{"id":1593,"date":"2020-10-08T11:41:01","date_gmt":"2020-10-08T10:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/?p=1593"},"modified":"2020-10-08T11:41:03","modified_gmt":"2020-10-08T10:41:03","slug":"message-from-the-minister-letter-18-sunday-5-october","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/?p=1593","title":{"rendered":"Message from the Minister Letter 18 &#8211; Sunday 5 October"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Sunday 5<sup>th<\/sup> October 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dear\nall,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\nhope and pray that this letter finds you well.&nbsp;\nThis Sunday we celebrate our Harvest Festival, although it may be somewhat\ndifferent this year we will still celebrate God\u2019s goodness and we look forward\nto the future when things will be different and back to some degree of\nfamiliarity.&nbsp; Remember last year when the\nchurch was packed and we had all those bags of food donated for the Food\nBank?&nbsp; This year the theme from <em>All We Can <\/em>(the Methodist Relief and\nDevelopment Fund previously called MRDF) is <em>Change\nbegins with a Bicycle.&nbsp; <\/em>How are you\nat riding a bicycle?&nbsp; When did you learn,\nwho taught you?&nbsp; Can you remember\nlearning to ride?&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You\nmight be a keen cyclist who likes to ride everywhere or as much as\npossible.&nbsp; Having a bicycle is a great\nform of transport for anyone, but especially in some parts of the world where\ntransport infrastructure is poor or even none existent, it can help people get\nto school, work or to see friends or relatives.&nbsp;\nOwning a bicycle can help break the cycle of poverty.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This\nweek, we look again to our gospel reading the account of the feeding of the\nfive thousand.&nbsp; Have you ever had someone\nunexpectedly turn up at your house for a meal?&nbsp;\nImagine having five thousand people turn up, all at once unexpectedly,\nwhat a challenge!&nbsp; We find this account\ntaken from John 6: 1 -15.&nbsp; Philip is\nunderstandably alarmed and asks Jesus what they are going to do to feed all\nthese people.&nbsp; He quickly calculates that\nit would take more than half a year\u2019s wages to buy enough bread just to give\neveryone one bite!&nbsp; If he had been given\nenough warning then perhaps he could have worked out a plan to feed everyone\nbut he didn\u2019t have any time to prepare and the crowd assembled were hungry and\nneeded an immediate response.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In\nthe account Jesus acts to ensure that everyone is fed and demonstrates how\namazing things can happen.&nbsp; A young boy\nis found and is brought to Jesus with his little pack-up probably prepared by\nhis mother.&nbsp; Jesus uses an ordinary boy\nand his pack-up to do something out of the ordinary.&nbsp; The same is true of us, when we bring what we\nhave to God, God can do amazing things but we have to be willing to bring an\noffering in the first place.&nbsp; We may be\nordinary people but we serve an extraordinary God and for that we should give\nour thanks and praise.&nbsp; This harvest let\nus celebrate, the work of <em>All We Can <\/em>and\nFood Banks helping people in their need and transforming things for the\nbetter.&nbsp; Whilst we all continue\npersevering in these strange times let us never forget, the best of all God is\nwith us, so let us celebrate and praise the Lord of the Harvest, this harvest\ntime.&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>May\nour Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Harvest, bless us now and always, <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday 5th October 2020 Dear all, I hope and pray that this letter finds you well.&nbsp; This Sunday we celebrate our Harvest Festival, although it may be somewhat different this year we will still celebrate God\u2019s goodness and we look&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1593"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1594,"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593\/revisions\/1594"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.northwoodmethodistchurch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}