Giving thanks

Our harvest celebration this weekend was a very special time.  Not only did it give us a rare opportunity to all be together as a church community but we got to say thank you to Tom and Gill, who have given so much time and effort to the church over so many years.  I'm praying now that they will be blessed with a very happy and fulfilled retirement and am, as ever, so grateful for them!

We were also encouraged to say thank you to God for the good things he's given us and I ended up writing a bit of a diatribe about the last year and how much change there has been.  My life is very different now than it was a year ago and I'm so grateful to God for giving me the opportunities to do new things that I'm enjoying so much.

I'm also incredibly thankful for the new volunteers who offer their services to Holy Trinity.  As I write, Honor is doing a brilliant job on the news sheet for this week - and she's only in her second hour in the office! George will be in, as usual, tomorrow and I'm sure will end up furthering his ever more deep and meaningful relationship with the office photocopier! Whilst these aren't the most glamourous of jobs, they are vital to how the church works on a weekly basis and I'm very thankful that God is prompting people to offer their time to do them!  We couldn't easily keep things running without this kind of help.

We're reliably informed (can you guess by whom?) that it was also Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend.  At our staff meeting yesterday we all gave thanks for the things we're most grateful for at the moment and it felt like a really positive way to start our time together. 

This felt particularly important as I'd watched Julie working throughtout the morning on the organisation of a funeral that is taking place tomorrow.  Obviously, as a church, this is what we do - come alongside people at difficult times as well as the happy ones - but it did make me think about how much energy I can waste on being grumpy about something, when I don't have much to be grumpy about.  It all made me decide to try and start saying thank you more and grumbling less!