Watch this week’s service on YouTube by clicking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arZmdEX6OVY&feature=youtu.be
Please join us for in-person worship Sundays at 10:00 (masks recommended)
Our newest video for children video is available here: https://youtu.be/AtS0TYzL1Cw
Join us after church on Sundays for Hebrew’s Café, coffee and fellowship following worship in the Van Roon Community Hall
Did you know you can support this ministry by PayPal/Visa, e-transfer, automatic withdrawal, and gifted securities, in addition to weekly or monthly cheques? For Offering Information please visit: www.charleswoodunited.org/support
Thank you for your generous support.
Dear Friends,
Welcome to worship for Sunday, October 9, 2022.
Anytime we wish another person a Happy Thanksgiving, or in any way extoll the virtue of offering gratitude, it should come with a warning. Living with thanksgiving changes you.
Offering thanks is a vulnerable act. It is an admission that we are a people in need. And that we recognize the times when others aid us in our need. In this sense thanksgiving is confessional. More than that, offering thanks is a profoundly connecting act, a recognition that we are in relationship with one another. Expressing gratitude binds one to the other and to something greater than ourselves. In this sense thanksgiving is sacramental.
In the lesson and reflection that are part of both the online and in person service this week, I try to tease out a peculiar aspect revealed in the story of ten lepers who are healed but only one returns to give thanks. That idea is that thanksgiving doesn’t change God. It changes us. The premise is that when Jesus offers healing it is always done so as an act of grace. It is offered freely and abundantly as though the sower has all the seed in the world to scatter and cares not
where it lands for that is not the point. God will love whether we acknowledge God or not, ask for it or not, give thanks or not. There is nothing we can do, or not do that is going to make God love us anymore than God already does. As Paul says “nothing can separate us from the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ.” I take great comfort in this but it does mean that God is not changed by my taking the time to offer gratitude.
But living with thanksgiving, while not altering God, can have a profound affect on us. If we develop the practice of giving thanks, we will be disarmed of our arrogance. We will be opened to the goodness around us.
We will be enriched by our common humanity. Giving thanks is a spiritual discipline. The more we practice it, the more we will be transformed in its likeness.
You probably have known people in your life who have mastered the old proverb and, ‘have a attitude of gratitude’. Remember them and think of the joy in their life and the peace in their soul. In my experience they are not people who have had it any easier than anyone else. But the simple daily practice of bringing the things we have to be thankful for to the conscious mind can have a profound affect on our happiness and our capacity to move through sorrow and
disappointment.
In a difficult year, at the end of a difficult period of history, I am thankful for you. Thank you for remaining connected and committed to the life of this church. Thank you for journeying with us in whatever way seemed best for you. Thank you for being hopeful and sharing the hope God has placed in you.
Thank you for being thankful.
Grace and peace,
Michael
P.S. There’s a special Thanksgiving gift at the end of this week’s online service. Even if you are coming to the in person service Sunday you may wish to take a peek.
