This Sunday, July 30, will be our last without our own pastor. On August 6th James Winderlich will be installed as the new minister of St Stephen's Lutheran Church, Wakefield St. Adelaide.
This Sunday (and next!) we'll be led by & hear a sermon by a previous pastor, Bob Kempe.
We're having a Thanksgiving Sunday, usually held in February/March, but appropriate enough for us right now.
At our 11 am service, we're going to use a couple of my songs, 'Here we are' & "Ordinary Miracles'. Each of them is thanksgiving. Not high language, extravagant, but as each of their titles suggest, down to earth:
'Thank you, Jesus, for ordinary miracles, thanks for seasons & birds in a line.'
And the other one starts:
'Here we are under this sky. Oh what a land to live in!
And then the song exclaims
'How did we come to be in such a place?'At the heart of thanksgiving & praise there's always a sense of wonder, of amazement, of 'I can't believe this!!'
I always reckon that it's all the close stuff, the humble things, the taken-for-granted bits that are most inspirational. People wait for miracles, and don't see the fabulous colours & changing shapes of the sky, or the terrifically sensitive whiskers of the domestic pussy cat.
'We keep wanting escape to another place. You say this place is just fine.'
