Donations of baby supplies for the MaRIH Pregnancy Crisis Center and food for the Food Bank have been reduced drastically recently. The babies and the hungry need our help. A package or two of baby wipes and a couple of cans of food make a difference.  Please look at the lists of needs below and bring what you can to the church.

 "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” Isaiah 5:20 (KJV)

The history of the people of the nation of Israel is long and troubled. She has been conquered, exiled, and persecuted multiple times for thousands of years, and yet she endures. Maybe Charles Krauthammer expressed it best: “Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity: It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba, and 2,000-year-old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the one that today advertises ice cream at the corner candy store.” Actually, she has done far more than endure, she has flourished, and enriched the world by her contributions in science, medicine, music, and the arts, in all of which fields her accomplishments have been far out of proportion to her percentage of the human population. And yet she is hated as perhaps no other people on earth have been hated.

Jews have been persecuted to some degree or other for as long as they have existed, and they have been targeted for extermination many times and in many places. I consider as shameful the fact that for centuries many if not most of the Christian nations of both eastern and western Europe were viciously antisemitic. In the last century the Third Reich and the Soviet Union showed us that antisemitism was not a uniquely or even primarily a Christian phenomenon as the neo-pagan Nazis and atheistic Communists embraced persecution of Jews as their official and, in the case of the Nazis, murderous, policies.

After World War Two and the industrialized mass murder of The Holocaust, it seemed that at least in this country we had turned away with revulsion from the ancient evil of enmity with the people of the Old Covenant and had begun to more fully appreciate our national commitment to freedom of religion and the legal equality of all citizens. Recent events seem now to indicate that our national political and educational establishments have abandoned both.

For decades the modern nation of Israel endured rocket attacks launched on it's civilian population from Islamic nations on its borders. It has fought limited wars against invaders from other nations and terrorist organizations explicitly dedication to its eradication. For all this time various Islamic terrorist groups have continued to openly state that the violent destruction of Israel is their permanent goal.

The horrors inflicted on Israeli civilians in the latest attack by Hamas, an attack which Hamas has explicitly announced that it intends to repeat, have led the Israeli government to retaliate against Hamas with the purpose not merely of defeating it but of destroying it as a terrorist or military threat. This is rational and justified. Hamas' founding document, the Hamas Covenant of 1988, expresses without reservation that as an Islamic religious duty all of the land currently held by Israel should be the target of jihad until that nation has been utterly destroyed. No nation should be expected to allow the existence on its borders of an entity whose primary reason for being is to destroy said nation, and the government of Israel's duty to defend its people from Hamas is clear.

It has been said that if all the Moslem states disarmed tomorrow there would be pace in the Middle East, but if Israel disarmed tomorrow there would be a massacre. I agree.

In the field of international relations this is the great moral test of our time, and it is a test which this nation is failing. Our national political establishment apparently sees some sort of moral equivalence between Israel and her enemies; I do not. Our national educational establishment is stridently opposed to Israel and supportive of Hamas' clear and unambiguous intention to continue its savage campaign of terror, murder, and barbaric atrocities against Israel until either it or the Jewish state no longer exist.

Calling evil good and good evil, indeed.

-- Father Bragg +

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

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SERVICES & EVENTS

Sunday Services, 7:45 AM, 9:00 AM, & 11:15 AM (for online participation for the services go to: https://www.facebook.com/saintsofscotland/ ) 

Sunday School, 10:30 AM

Wednesday, 12 noon, Holy Communion and anointing for healing, (for online participation for the service go to: https://www.facebook.com/saintsofscotland/ )

Wednesday, 7:30 PM, Bible study with Father Bragg, church undercroft, "The Gospel of Saint Mark in the World of Saint Mark"

Thursday, 12 noon, Ascension Day Holy Communion

Saturday, May 18, MEN'S GROUP, 8:30 AM, breakfast by Chef Extraordinaire Claude Crump and Bible study by Fr. Bragg.  Great food, Bible study and fellowship

Monday, June 3, Next Vestry Meeting, 7:30 PM

MaRIH Center (crisis pregnancy center) Needs Our Help Now

MaRIH Center with its all volunteer staff provides help to mothers-to-be and mothers in need.  Please provide some of the items that are needed.. (You can leave the donations where the food for the food bank is collected on the pew in the undercorft.)

Especially Needed
 In Bold are a critical need.

Diapers (sizes newborn, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6)
Lovies
Baby wipes
Diaper rash ointment
Spring/Summer Clothing: 0-3 month 3-6 month, 2T
Baby shampoo
Baby blankets
Bibs
Formula: Simulac Advance Formula
Formula: other but not recalled
Wash clothes
Hooded towels
Grocery gift cards

Food Donations

Please help this month with a food donation if you are able. Christ House is very thankful for the food we provide to them each month. Please also buy low sugar cereals (and not the kid's types that have lots of sugar).  Current needs include the following:
• canned meats (chicken, corned beef, spam)
• peanut butter
• jelly
• tuna
• canned vegetables (corn, green beans - (regular and low sodium)
• individual fruit cups (low sugar)
• canned fruit (low sugar)
• boxed cereal (low sugar) and instant or old fashioned oatmeal (18 oz or 42 oz)
• pasta (regular and gluten-free)
• instant potatoes
• Macaroni & cheese kits
Soups: Chunky or Progresso; Chicken broth
• Coffee, cooking oil, flour, sugar
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Our mailing address is:
St. Andrew & St. Margaret of Scotland
1607 Dewitt Avenue
Alexandria, VA 22301-1625