Welcome to our mid-week celebration of all the great things happening in Leesfield Parish and beyond.
Our Sunday service details will be here at the weekend, but there's so much more we would love to share with you in the meantime.
There is no Worship for all Generations at St Agnes' Church this week, but you can find a recorded reflection from 6.30 pm tomorrow on our facebook page by clicking here - Leesfield Parish
This week's musical item comes from a BBC Breakfast programme a couple of days ago. Like me, you may have missed it because it was on VERY early. It features a retired teacher with Azheimers, Paul Harvey, playing his own composition "Four Notes" alongside the BBC Philharmonic - remotely of course!
As we approach November, it's time for another inspiring calendar from Action for Happiness. This time the title is "New Ways November" - hope you enjoy taking part in all the activities!
This Sunday we celebrate All Saints Day, and our friend Rev'd Paul Monk has kindly agreed that we may share this item from St Barnabas' Parish magazine:-
The saints we celebrate on All Saints’ Day (1 November) live with three crowns.
The crown of the Kingdom
The idea of God as King occurs everywhere in the Holy Scriptures. It means we obey God in everything just like a citizen living under a powerful earthly king. And because God the King of Heaven is a good king, following Him means we do good and are good each time we obey. Anyone wanting to please God therefore chooses to live as a citizen of the Kingdom of God: they make every decision with reference to God the King. And it’s why Jesus tells us to build the Kingdom of God here on earth (Matthew 6:10).
The crown of martyrdom
The word ‘martyr’ has two meanings:
• A martyr is a witness, so their lives show God through their acts of love, obedience and service. Living their faith makes them look different, and they do so publicly. God lives through them and an infinite God is hard to hide.
• Martyrdom means dying for the Christian faith. In practice it could means physical death (which is very rare in the western world but much more common elsewhere). But Jesus encourages Christians to give their lives to him in order that he can live in them. Jesus describes this living for him saying, ‘Greater love has no one than that they lay down their lives for their friends’ (John 15:13).
The crown of life
The ‘crown of life’ is a way of describing heaven, the reward of lives lived in faith. We’re familiar with one way of picturing it, the halo of the saints in stained-glass windows. In pictures it often looks like the helmet enclosing an astronaut’s head. It is meant to indicate the way a godly person almost glows with the love of God.
And we’re all called to be saints, so these crowns are also ours
