We celebrated Fathers’ Day today with lots of fun and thought-provoking activities at our All Age Eucharist. After the welcome and a hymn the first half of our service took the form of three activities at the Sorry tabe, the Prayer Table and the Learning Table.
The Sorry activity used rice (dyed purple for ‘sorry’) to build a mountain. Each person took a scoop of rice and sprinkled it onto the mountain, bringing their sins to God. The lights represented God’s forgiveness, and I told each person in turn ‘God forgives’. This prayer idea was described to me by a buddhist friend – rice is used like this in many places accross the world for prayer and contemplation.
The Prayer activty was to write the names of loved ones or draw their pictures on house shapes and then place a candle on the house. This could include those who had died – we have a number of bereaved families in church just now. The candles were battery operated (health and safety!) Here is Mrs Croft praying for her family!
And here is our Learning Activity – we all added our names to this poster on foam hands and feet as we thought about Jesus calling people then and now. We thought about what God might be calling us to do. The poster looks amazing!
We then came back together to celebrate Holy Communion. At the end of the service all dads, step dads and grandads, and all men in church received a Kit Kat to say thanks for all they do and all they are. Well done St. Oswald’s men!!
All this took 50 minutes!
I noticed after the service how many people had lit candles on our prayer station for all those affected by the three recent tragedies in the UK, especially this week for those affected by the Grenfell Tower disaster If anyone affected is reading this, you’re in our thoughts and prayers.
