Monday, March 31, 2025

Contemplative Nature Walk | 4:00pm-5:30pm Sunday 6th April 2025

NOTE!! CHANGE OF VENUE!!!  
We've changed the location to the Mernda Wetlands to bring the 
walk closer to where the majority of you live! 
Tell anyone who may not be aware that we are not starting from Brinawa Reserve!!

4:00pm-5:30pm Sunday 6th April 2025 
Worship Focus: Join us on a Contemplative Nature Walk. 

A contemplative walk is an invitation to slow down & spend time in the outdoors enjoying God’s amazing creation. 

Set in the beautiful South Morang Wetlands, we meet at the corner of Glenwood avenue and Wilton Vale Rd, Mernda, then we will spend time engaging our senses; connecting with nature, our bodies & God.  

Meet at the corner of Glenwood avenue and Wilton Vale Rd, Mernda (Map below) 

BYO refreshments 
Check here and on our Facebook page if the weather is inclement.

Haven | Palm Sunday | 5:00pm - 6:00pm | Meal together










Palm Sunday

5:00pm - 6:00pm Sunday 13th of April 2025
Venue: UCA, 7 Schotters Rd, Mernda

We will share a meal together and reflect on those last seven days of Jesus life leading up to Easter.

Bring a plate to share (enough for yourselves and maybe a portion more). We'll put the food out, buffet style, and folk can help themselves. 

***   ***   ***   ***

"...As Jesus and the disciples approached Jerusalem, they
came to the town of Bethphage on the Mount of Olives. Jesus sent two of them on ahead. 2 “Go into the village over there,” he said. “As soon as you enter it, you will see a donkey tied there, with its colt beside it. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone asks what you are doing, just say, ‘The Lord needs them,’ and he will immediately let you take them.”

4 This took place to fulfill the prophecy that said,

5 “Tell the people of Jerusalem,
    ‘Look, your King is coming to you.
He is humble, riding on a donkey—
    riding on a donkey’s colt.’”

6 The two disciples did as Jesus commanded. 7 They brought the donkey and the colt to him and threw their garments over the colt, and he sat on it.

8 Most of the crowd spread their garments on the road ahead of him, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 Jesus was in the center of the procession, and the people all around him were shouting,

“Praise God for the Son of David!
    Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
    Praise God in highest heaven!”

10 The entire city of Jerusalem was in an uproar as he entered. “Who is this?” they asked.

11 And the crowds replied, “It’s Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”

12 Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out all the people buying and selling animals for sacrifice. He knocked over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves. 13 He said to them, “The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple will be called a house of prayer,’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves!”

14 The blind and the lame came to him in the Temple, and he healed them. 15 The leading priests and the teachers of religious law saw these wonderful miracles and heard even the children in the Temple shouting, “Praise God for the Son of David.”

But the leaders were indignant. 16 They asked Jesus, “Do you hear what these children are saying?”

“Yes,” Jesus replied. “Haven’t you ever read the Scriptures? For they say, ‘You have taught children and infants to give you praise.’” 17 Then he returned to Bethany, where he stayed overnight.

18 In the morning, as Jesus was returning to Jerusalem, he was hungry, 19 and he noticed a fig tree beside the road. He went over to see if there were any figs, but there were only leaves. Then he said to it, “May you never bear fruit again!” And immediately the fig tree withered up.

20 The disciples were amazed when they saw this and asked, “How did the fig tree wither so quickly?”

21 Then Jesus told them, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith and don’t doubt, you can do things like this and much more. You can even say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. 22 You can pray for anything, and if you have faith, you will receive it.”

23 When Jesus returned to the Temple and began teaching, the leading priests and elders came up to him. They demanded, “By what authority are you doing all these things? Who gave you the right?”

24 “I’ll tell you by what authority I do these things if you answer one question,” Jesus replied. 25 “Did John’s authority to baptize come from heaven, or was it merely human?”

They talked it over among themselves. “If we say it was from heaven, he will ask us why we didn’t believe John. 26 But if we say it was merely human, we’ll be mobbed because the people believe John was a prophet.” 27 So they finally replied, “We don’t know.”

And Jesus responded, “Then I won’t tell you by what authority I do these things.

28 “But what do you think about this? A man with two sons told the older boy, ‘Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.’ 29 The son answered, ‘No, I won’t go,’ but later he changed his mind and went anyway. 30 Then the father told the other son, ‘You go,’ and he said, ‘Yes, sir, I will.’ But he didn’t go.

31 “Which of the two obeyed his father?”

They replied, “The first.”

Then Jesus explained his meaning: “I tell you the truth, corrupt tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the Kingdom of God before you do. 32 For John the Baptist came and showed you the right way to live, but you didn’t believe him, while tax collectors and prostitutes did. And even when you saw this happening, you refused to believe him and repent of your sins.

33 “Now listen to another story. A certain landowner planted a vineyard, built a wall around it, dug a pit for pressing out the grape juice, and built a lookout tower. Then he leased the vineyard to tenant farmers and moved to another country. 34 At the time of the grape harvest, he sent his servants to collect his share of the crop. 35 But the farmers grabbed his servants, beat one, killed one, and stoned another. 36 So the landowner sent a larger group of his servants to collect for him, but the results were the same.

37 “Finally, the owner sent his son, thinking, ‘Surely they will respect my son.’

38 “But when the tenant farmers saw his son coming, they said to one another, ‘Here comes the heir to this estate. Come on, let’s kill him and get the estate for ourselves!’ 39 So they grabbed him, dragged him out of the vineyard, and murdered him.

40 “When the owner of the vineyard returns,” Jesus asked, “what do you think he will do to those farmers?”

41 The religious leaders replied, “He will put the wicked men to a horrible death and lease the vineyard to others who will give him his share of the crop after each harvest.”

