Giving Thanks

Although not Thanksgiving Sunday, this was a Sunday for giving thanks.

We gave thanks for the life of Eleanor Cox as Ann Frederking led the Bell Choir in a special piece in her honour.

We remembered the lives of Ed Kirk and Marg Kneen' s Uncle Glen and will keep them in our thoughts and prayers as services celebrate their lives this coming week.

We thanked Russell Smith for writing a stewardship hymn which spoke to me on living with respect in creation. We sang this together in worship for the first time this morning.
We gave thanks for the response to the stewardship campaign and the generous outpouring of time, talents and treasures. Phyllis, Graham and Tom thanked the congregation for their generous hearts.

And finally we gave thanks for God's presence as we shared a meal together following the worship. This table, laden with soup, sandwiches and cake served as an extension to the table at the front of the sanctuary. How good it is to meet and eat together. This is one of those places where important conversations take place.

How could you not feel thankful after all of that!

Peter



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Ultimate Forgiveness

The Ottawa Citizen this morning contained some strong opinions on a recent car crash into a home in our community. The home owner was accused of being too forgiving in her comments about the young man. It reminded me of another controversy over how merciful we should be.

It was close to 21 years ago that Jim Swire's daughter Flora died on Pam Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. How painful for the families involved when the tragedy was once again debated in the press. The occasion was the release from prison of Abdelbaset Ali al megrah Megrahi, the Libyan man known as the Lockerbie bomber.

Jim Swire praised the Scottish government for the release. He said, " am a Christian. So I would hope that, even if I was convinced that Megrahi was guilty, my Christian compassion and forgiveness would extend to wanting to see him die with his family around him in Libya."

Peter


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An Open Invitation To The Table

This is the weekend for family and feasting. Following the service, the common question over coffee was “Who is cooking the turkey at your place?”

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This year it’s not us. With a couple of exceptions, we have cooked a turkey for over 30 years. But this year part of our steadily expanding family is doing the job. And we will be the invited guests for a change.

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It’s a good thing to invite others to our table. I spoke to a number of people in our church community who are opening their tables to others for this feast.

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Some of us know what it is like to be a stranger in the community and how much it means when you get invited over for dinner. As a single summer student working in a northern mining community, it was church folks who invited me over on Sunday after church. It was what you did in those places. You invited in the stranger.

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And it’s also part of the faith story. Remember the stranger in the land. Share with them the abundance of your fields. So whether there is plenty or where there is little, may we continue to put our faith into practice and invite one another to the table.

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Burp. Excuse me. Amen.

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Peter

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What To Do ...... Nothing

The summer edition of the American Scholar trumpets the value of doing nothing.

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The Dalai Lama has claimed that when someone harms you, the best thing to do is nothing.
Don’t call attention to it in order to shame the offender. Mark Edmundson says that much of the pain in the world comes when we pass on our own injuries, compensating for our belittlement by sticking it to somebody else.

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When I read that, I can feel a protest coming on. But surely the prophetic tradition demands that we protest when harm is done to any of God’s creatures.

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The rebuttal I suppose would be, yes but when we fall into a pattern of reacting to everyone who cuts us off in traffic or says something unpleasant to us, then we can become negative rather than positive forces in our relationships. So here’s to doing nothing for the sake of the gospel.

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Peter

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