Weekly Message October 18

You will not be surprised to hear that there are no plans on the horizon to reopen our church building or to begin holding worship services and other events in person.

Please Worship with us online. We share a weekly YouTube link for you to watch when it is convenient for you. This Sunday’s Worship is:

Welcome to World Food Day – since 1945, October 16th has been designated by the United Nations as World Food Day. World Food Day was established to increase awareness of world hunger and poverty and to inspire solutions for world change.

Did you celebrate Thanksgiving?  Who was at your table … or whose table were you at for a Thanksgiving dinner? What did you eat? Who was missing? Who would you like to have invited? Who did you not get to invite or go to eat with because of the pandemic? Because of other reasons?

Coming as it does on the heels of Thanksgiving in Canada, I have been thinking about the tables we’ve sat at, the meals we’ve shared, and the leftovers many of us are perhaps getting tired of eating … This week’s scripture reading is a story about feeding a crowd and dealing with the leftovers: see John 6: 1-14

Sunday, October 25 – Peace Sunday – Our worship will centre on Jesus’ message of peace – not the easy peace, but peace that is worth working and praying for …

I would love to have your messages and prayers for peace to include. If you are able, please consider making one or more paper cranes made with your messages and prayers.

If you’re not sure how to fold a paper crane, here’s one website: https://origami.me/crane/. (or ask a friend to talk you through it – that could be an interesting call!) Then please take a photo and send it to me so I can include it in our worship. Another option would be to drop off your crane(s) in the church mailbox – perhaps we can find a volunteer to create a mobile or string them up somewhere! If folding a crane seems beyond what you can manage at this time, sending in your prayers and messages in any other form would be great too. Thanks. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Sunday, November 1 is All Saints Day – It has been the practice at Harrow to include a collage of remembrances of those who have died in the previous 12 months. This year, I’d like to do something a little different.   We’ll be talking about the ‘communion of saints, the great cloud of witnesses’.

I would be honoured and delighted to have you share a photo of someone you would name as being part of the ‘cloud of witnesses’. Can you send me a photo, tell me who it is and, if you’d like, include a brief story? This can anyone from your past or present, and does not need to be someone who has died in the past 12 months, though we will definitely be including those folks.

Looking for another option to feed your spirituality?  The Rev. Dr. Candice Bist, minister of the Shelburne-Primrose (ON) United Churches does a weekly podcast. Bist was a former television producer; her husband, Bruce Ley, is a professional musician – also employed by the pastoral charge. They have a studio and musical instruments in their home and put together a new podcast most weeks.

You can find them here:  https://www.shelburneprimrose.com/sunday-morning-podcast-with-shelburne-primrose-united-churches

Faithful Readers 

This reading group meets online once a month (on the last Wednesday of the month, usually at 1:30pm) to discuss their latest book.

You are welcome to join us. Click here for more information.

Harrow United Church

If you would like to be part of the online gathering and discussion, please email or call the church office and we’ll add you to the list.

The next meeting is:

October 28: The Lightkeeper’s Daughter by Jean E. Pendziwol

Though her mind is still sharp, Elizabeth’s eyes have failed. No longer able to linger over her beloved books or gaze at the paintings that move her spirit, she fills the void with music and memories of her family—a past that suddenly becomes all too present when her late father’s journals are found amid the ruins of an old shipwreck.

With the help of Morgan, a delinquent teenager performing community service, Elizabeth goes through the diaries, a journey through time that brings the two women closer together. Entry by entry, these unlikely friends are drawn deep into a world far removed from their own—to Porphyry Island on Lake Superior, where Elizabeth’s father manned the lighthouse seventy years before.

Till next week,

Yours in faith, Teresa

(Rev.) Teresa Moysey

Harrow United Church

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