We will be celebrating Thanksgiving this Sunday during worship with traditional hymns and scriptures and reflections on gratitude, and we will celebrate in a different way with an Oxfam Hunger Banquet after worship.  You can read about the Hunger Banquet and see a video by clicking here.

The Mission Committee invites you to bring at least one non-perishable food item to worship on Sunday the 18th as part of the offering to support the Sharon area food shelf.

Thanksgiving hymns have a special power for some of us, transporting us to times gone by and beloved family members and delicious smells in a warm, bustling kitchen.  We will sing two that can do that: “Come Ye Thankful People Come,” and “We Gather Together.”  The old fashioned words and theology can be pardoned for the magic they can do.  We will also sing a more contemporary and equally beautiful set of words, “For the Fruit of All Creation,” set to the beautiful Welsh tune AR HYD Y NOS (the tune of “All Through the Night”).  We will read from Psalm 95 and the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:19-33).

Gratitude is not just a warm fuzzy feeling, it is a path that leads through our fears to courage, and as William Sloane Coffin used to say, courage is what makes all the other virtues possible. Gratitude leads to the courage to stand up for what we are grateful for, to protect it, to nurture it, to change the world, if necessary, in order to preserve it.  We need the power of gratitude at work in our lives today more than ever before.  We invite you to come reflect on what you give thanks for and what your gratitude moves you to do with the rest of your life.

Pianist Nicole Johnson will play Consolation 1 in E major by Franz Liszt and Op. 102, no. 6, from Songs Without Words, by Felix Mendelssohn.  The choir will be directed by Becky Bailey.