some friends?

In Advent hope,

Brian Walsh

PS. While this will be our last WBB service on a Tuesday morning, we will gather one more time this semester next Monday evening (December 13) at 5.15 in the Trinity College Chapel for “Wine Before Dinner.” And yes, dinner will be served after the service. So if you can’t ever get out to a Tuesday morning service, then why don’t you join us for that early evening service in the third week of Advent. If you could send me an RSVP if you plan to stay for dinner, that will help our friends at Trinity to prepare enough food.