Blenheim United Church

Bricks are available outside of the fence at the united church today!

A lovely short video to enjoy just in time for Advent.

Do you have Christmas greeting cards from years past you no longer want to store? Church nursery roll booklets are soon to be prepared for our youngest members and we could use more cards. Please let me know if you have some and how we can co-ordinate pick up. thank you for your help.

Are you you looking for gift cards to simplify your gift giving this year? Would you like to purchase cards for your everyday shopping needs Ie groceries, gas for vehicles, beverage break? Our Christmas Fundscrip order is due Tuesday Nov. 24 . You can send me your order and payment ( cash or cheque) or go online and order yourself from Fundscrip website using Blenheim United Church code DEGHL6 ( more info was included with newsletter if you received one. BUC receives a percentage of your purchase total. Let me know if you need more information thank you for your support.

When I was growing up, one of the phrases that I remember connected to Remembrance Day was "Never again." Armed conflict comes all too often, and yet I still h...old hope that we can work for a world where governments only reason to deploy our Armed Forces is to help one another, rather than fight one another. Perhaps that is naive, but it is what Remembrance Day challenges in me, each time I stand at a cenotaph and hear spoken the words, "They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them." --- God of all times, God of all places, God of the war-torn, God of the great peace... on the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, time stops, for a minute, or even two, with the weight of Remembrance. That minute, or even two, when we stop, when the silence that fills my ears (and my heart) is the quiet of the grave. The silence of lives lost, and the lives changed - in service, in wartime and peace time, by the people of the Canadian Armed Forces, and others, the world around - shouts loudly in those minutes... and I remember place names, like Ypres and Dieppe, and Kapyong, and Kandahar... and I remember people's names like Choi and Casey, Miron-Morin, and Smith and Templeton, and on and on... fallen in service, remembered and loved. I remember. In the weight of this silence, I remember, too, the innocents - the civilians caught in the lands of death - that war claims as its own. And, as I remember, I reach out my hands to grab the torch tossed from the fields of Flanders - and commit myself, again, to be someone who do all that I am able (and more) to work for a world of justice and hope, a world where war is not, where everyone can sit 'neath their vine and fig tree, at peace, and unafraid. In that two minutes, (and in the days that follow,) I remember - and remembering, I grieve their deaths, I give thanks for their lives, and I commit myself, anew. God of all times, God of all places, God of the war-torn, God of the great peace, hold me to my commitment, and hear my prayer. Amen.