Around the Table

Seems a fitting end to our Thanks Giving Study and to Give Thanks Give Hope.  My wife has always been a better writer than I... or is it me...  anyway... 

As I write this, I’m at our dining room table, the fire flickering, the children playing a board game, and my tea mug almost empty.  Tim has just left the table, but what a joy to sit this morning as we both lingered, talking, giving thanks on this Thanksgiving morn.

As the table is central to the Thanksgiving feast, the table has been a central place for us during Gifts of Hope.  We sat one evening with Bishop Andrea DeGroot, Dr. Ed Maliski, and a table full of others.  We all talked about malaria.  The energy and the ideas and the means to truly save hundreds – thousands – of lives was coming out of this conversation.  All of the sudden I had this sense that I was on the sidelines, gazing at this lively table of possibility, and my eyes swelled with tears.  I knew the Spirit was there.

A week later, we sat with Pastor Benyam Kassahun at the table where I now type.  A small group of six of us broke bread together and prayed and talked and dreamed about an Africa where children weren’t dying each minute from preventable and treatable diseases.

The table is a powerful place.  This Thanksgiving weekend, we pray that you feel the power of Spirit upon you.  We pray that you are blessed with good conversation and good food.  We pray that you say a word of prayer for those who have no feast today.  And we pray that the many table-conversations surrounding Gifts of Hope will bear much fruit.

Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest,

and let these gift to us be blessed.

Blessed by God, who is our Bread;

may all the world be clothed and fed.

Chamie

By the way there is still plenty of time to take part in the Gifts of Hope campaign.  You can pick up order forms at Ascension and turn them in (through December) at the church office or at church on Saturday nights or Sunday mornings.  God's abundant blessings to you. 

Pastor Tim