Worship on Harvest Sunday
10:00 am October 12, 2025
Minister: The Rev. Brad Childs Music Director: Binu Kapadia
Vocalist: Lynn Vaughan Welcoming Elder: Renita MacCallum
Children’s Time: Brad Reader: Godfrey Esoh, Jr.
We gather to worship God
Music prelude
Greeting
L: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you
P: and also with you.
Lighting of the Christ candle
Welcome and announcements
Preparation for worship
Call to worship:
L: We come as guests invited to a table.
P: We come to celebrate with friends and neighbours.
L: Jesus Christ, our Friend and Saviour, invites us to gather.
P: We gather with his friends around the world.
L: We gather with his friends around the world.
P: We worship God in gladness, for God’s faithfulness endures forever.
Opening praise: Forever God is faithful
Prayers of approach and confession
Gracious and Loving God, we gather in this season of thanksgiving, struck by the colours of the leaves, the last warm breezes, birds flying south in formation.
Such beauty speaks to us of your goodness, and your desire to provide what each of your creatures needs.
As we gather, renew our sense of gratitude for every good gift you offer us.
Especially we praise you for the gift of Christ Jesus who teaches us how to walk in the world you love and offers us grace and compassion to share with those we meet.
Receive our love and gratitude in his name, and by your Spirit, empower us to live gratefully each and every day.
Living and loving God,
We acknowledge that we enjoy life with an abundance many nations cannot imagine.
Yet, we confess we do not always recognize the blessings we share.
We worry about our futures, and ignore the present needs of those around us.
Forgive us our fears and narrow vision and our failure to care for creation as you intended. Amen.
Response: I will trust in the Lord
Assurance of God’s pardon
The mercy of our God is from everlasting to everlasting.
Hear and believe the good news of the Gospel:
In Christ Jesus, we are forgiven and set free to begin again.
At this time of Thanksgiving, let us give special thanks for God’s most generous love.
We listen for the voice of God
Response: Jesus we are gathered (514)
Children’s time and the Lord’s Prayer (535)
Song: For the fruits of all creation (802)
Scripture readings: Psalm 100 & Philippians 4:4-9
Response: Glory to the Father
Message: Encouraged
One day in 1939, George Bernard Dantzig, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, arrived late for a graduate-level statistics class and found two problems written on the chalkboard. Dantzig jotted them down in his ledger in a rush to catch up, and the class went on as usual. Three days later, Dantzig turned in the problems and apologized to the professor for not finishing them sooner. But there was a bit of a problem.
Paul and his young friend Timothy visited the city of Philippi on Paul’s second missionary journey in 51AD. Philippi is on the north-east end of Greece, twelve kilometres from Neapolis. It was to be the sight of the first Christian Church in Europe (contrary to popular opinion, of course, Christianity is not a religion of the West, it is actually a Near-Eastern religion). In any case, ten years later, after the Church had flourished and grown, Paul wrote a letter to them encouraging them. While Paul writes to them, telling them how much he loves them and to keep strong and be positive, he himself is in prison again as he writes.
And yet, Paul writes, “8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about these such things.”
In short, Paul says, “you should never underestimate the power of a faith and a positive attitude”. He says, “when we face challenges, keep your eyes on the positive things”.
Paul’s not alone in this. At the turn of the 19 century Danish author Isak Dinesen wrote, “God made the world round, so we would never be able to see too far down the road.”
I like that. And it’s true. Things get really hard sometimes, but no matter what happens this one thing remains true… we have no idea what’s coming up just around the curve. The world is round.
For Paul, troubles were real, and they were going to keep coming.
This letter was written at nearly the same time as Timothy and so we know from the archeological information we have that Paul actually did get executed. When he wore this, he was at the Fortress Antonia awaiting a trial with Caesar and was executed shortly after.
Paul was killed under the rule of Nero in either May or June of 68AD. But here’s the thing. That’s 6 years after Paul wrote this letter to the Philippians, thinking he could die any day. He thought life was over but he got six more years.
The truth is nobody has a guarantee of tomorrow. But it does us no good to live in the shadows. It does us no good to waste our time on things that make us angry or bitter – we can’t just wait around for doom and gloom. Paul knows he is going to die and that it could be any day. But he says, we should put our minds on whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, whatever is excellent; whatever is praiseworthy. In the words of Marvel’s Director Nick Fury, “Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.” We need to put our minds (as much as possible) on the good. And we need to go on living like the world intends to spin on and like it’s round.
