Watch this week’s service on YouTube by clicking:

February 1 Worship Video Service

 

 

Join us for Sunday morning worship at CUC is at 10:00 AM

with the He/SheBrews Café following in the Van Roon Community Hall

 

• 3^rd Annual Mental Health Awareness Evening – Join us on Monday, February 2 at 7:00 PM for our annual Let’s Talk About Mental Health Event. This year we are hosting a conversation with Dr. Mark Koltek, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist with the Manitoba Adolescent Treatment Centre (MATC). Dr. Koltek will be discussing the challenges of good mental health and looking at the practices that aid in positive mental health outcomes in young and old. This evening is open to the community and anyone with interest in robust conversation for personal well-being is most welcome.

 

• We have a few people interested in a “Cooking and Caring Club”, a team of people to reach out to members of the church who would benefit from a warm meal during a difficult time. If you have an interest in being part of such a team please contact the church office, 204-832-3667 and we will connect with you as we put this initiative together.

 

• An Open House for the United Nations Association of Canada (UNAC) will be held at Canadian Museum for Human Rights on Saturday, January 31st from 1:30pm- 4:30pm. Among the presentations is one on sustainability by one of our community Jennifer Berven. All are welcome.

 

• The funeral service for Dennis Lloyd will be Friday, February 6 at 2:00pm. Please remember Doreen and the Lloyd family in your prayers this week.

 

 

 

Dear Friends

 

Welcome to worship for Sunday, February 1, 2026.

 

This past Tuesday, January 27 was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is observed each year on the 27^th of January because that is the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp in 1945.

 

We were fortunate to host an event this past Thursday evening that wasn’t mean to be a Holocaust Remembrance Day event but served as such for us. We partnered with and Manitoba Institute to Combat Antisemitism to hear a presentation from Dr. Andre Oboler of the Online Hate Prevention Institute of Australia. The subject was the online hate that resulted from the horrific and tragic Bondi Beach Hanukkah massacre in Sydney on December 14. Hosting this event was a way for our church to respond in love. So often we hear news of a tragedy far away and though we offer prayers and write letters of support, we wish we could do more. This opportunity presented itself and gave Charleswood a chance to show our solidarity with victims of hate by receiving guests, educating ourselves, and welcoming an interfaith collection of people into our sanctuary.

 

Dr. Oboler’s talk was sobering at best. His agency tracks online hate and began an intensive monitoring the same day as the shootings. Antisemitic to be sure but Islamophobic, xenophobic, and racist as well. To read through some of the posts made to distort, justify, downplay, deny, glorify, and even celebrate this act of evil, the largest terrorist attack in Australia ever, is more than just disheartening. It is to confront the most offensive of human behaviour. To use the language of faith, it is to stare at the unadulterated face of sin. It doesn’t make you think so much as it makes you feel. Badly.

 

We didn’t spend time on Thursday evening as we might have. We could have just as easily looked at thousands of messages sent to Jewish communities and Jewish friends around the world in the aftermath. We could have tuned into the millions of prayers for the victims and for everyone who is made to feel unsafe when hate motivated violence presents itself. We could have focussed on the good will and love of neighbour that was abundantly present Thursday evening. Surely the light of these acts of witness would have overwhelmingly overshadowed the musings of anonymous traders of misinformation hiding in the web. Goodness and grace are also part of the aftermath of Bondi Beach.

 

But sometimes we have to look at hatred for what it is and not dismiss it too quickly as something less than what we expect from one another. As we heard, no one was killed in the Holocaust until someone was killed. And then 6 million followed. However, in the years before the first murder, hatred was allowed to fester and to grow. It was dismissed and excused. It was downplayed and justified by ignorance and lies.

 

We are not simply a community who loves. We are a community that seeks to teach love, model love, and encourage love in others. We are called and empowered by a Spirit who has shown us love’s power to overcome death itself.

 

And we will remember our story along with the stories of others so that such a love may flourish.

 

 

Grace and peace,

Michael

 

• For news and events, please have a look at Life & Work on our website: Life and Work

 

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