Peacemobile

Great news of out of Ottawa. Better still! Great news accompanied by pictures! A whole team from the Ottawa congregation packed up their crayons and play dough and cooperative games and activities and took themselves down to the community street festival where they spent the day sharing fun and ideas and concepts about peace with the children and parents that came out.

Happy faces abound in those pictures. What better way to spend a sunny Saturday than teaching children that peace is important and worth learning about. Maybe even worth working at with other children and adults and people of all sizes and colours, ‘cause they were all there. Thanks for the report and the investment, Peacemobile Team!

Blueberries

Alfredo Zelaya loves blueberries! He asks for them all the time. He asked Robert Smith for them when Stratford hosted the Camp Staff Training Day back in early May. A great day of planning for a summer of promise; we even had blueberries!

He asked for them at the GTA West Sunday School picnic last Sunday. He had to settle for watermelon and sunshine and fun and games galore!

They had blueberry cheesecake at the final Joybringers’ gathering of the season in Hamilton on Monday. One hundred people coming out to enjoy each others’ company every month! The organizers are taking a well-deserved summer break, but they’ll be back at it in the fall.

Maybe Alfredo can get some more blueberries then.

Ordinary

This Sunday the Christian calendar entered “ordinary time.” Not the great joy or anticipation of Advent or the intense personal reflection of Lent or the celebration of all the layers of meaning to resurrection at Easter; just ordinary time. This is a long segment of the year, so we really must get plenty accomplished. I also think it’s neat that we launched with Mark’s relating Jesus’ little seed stories. Plant some seeds and watch them grow.

That’s what must be happening in ordinary time. It’s the long haul between seedtime and harvest. Who knows what will come up? Will there be enough rain? All the unknowns of any crop or garden. And what do we get at the end of ordinary time? Hopefully we get another bushel or sack or handful of seeds and the question is put to us again…what will we do with these seeds?

What’s the Good Word?

I guess I should start off with this word. It just has so very many layers of meaning. Of course in our context many of you may think of “In the beginning was the Word” and surely that was good news! Good news relates to gospel relates to amazing things coming into the world.

The question “what’s the good word?” is apparently an antiquated greeting that really doesn’t mean anything more than Hey, howya doin’? but implies that you’ll respond with something positive and won’t be loading me down with your negatives.

I’m ok with sharing negatives, if that’s what you’ve got and that’s what you need to share, but for the most part, I want this spot to be for the good news, the good word, the quick reports of the many, many wonderful news items I hear all the time and want to share with the rest of you.
So give me a word and I’ll pass it along to the rest of the world. Or at least to as many as want to look in here from time to time. Expect to find the good news when you come to check out “what’s the good word?”