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Redhill WI Our next fund-raising event will be the annual Harvest Supper, which will be held in Redhill Village Hall on October 25th. New members – or former, returning members – will always be most welcome. We meet in Redhill Hall on the 2nd Tuesday of each month at 7.30pm.

Christ Church Harvest has been and gone, so the summer is really over and it is time to tidy up our gardens ready for the onset of winter. Our churchyard too will be subject to a number of tidy-up sessions, trimming back and sweeping up. We have a Churchyard Clean-Up Party on the morning of the fourth Saturday of every month; all are welcome. There are lighter duties, such as weeding around the flower beds, and heavier duties as in cutting back the hedges and large shrubs that encroach further and further each year. We call it a ‘Party’ because it is fun, sharing with others in a bit of physical work in the open air. If you like the sound of it, do come and join us 9:30-12:30. It’s not just our gardens and our churchyard that need a pre-winter tidy up, but also our lives. Over the chaos of summer; with holidays and visitors; our normal routines can fall by the wayside and the sense of balance in our lives can be lost. We do all the things that need doing, but are we also giving time to the less urgent, but equally important, things that we would like to do. I mean the things that, when we look back on the year, we may regret not having made time for. In my case it is spending time with my children and grandchildren, also a bit more ‘Me Time’ reading. This is the right time to survey where our time goes and decide whether routine work has encroached too much on our lives, just like those hedges encroach on the lawn. The church refers to this time when we turn to interests other than our work as Sabbath, or Sunday. Wait a minute, you may say, the Bible refers to the Sabbath as a day of rest! Is it not based on the Creation Story, when God spent six days creating the world and all that is in it, and on the seventh day He rested? The answer is ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. Yes, He rested on the Seventh Day, He ceased His work. But also ‘No’, because the Bible is clear that the Sabbath/Sunday is not to be treated as a day of enforced idleness, just not the same old work as the rest of our time. It is a time of ease, it is a time of reflection, it may also be a time of helping each other. The essential message is that we do not allow our weeks to become a continuous round of grinding work. Your Sabbath may be a Sunday, or a Saturday, or an hour each evening, but we need to find some time when we can step off of the merry-go-round of work. And October is a really good time to try to do this. May the love of God and the hope of Jesus Christ be a blessing in your life Andrew