At St Stephen’s Church
Today was our Harvest service, celebrated jointly with St Leodegar’s Church. Revd Graham Steele led the service. We had a great morning!
We had a special visitor today, a little robin.
The church was beautifully decorated for Harvest. We are so thankful for all those who offered their time and talents to prepare our church with these displays.
Revd Graham said that Jesus often used stories in an agricultural context as the locals were subsistence farmers and would understand these stories. The Exodus reading talked about the physical bread that God provided, manna. Jesus is the bread of life, spiritual bread. The service this morning provided both types of food: a collection of harvest gifts for the Chichester Foodbank is the physical food and Communion is providing our spiritual food.
The take aways from today’s lesson: Jesus is essential for life. He is the Messiah who provides spiritual food. We need to make a choice to follow him and put our faith in him.
Sunday School
The children had a lot of fun today. There were 20 children today! They were offered a choice of different activities.
- They made a cardboard barn and fruit and vegetables to go inside. It is called The Green Barn.
- They created a tree on which they wrote things they are thankful for, as well as things they can do to help others.
- They played a game where one half of the children hid some harvest items and the other half went searching for it.
- The built another barn from wooden blocks, with a cardboard roof, that held some real vegetables.
