WELCOME TO SISTER MARIAN’S WEB-
WEEKLY MEDITATION
HARVEST
Our Harvest festival is a time when we can say thank you to God for everything He
has given us. St. Paul told the Thessalonians (1Thess. 5:18): ‘No matter what
happens, always be thankful.’ Perhaps we feel that we haven’t much to for which to
thank you for this year, but there is always something if we think honestly and hard
enough!
There is a story about a minister and one of his parishioners who had deep discussions
with one another. The Parishioner was like someone in a bad mood on a gloomy Monday morning,
who just couldn’t face anyone being cheerful!
Much to the Parishioner’s annoyance, the minister was always telling his flock that they should
find something every day for which to thank God and he always started the prayers at the
services by saying thank you for something that had happened that week.
The Parishioner didn’t feel that there was anything for which he could be thankful because
he had been going through a very bad patch in his own life and on top of that, the
newspapers and the media were always full of bad and depressing news and all that
summer it had done nothing but pour with rain! (Sound familiar ?)
So just before the service that Sunday he told his minister how he felt and said, “I defy you to find anything to say
thank you to God for this morning!” The minister nodded and smiled and the service duly began.
The time for the prayers arrived and as usual the minister started to pray. “Thank you God” he began, then stopped
and looked across at the Parishioner looking smug in his pew, then he continued, “ thank You God that it’s not always
like this!”
There IS ALWAYS something for which to say thank you to God!
But we can do more than just say thank you; we can show how thankful we are by our actions.
So today I want to share with you four ways in which we can show our thanks to our Heavenly Father. THEY ALL
COME UNDER THE heading title of: STEWARDSHIP!
We should be good stewards of everything God has given us!
The first way involves our treatment of CREATION.
We should thank God for Creation and in order to show our appreciation, we should have the grace to listen to the
prophetic voices warning us of the damage we are doing to our beautiful world and to ask for the wisdom to repair the
damage in order to conserve its beauty, before it is too late.
This means taking stock of our lives and doing something about the waste for which we are responsible, the
pollution you and I cause, and the abuse both of nature and of our own bodies for which we are responsible. (Let us
always be conscious that our bodies l are supposed to be ‘TEMPLES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT).
THE
SERMON
SLOT