42 Then Jesus asked them, “Didn’t you ever read this in the Scriptures?

‘The stone that the builders rejected
    has now become the cornerstone.
This is the Lord’s doing,
    and it is wonderful to see.’

43 I tell you, the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation that will produce the proper fruit. 44 Anyone who stumbles over that stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone it falls on.”

45 When the leading priests and Pharisees heard this parable, they realized he was telling the story against them—they were the wicked farmers. 46 They wanted to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowds, who considered Jesus to be a prophet.

Matthew 21(NLT) 

Friday, March 28, 2025

🍁 Autumn 2025 Newsletter | M&E Boutros 🍁

   Autumn 2025








Greetings friends,

Autumn’s just about here and the leaves are beginning to colour and fall from the trees. That means Easter is not far off! 

As we come to Good Friday and then Easter Sunday take a moment to pause and contemplate the God who comes to us in Christ!
.
May God the Father bless us,

May Christ take care of us,

May the Holy Spirit enlighten us all the days of our life.
The Lord be our defender and keeper of body and soul,

both now and for ever, to the ages of ages. 
Amen

We’ve attached a short news-letter to give you bit of an update Click here
We want to say a huge thankyou to the many who encourage, support and pray for us and for Haven — You are so appreciated! 

Sincerely,
Martin and Esmae

Sunday, March 23, 2025

NOTE — No Haven programme on Sunday 30th of March!

Hey everyone,
Just a reminder that there is NO Haven programme on the 30 March 2025.
We are keeping the ‘extra’ fifth Sundays of the month as a gift for you to use!

Use that weekend as you need: 

    — Plan in that: “We must catch up one day!” catch up!
    — Chat with the Neighbours!
    — Go out for a leisurely lunch with the family!
    — Have along slow coffee with a friend!
    — Curl up with a book!
    — Maybe just lie on the lawn and watch the clouds and rest up!


We’ll be back on for Sunday 6 April and our worship time will be a contemplative walk down at the Plenty Gorge Parkland  (See the Blog entry for details!)



















Questions!


Well, we had a great selection of thoughtful questions thrown into the mix for us to discuss this Sunday (23rd March 2025)

We made a good start on some of our questions:
  • How do you discern whether something or some vision is from God, from your own thoughts or from the devil?
  • Is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit really an unforgivable sin? Does this mean you won't go to heaven?
We had a quick look at two other important questions (groan):
  • Who was the first tennis player in the Bible? (Moses, who SERVED in Pharaoh’s courts)
  • First person in Bible to have computer issues? (Adam and Eve had serious issues with their Apple) 
Still to get to at future gatherings:
  • What does it mean when God hardened Pharaoh's heart so he didn't let the Israelites out of Egypt? 
  • Mental health vs possession, and how do we know?
  • Is climate change part of God’s laws of nature?
  • Why are mortgages & house prices so burdensomely large?
  • How do we reconcile the idea that many  people will not be ’saved’ by becoming Christian with the fact thay God is love?
  • Please explain the Trinity? 
  • What can we do as Haven to help our community -- This one had ‘pick me!' written on the paper it came on!! We will spend a whole week workshopping this together next term. 

Note: Next 30th of March as a fifth Sunday, is a break from our usual meeting (See next post


Haven Zoom Prayer Meetings


Greetings everyone!

The the second Haven Zoom prayer time for the year will be as follows:

        8:00pm-8:30pm Monday 7th of April 2025
        Join Zoom Meeting — https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83038483377  
        Meeting ID — 830 3848 3377

Note: Keep the Zoom Link details for all further prayer meetings.
Zoom prayer times will be on 8pm each FIRST Monday evening of EACH month

The prayer time is an opportunity to pray together for the northern suburbs around Mernda, Doreen, Woollert, South Morang.

We want to pray for the people who live, work and play there

We want to pray for followers of Jesus who serve there as salt and light

We want to seek God’s guidance about growing Haven community in 2025

If you can’t join us, that’s perfectly fine — but could you maybe, pause and pray for a few minutes where you are? 🙂

Grace and Peace,

Martin

Sunday, March 16, 2025

I got questions!| 4:30pm-5:30pm Sunday 23 March 2025

 

We all have questions around life, the universe and everything! 

And no, the answer isn't always 42!

We're going to have an afternoon where we pose some of those questions and think about how we respond to them. I'm not guaranteeing 100% right answers! Often questions can raise other questions that send us away thinking some more!

Come and join is! If you want you can send in a question beforehand via here: HERE



Sunday, March 9, 2025

What if God was one of us? | 4:30pm-5:30pm Sunday 16 March 2025


Some years ago, Joan Osborne (1995) released a song called "What if God was one of us?" The first verse started:

    If God had a name what would it be?
    And would you call it to his face?
    If you were faced with Him in all His glory
    What would you ask if you had just one question?

Christians believe that the miracle of the incarnation was that God was one of us, and  that the life and death and resurrection has special significance.

C.S. Lewis (author of the Narnia books) put it like this: 

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”   C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

As we go through the season of Lent leading up to Easter, we're going to consider this at our gathering on 4.30pm Sunday 16th of March (Mernda Uniting) What's the significance of Jesus Christ and what do Christians believe happened at that first Easter. Come join us!

Chocolat and Chocolate


We had a fantastic time on this warm Labour Day Sunday afternoon watching Chocolat together and savouring all the wonderful chocolates people b
rought to share. Those Easter eggs, soft-centres, almond chocolate and Ferrero Rocher balls! Mmmmm!


'Enjoyed a lively discussion about the movie's themes, around redemption, legalism, parenting, where transformation comes from, acceptance, inviting in the strangers and much, much more!


See you all 4.30pm next week as we think about the easter theme -- What if God was one of us — What makes Jesus important?