Today at St Paul's we celebrated our Harvest Thanksgiving Service. Our All-Age service was preceeded by our monthly "Breakfast at Barney's". During the service everyone was invited to come and give gifts which will go to The Welcome Project, providing tinned foods, drinks and toiletries to asylum seekers. In our consumerist western culture it can be very easy for us to take for granted all that we have and where our food comes from. Our Bible reading reminded us that the earth belongs to God and that all that we have comes from Him.
The children had great fun knocking down piles of boxes that represented a barn. The story of the man who tore down his barns to build bigger barns (Luke 12.16-30) shows us that we can easily forget our need for God who gives us all good things. We prayed for all those who work so hard on the land to grow our crops and those who don't have enough.
As a token of our thankfulness to God we offered some of what we have back, to be given freely to those in need.
