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Paignton (Palace Avenue) Methodist Church
Palace Avenue, Paignton, Devon, UK.

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Minister's Letter

'Our Calling'
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Dear Friends,

Our Harvest Festival on Sunday was a wonderful success, the Church looked absolutely beautiful, and I was so encouraged by people’s generosity.  The sale of goods after the service raised over a hundred pounds, and there were many bags and boxes of goods to be taken to Factory Row.

Harvest is about celebrating God’s generosity to us, but in turn our response to that is to be generous to others.

John Claypool in Life Isn't Fair, Thank God, tells of an old rabbinic parable about a farmer that had two sons.  As soon as they were old enough to walk, he took them to the fields and he taught them everything that he knew about growing crops and raising animals. When he got too old to work, the two boys took over the chores of the farm and when the father died, they had found their working together so meaningful that they decided to keep their partnership.  So each brother contributed what he could and during every harvest season, they would divide equally what they had corporately produced.  As the years rolled by, the elder brother never married and became an old bachelor.  The younger brother did marry and had eight wonderful children.

Some years later when they were having a wonderful harvest, the old bachelor brother thought to himself one night, "My brother has ten mouths to feed. I only have one.  He really needs more of this harvest than I do, but I know he is much too fair to renegotiate.  I know what I'll do. In the dead of the night when he is already asleep, I'll take some of what I have put in my barn and I'll slip it over into his barn to help him feed his children.  

At the very time he was thinking down that line, the younger brother was thinking to himself, "God has given me these wonderful children who will support me as I grow old.  My brother hasn't been so fortunate.  He really needs more of this harvest for his old age than I do.  But I know him, he's much too fair.  He'll never renegotiate.  I know what I'll do.  In the dead of the night when he's asleep, I'll take some of what I've put in my barn and slip it over into his barn."

And so one night when the moon was full, as you may have already anticipated, those two brothers came face to face, each on a mission of generosity.

The old rabbi said that even though there wasn't a cloud in the sky, a gentle rain began to fall.  You know what it was? God weeping for joy because two of his children had gotten the point.  Two of his children had come to realize that generosity is the deepest characteristic of the holy and because we are made in God's image, our being generous is the secret to our joy as well.

I thank you for your generosity, which will touch the lives of so many.

God Bless.

Paul

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'Our Calling' is a statement that was adopted by the Methodist Conference and sets out what our purpose is as a denomination - "the calling of the Methodist Church is to respond to the gospel of God's love in Christ and to live out its discipleship in worship and mission." 

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Last modified: November 2008