This life is full of tragedy. In fact if Genesis 3 tells us anything, it tells us that we can expect our world to be full of tragedy and suffering because this world is not as it should be... this is a broken world and tragedy is part of life.

But what is a Christian response to tragedy and suffering?

Currently we are surrounded by stories of personal loss and suffering caused by the earthquake in Haiti. Last year it was the tragedy of bush-fire in Victoria, before that it was the Indian Ocean Tsunami... There are countless tragedies caused by cyclones, or drought, or flooding, or disease... So what does the Bible have to say on suffering? Well the Bible has a lot to say to us in the midst of our suffering, more than we can cover here. So I just want to point out  4 key responses to personal suffering that the Bible offers. These 4 responses come from the examples of Job (pronounced "Jobe"), the psalm writers, and Jesus himself.

Have you visited the All Saints Petersham Twitter feed? You can find us at twitter.com/allstspetersham (note the spelling).

If you have a Twitter account (and it's free to get one), please add @allstspetersham to the list of people that you follow. We usually post a couple of announcements to Twitter each week, generally for new podcasts and previews of the next Sunday's service.

You can also send feedback on Twitter to @allstspetersham. And why not spread the word about All Saints through your own tweets? (Here's an example I cooked earlier.)

Thanks to everyone for your patience and understanding while the All Saints and Salt websites were off the air for the last eight days.

The outage was the result of an over-exuberant search engine indexing agent from one of Russia's leading websites, Yandex, which chewed up a staggering 37 per cent of our webspace's allocated bandwidth for the month of June 2008. By comparison, Google's share was about 4 per cent.

There is no evidence either of hacking or of a denial-of-service attack.

Bearing in mind that Russia falls outside the Petersham parish boundaries, I am taking steps to deny access, human and otherwise, to the All Saints website for all visitors from Yandex.ru

Note also: Our website will also be offline from 9pm tonight (Wednesday July 1) for some routine maintenance. I expect to have it available again by morning Thursday. In case of further problems we'll have status updates on Twitter @allstspetersham.

Prayer Points – Kellie Nicholas

Japan – 13 February 09

Dear all,

The third of February marked the first anniversary of my arrival in Japan.  It it hard to believe that it has been a year, and yet so many things have happened in that time.  Let’s give thanks to our great God for a good year and pray that he will continue to sustain me as I serve him and his people here in Japan.

This month has brought, and will bring, some firsts for me.  Last week I wrote my first Bible study in Japanese.  I had my tutor look over it and help me fix the questions so that they made sense.  The girls in my Bible study group understood the questions and I mostly understood their answers :)  I will also be praying at church on the 15th and leading the evening service on the 22nd.  Please pray for these things as they are really beyond my language ability.  Pray that God will help me to be understood and that people will be encouraged in their worship of our great God.

With all of these things going on, you would think that I had no time to get bored but recently this has been the case.  I think I mostly miss having people to hang out with in my free-time.  People are so busy here and don’t really have a culture of just hanging out together.  Please pray that I will be content and continue to build the relationships that I have.

Thanks for your partnership and prayers.

Kellie

Kellie Nicholas

Connect 09 @ All Saints

What is Connect 09?

1.             Connect 09 is a co-ordinated campaign by all Sydney Anglicans to pray for and

2.             contact every resident in the region of the Diocese withthe Word of God in a way

3.             which enables them to connect further with our churches and with Jesus Christ.

Each church is responsible for working out the best way to achieve this in their context.

What is the ‘Big Day In’?

This is the launch of Connect 09 across the diocese via telecast on Sunday 8^th Feb @ 10am (next week). The only service to be held at All Saints that day will start promptly at 10am.

Citysearch Sydney has posted an item on their website about the All Saints/PEC Carols in Maundrell Park next Saturday night. Click here to visit the page and add to the number of recommendations!

This is the video clip shown during Antony's November 30 sermon on 1 Corinthians, featuring Christopher Hitchens (right), author of "God Is Not Great", in debate with Anglican theologian Alister McGrath (left). If you cannot see the video below please click here to view the clip on Youtube. The complete debate can be viewed online at Fora.TV.