What a week that was

Holy Trinity Church, Huddersfield, Sunday 16th June 2019

‘Shine’ our mission week to celebrate 200 years of being a church is over, appropriately on Trinity Sunday. This was a great service of celebration.

Me? I’m happy and tired but in pain. Such a lot of socialising is hard on my autism, time spent on my feet has brought the arthritic pain to a head, nights have been to some degree sleepless because of this pain. On top of this I have caught an infection, lucky me. I am thoroughly frazzled. But I am happy, very happy.

I was in the worship band. With no other drummers available I am on every week until the end of July. The wealth of musicians we have has a temporary hole. But it was an easy task. It is great to play a part in leading people in worship who really want to worship. Congregational singing was so loud that I could really lay into the cymbal crashes. I worked up a good sweat playing. A great morning to worship a great God.

Before the service started there was breakfast. Timed for 10am, the time the early traditional service was due to end, there was a buffet of fruit and bread. The early service overran a little, so we got in first. The sound check for the band was done eating.

An extra in the service was a testimony from D, an ex prisoner deported from the USA to Britain and how knowing Jesus had changed his life. It was a amazing story, I wish I had permission to share it.

Vicar Mike gave the sermon. As it was Fathers’ Day he started with some dad jokes, such as:

A father rings up his son’s school. “Why has Johnny been sent home early?”

“For weeing in the swimming pool.”

“But all children do that.”

“Not off the diving board.”

The rest of the jokes were even worse.

Light is shed into the community, said Mike. The mission week has not been about Holy Trinity, in the same way that the moon reflects the light of the sun we should like the moon be reflecting God. We cannot look at the sun, but we can look to Jesus and that is how we find our what God is like, by looking at Jesus.

God makes new people of us, if we let God flood us with with his love and forgiveness. God makes the first move and waits for a person, he is waiting for us all to open the door of our life and let him in. God can come in to the darkest areas of our life.

The sermon had a lot in common with D’s testimony.