A THOUGHT FOR THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER
As I sit here at my desk I am asking Our Lord, what I can write about today? Have you ever had to write an A4 page of ‘thoughts’? It is not easy unless of course you are a journalist or write books for a living. However, somehow, something comes into my head and I put these thoughts down on paper.
We have several people that make contributions to the Ashburnham and Penhurst Magazine who don’t seem to have any trouble, their articles are always very interesting but of course
they write about nature which is something that even I could find loads of things to say. After all we have four seasons which are changing all the time, then there are animals, insects, birds and weather, all providing thousands of interesting things to write about.
My family attend the local C of E Church every Sunday morning and sometimes I play the piano or organ for their worship hymns. In the evening of course we attend this Chapel and are joined by people from at least 4 different denominations most Sundays. We provide a challenge for the Minister leading us in the evening because we have nearly all been to a Service somewhere else in the morning where lectionary readings have been used and talks based on them.
We have 14 different preachers/leaders that come to take our Service on a Sunday evening and they are a mixture of C of E, Baptist, U.R.C and Methodist. I always say to the person coming to lead us when they ask what they should preach on, “ask The Lord, He will tell you what he wants you to say”. It is uncanny how often somebody will come up to me after the Service and say “there was a message for me tonight in that Sermon!”
I prepare the Order of Service and I usually choose the hymns because of course the Ministers do not know which of the many hymns there are that we use.
I am particularly concerned at the moment that our Congregation rarely sees people from the Village our Chapel is in. I have been praying for Our Lord to show me if there is anything we can do at the Chapel to encourage local people to join us more often and when I was told that our Message this week was entitled, “’Contentment’ Trusting in God and waiting for His timing.” I immediately thought, that is my answer, I must be content with things as they are and Jesus will tell me when He wants me to do something more specific.
I realise that our Congregation numbers are very good considering our Service is in the evenings. Very few Churches have evening Services these days. Also we have such a joyous time, everybody loves singing so we have 6 hymns and then afterwards we sit around chatting and eating cake and drinking tea or coffee. Sometimes it is after 9 pm when my husband and I get home because nobody wants to leave.
An ALPHA COURSE is starting on 15th September in The Orangery at Ashburnham Place with a meal before and I am praying that a lovely man and his auntie will accept my invitation to come along, if you could pray that they accept my invitation I would be very grateful.
Fay