Grace and Grapes.🙏🏻🍇

‘That’s community, a fellowship of little people who together make God visible in the world’.

 (Henry J.M. Nouwen)

Mary has a fine crop of organic grapes this year, we the fortunate beneficiaries. She shares them with us  - our little church community. Christine shares her beautiful lettuce, I share little pebbles of wisdom I pick up along life’s highway. All of us share.

We attend Holy Mass every morning and have done for quite some time. Our friendship and camaraderie grew over time, now we cannot imagine life without one another. We live our lives independent of one other but whenever any one of us is absent for a few days, one of us will always text and make sure he/she is ok. A Divine Bond of friendship in these tumultuous times. Debbie oftentimes says - ‘ A friend is for life’, double-barrelled meaning in my heart - Enlivening and enduring.

To the unaware eye, we are a group of prayerful people who take life very serious but nothing could be further from the truth. We laugh a lot and often, we keep each other joyful, we swop prayer requests. We are not a select group, newcomers not alone welcomed, they are celebrated. God did not design people to thrive without the support of a loving community.

We have the Grace to witness to Jesus when we stay close to Mother Mary and it is our great privilege to serve God in an attitude of humble service through the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus told Gabrielle Bossis in ‘He and I’ - ‘Pray for others and God will take care of you’. Such comfort and assurance.

JOY - Jesus first, others next, yourself  last. In our modern world putting ourselves last seems so ridiculous, counter-cultural, but in God’s world it makes perfect sense. Easy to do when we know and believe that Jesus is doing the work through us, our only task is simply to ‘show up’ , be conduits for His Mercy and Love. With Jesus, there’s a newness that never grows old.

‘When someone does a Kindness, it always seems to me, That’s the way God up in a Heaven, would like us all to be’. (Helen Steiner Rice)

‘Saint Mother Teresa’s face took on a golden glow from her time gazing on Jesus in The Blessed Sacrament’, I told Mary. ‘ Really’, replied Mary - ‘It is very sunny in India too’........🤨😂

‘Serve The Lord with gladness’. (Psalm 100:2)

I would like to be an Angel, who continually sings Your Glory, offering my heart to You with face all aglow’. (Eucharistic Hymn)

September 2023 - many Asylum Seekers arriving in our town. Our Church community banding together to aid our sisters and brothers in Christ. Everyone of us has something to give, none of us have everything. To be Jesus Hands and Feet!!