Hey there! All who are thirsty, come to the water! Are you penniless?

Come anyway—buy and eat!Come, buy your drinks, buy wine and milk.

Buy without money—everything’s free!Why do you spend your money on junk food,

your hard-earned cash on cotton candy?

Listen to me, listen well: Eat only the best,

fill yourself with only the finest.Pay attention, come close now, listen carefully to my life-giving,

life-nourishing words.

Isaiah 55

Grâce

Write 5 things that you’re thankful for on the paper napkin.

They can be small or big but make sure they’re significant to you.

Keep the napkin with you when you go as a reminder to cultivate thankfulness in your day to day life.

• • •

Aperitif

Silence, solitude and still-ness.

“Settle yourself in solitude and you will come upon Him in yourself.” Teresa of Avila

Seeking out solitary places was a regular practice for Je-sus.

So it should be for us.

Take some time to ‘be still’ before God.

Enter the silence.

Embrace the solitude.

Encounter the stillness.

Focus your attention on Jesus.

You may wish to set the amount of time you want to be silent for on the egg tim-

er.

At the end of the silence, why not pray aloud a prayer of re-lease for anything that is on

your mind:

I release … to you my Father, and wait in stillness for your

restoration.

Plat principal

Communion

Listento “Welcome to the table” on the cassette player.

ReadFull on faith in what you did for meI feast on you; the bread of beauty.Every mouthful a moment of mercyRestoring my dignity and sat-isfying my hunger for love.

Full and fedI simply say thank you. take some bread and eat.

Read May God rebuild thedislocated and broken pieces of you,restoring your humanity and revealing his intended mas-ter pieces.So raise your glasses,a toast to the God who is making all things new.Blessing like wine pouring off the mountain.take a sip of wine.

May the things you turn yourhands to bring about beautyand bear fruit, fruit that will last.So raise your glassesa toast to the God who is making all things new.Blessing like wine pouring off the mountain.take a sip of wine.

May you find yourfeet in the future God has in store for you,never losing sight of the promises he has spoken over you.So raise your glassesa toast to the God who is making all things new.Blessing like wine pouring off the mountain.take a sip of wine.

.

Plat fromage

Fromage de appellation d’origine protégée.

Cheese is great isn’t it?

I say that, but it’s quite hard to agree with hole-ly, because, cheese isn’t just cheese is it?

Most countries and regions have their own brand or type, and most of these are named after where they are pro-duced; Camembert, Cheddar or Stilton.

They’re so good, they’re pro-tected by an EU law, A.O.P,which makes sure they are only called the town name if they are actually produced there.

They all have different prop-erties too, flavour, texture, smell, colour and consisten-cy, which is why everyone has a most favourite and a least favourite cheese.

In a way, cheese is tied in with locality and identity, like peo-ple, like place.

If the town/village/city that you live in was a cheese, what would it be like?

What if we ignored the cheese for a minute and focussed on the cheese-esque properties of your habitat?

How is your town special?

Imagine the the cheese of your locality.

What is your town like?What is good?What needs to change?

What vibes do your town give off; Peaceful? Welcom-ing? Fruitful? Social? Artistic? Unrest? Poverty?

Spend some time praying for your locality, praying thanks for where it is good, fresh and tasty, and praying for change, freedom and restoration where it is stale mouldy or stinky.

Where is the Spirit moving?Where do we feel our hearts being pulled?Ask. Pray. Seek.

Dessert

At what pace are you going to leave this table?

Read these words from a wor-ship.ca blog post. ‘A while ago I was in Tokyo for a Lutheran World Federation conference on “Mission in the City.” The crowds in the streets, at the airports, on the subways, were like those in Ottawa on the first of July.

One was literally shoved into and out of buses and build-ings. Often we were able to see only the blur of persons in motions; we saw no faces. In his opening remarks, the keynote speaker at the con-ference, a Japanese theolo-gian, asked us to reflect on the speed at which we are living.

“The context in which most persons live is fast-moving urban life, with its noise, its hustle and bustle, its domi-nant impersonal relation-ships,” he noted.

“People no longer see one another with faces, but as numbers and replaceable units in productive processes and systems.”

After a pause, he contrasted our speed with God’s pace. “Our God,” he said, “is a three-mile-an-hour God.”

That is the speed at which hu-mans walk. That is the speed at which Jesus wandered his way through Galilee - touch-ing the ill, chatting with wid-ows, pausing in marketplaces to observe children at play, plucking grain in the fields on a sabbath day.

We were created in the image of a three-mile-an-hour God, and we have been called to be partners in ministry with a three-mile-an-hour God.

This world on the run needs people who are moving slowly enough to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice; peo-ple who are moving slowly enough to notice smiles of joy and tears of sorrow.’

. .

Stop for a while.

Slow down and savour the flavour of the present mo-ment.

Become more aware of the presence of God in your ev-eryday.

Take a piece of chocolate and put it in your mouth. Savour it. Allow it to melt. Appreciate the different flavour notes.

Delight in Gods rich pres-ence.

Begin to draw your attention to the people that encircle your life and the places in which you journey.

What do you notice?

Who is weeping, who is re-joicing?

Who is smiling, who is cry-ing?

Who is in need of a kind word, a beer or a coffee, a chat?

Can you help?

Pick one or two of the people you have thought about and go and walk with them this week.

God of all peopleGod of all placesGod of the everydayWe bring our lives to youSlow our running to walkingturn our walking to noticingtransform our noticing to lov-ing.

3mph God, hear our prayers.

Amen