Thank you to everyone involved - on the parish team and in the wider community.

The count for the Dural District Anglican Churches food drive stood at 12,314 on Sunday night in the parish packing room where we gathered with Cherrybrook Anglican for a short church service. This result is about 2,000 items more than last year, and over 1,000 more than the target we'd set for this year. An excellent response and a great help to Anglicare and the families they assist during the challenging Winter months.

We are thankful to God for this result, and express our appreciation for the widespread community support for this initiative, now in its 5th year. Non-perishable food can still be donated by placing it in the collection boxes outside St Jude's Dural, St Columb's Arcadia and Christ Church Kenthurst until Monday 23 June 2008.

In one sense, you'd hope that anyone, Christian or not, would compassionately seek to help the needy - and we're glad so many do. But Christians have a special reason for doing so. In a word, it's Jesus.

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When seeking financial support for poor Christians in Jerusalem, the apostle Paul motivated fellow believers by reminding them of Jesus' example with these words: "You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich." (2 Cor 8:9, NIV).

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He didn't mean that Jesus came to make us wealthy, as some have said, but that if Jesus gave up the riches of heaven to die for us, we who have thus received God's generous forgiveness should use our material possessions to help others. Not to be generous is to head in the opposite direction to Jesus' grace.

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You can learn more about Christian attitudes to giving by reading the whole account in 2 Corinthians 8 & 9.