PINKTOBER 7 - AUTUMN PINK

I led the Worship at Church this morning, our Harvest Service - but not a traditional Harvest Festival - at least, not in our Church.  Having said that, I think that many churches these days are moving away from the traditional service of Harvest Festival and supporting worthy causes in different parts of the world.  It is very different when the Church can be laid out with Harvest produce and wonderful floral arrangements, often the day before, and then, of course, everyone can bring their Harvest gifts on the Sunday morning - I am sure this still happens in quite a lot of village churches.  

I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that I can recall walking into Church on a Harvest Sunday morning and smelling that wonderful autumnal Harvest fragrance and there was often a very large loaf in the centre of the arrangement that looked like a huge sheaf of corn - strangely enough, I don’t ever remember anyone eating it!

Because we worship in a Community Centre, this would not be possible, so for quite a number of years, we have not had what many would see as a traditional Harvest Festival service - although we did sing one Harvest hymn this morning - Mr. HCB’s favourite, which is “We plough the fields, and scatter the good seed on the land…..”.

BMS, known for many years as the Baptist Missionary Society, was given a new name, BMS World Mission in 2000, and this year, we are supporting their initiative, “From Life’s First Breath” and if you want to see the video we watched this morning, you can see it here.  

We hope that many in our congregation will respond to help BMS World Mission in their efforts to save the lives of mothers and babies in Afghanistan.  It was really poignant when one father spoke of he and his wife having had eleven babies, all of whom had died either just after birth or had lived for just a couple of months and then died.  It was lovely to see later in the video that they now have two children, a boy and a girl.

After the service we went out for our usual drive - not really looking for dereliction today, unless it had some pink in it!  We stopped on the Ashbury to Lambourn road, on The Ridgeway and walked along for about half an hour and I was saying to Mr. HCB that pink wasn’t really an autumn colour, when we spotted these little wild flowers in the grass - Pink Campion.  It was good to be out in the sunshine, especially after the rain yesterday, but as soon as the sun went behind a cloud, the temperature dropped, so we didn’t hang around for too long and anyway, I was happy that I had my Blip for Pinktober.

Please join me during 
Breast Cancer Awareness Month
By clicking here
So that those who are not able to pay
Can have a free mammogram. 

“Every new day is a beautiful gift. 
     Open each one and find joy, 
          happiness and hope.  
Let those gifts build strength, 
     courage and healing and
          wake up every day renewed, refreshed 
               and ready to accomplish great things!” 
Lynne - a cancer survivor