Leith Hill Benefice: Four Churches, One Community
Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and pay your vows to the Most High, Those who bring thanksgiving as their sacrifice honour me; to those who go the right way I will show the salvation of God. Ps 50: 14 & 23
Apparently last Monday is known as Blue Monday and it is supposedly the bleakest and most depressing day of the entire , if only because for many it's the day when those Christmas credit card bills come rolling in. And thinking about this I wondered just what God's credit card bill to each one of us would contain? My goodness it simply doesn't bear thinking about should we stop for even a moment and consider all the services he has rendered us, all that He has given us. The bill would surely include the cost of all the countless times when God has led us through the dark valleys of loss and pain, the times when prayer was answered, the times when he encouraged us and supported us as we wrestled with some seemingly intractable problem and most significantly the times he offered us forgiveness and redemption and all the blessings bestowed on us. The list would be endless.
. And how can we ever begin to pay off such a debt? However hard we tried it could never be paid in full. But because of the infinite generosity of God's unlimited mercy and redemptive grace he never exacts payment from us but in its place asks for the smallest of offerings. The offerings that constitute the sacrifice of a grateful heart and the willingness to do our best to reflect in all that we do the love he never stops showering upon us. As it says in Hebrews: 'Through Jesus, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. Do not neglect to do good and share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.'
For some Blue Monday may be the gloomiest of days but for us, as with every day, it is just another opportunity to offer to God our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving and recognize his love in all he has freely given us and all he has freely done for us.
Lord, help us to give you our praise and thanksgiving today and always.
Virginia Smith 25th January 2021>
St James' is now open for private worship on Wednesdays from 2pm to 5pm - look at the Diary here for formal services.
You can see here some that would have been heard at Saint James' and other Benefice churches, including all the weekly thoughts that you see here.
Early in the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, the Abinger & Coldharbour Parish News was published electronically. It is now published physically and distributed within the parishes. Electronic versions from May 2020 are available here as a PDF version.
See the Covid-19 page for the latest on the impact of Covid-19 on the parish, and where to look for help (supplies, support, etc.).
Press Ctrl+F5 to refresh this page so you see the latest. See Site Map for all the information available on this site (parish registers, history, pictures, music etc.). Click on the address header to see a random page.
As you will gather as you browse over these pages, we are a church with a long history and, as a community, Abinger goes back even further. Even if we take the Domesday Book as a start point, we have been a Christian worshipping community for a very long time. So, we are very proud of our church building. It has had a very chequered history, not least in the 20th Century. But now we are doing our best to meet the challenges of the 21st both for our building and church community.
Worship, praise, prayer and the reading of God's word are all part of our regular Sunday services, and if you are ever passing and would like to join us, we'd love to see you and make you feel welcome. But we don't believe that our church building any more than our faith, is just for Sundays. We are always looking for ways which enable the building to be a community resource during the week. We use the church for a Café morning on Wednesdays in term time from 8.30am until 10.00am. We also believe in developing our understanding of the Christian faith, so we meet in small groups to study what practical things the Bible has to say about living out the Christian faith in today's world.
Again, if you would like to join us you are more than welcome; you should be able to find the dates somewhere on the website, failing that then do by all means get in touch. Thank you for visiting the website; I hope you find it helpful, informative and enjoyable, and we look forward to giving you more than a virtual welcome when you visit us for real!
Tony Berry, Rector
Click on a diary entry for more information - including links for Zoom servives.
For more details of music in (sung) services, see the Services page.
If you have appropriate rights, click the +GoogleCalendar icon above to edit calendar entries. See page for larger format.
For any information not shown in these pages, or to enquire about Baptisms, Weddings and Funerals, contact the Parish Office here.