Eighty-six-year-old Joy Johnson, a veteran of 25 New York City marathons, died in 2013. Johnson was the oldest runner in that year. She fell at the 20-mile marker in the event. But she got up to cheers from the crowd, all the while making lazy bags-of-skin like me, feel like we’d better get back to the gym. Yeah, she fell, but she crossed the finish line at about eight hours. She did it, and she did it for the 25th time.
Joy Johnson died that same day. But she died with her shoes on.
After the race, she returned to her hotel room, lay down with her shoes still on, and never woke up.
Amazingly, Johnson didn’t run her first marathon until she was sixty-one years old. Before that, she had never really been into any particular sports. In fact, the only hint of the sport around her house was the verse from Isaiah 40:31 which hung on the kitchen wall in her family farm house in rural Minnesota: “But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”
Ironically, the career gym teacher, Joy Johnson, was almost a complete stranger to personal exercise until she took a three-mile walk in 1986. Then she started jogging, and after a while, competing in 10-K races. By 1988 (just two years into running), she had competed in her first New York City Marathon. Three years later, she recorded her best time at age sixty-four with a time of 3 hours and 55 minutes.
A few years ago she told a reporter about her exercise regimen. She would wake up at 4 A.M., drink her coffee, while reading her Bible, and then set out on an eight-mile pre-dawn run. “When you wake up, it can either be a good day or a bad day,” Ms. Johnson said. “I always say, ‘It’s going to be a good day.’ And then I put my shoes on.”
The devout Christian ran every day but Sunday so she could attend church. Johnson sang hymns to herself to pass the time while running. According to Johnson’s daughter, “She was always a happy runner—and besides her faith and family, this was something she loved the most.”
I suppose this could serve as her epitaph. Joy Johnson died with her running shoes on!
What would you choose as your epitaph? Will people look back and say, Well, she tried, but she sure was grumpy. Will they talk about the last conversation you had… Will it have been a pleasant one? Was it a complaint session? Will they say, “boy of boy, he was really upset that last month”. Or might people say that you had your mind on “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, whatever is excellent; whatever is praiseworthy”?
For me Joy Johnson is a pretty inspirational person. Now don’t get me wrong about this, I have no plans to start running marathons anytime soon (though to be honest, that’s less about my hate of cardio and more about my fear of the terrible clothes runners always wear – I would be embarrassed).
What impresses me is that Joy stayed positive until the very end. The world is round, and she didn’t know what the coming days were gonna look like. She just decided “It’s going to be a good day”. She “died with her shoes on”.
She managed to keep positive in a world where that’s often a very hard thing to do.
Troubles are real. They are. And we sometimes face seemingly insurmountable odds. And sometimes, like Paul, our very lives are at stake, and we truly are – in the last of our days. Other times, like Paul, we are gifted with a few more unexpected years, and sometimes, like Joy, like with Paul, like with everyone, that dark cloud catches up to us. But we should not be deterred. The world is round. We don’t know what’s around the corner. But what we can know, we can know just who is with us while we travel the road.
In Phil. 4:13 Paul writes, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
As one author put it, “Common sense is seeing things as they are, but doing things as they ought to be.” Or as Chuck Swindoll put it, “The longer I live the more convinced I become that life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 per cent how we respond to what happens to us.” 300
Rom. 12:12 says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” And in the same way, Jesus himself in Mark 11:22-25 said, “Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.”
In simpler words, “Don’t let things drag you down. Don’t put your mind on things that don’t benefit you or harm others.” Don’t spend your life being dragged down by the ridiculous doom and gloom of the news, telling us every day the sky is falling, but every day having a new reason for that because it didn’t happen the day before, like they said. Don’t fill your life with conversations that don’t lift people up.
Instead, put your minds on “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, whatever is excellent; whatever is praiseworthy.” No, not one of us knows when it might be our time to go, but we can all make the ever-important choice to live life with our shoes on. Let’s put our minds on the positive because when we do, Jesus says, we can move mountains. He says we can do the impossible.
When George Dantzig handed his assignments in that day, George had no idea there was a problem.
George Dantzig later recounted what had happened in a 1986 interview for the College Mathematics Journal: “It happened because during my first year at Berkeley, I arrived late one day at one of Dr. [Jerzy] Neyman’s classes. On the blackboard, there were two problems that I assumed had been assigned for homework. I copied them down. A few days later, I apologized to Dr. Neyman for taking so long to do the homework — the problems seemed to be a little harder than usual. They had taken me all weekend, and I asked the professor if he still wanted it. He told me to throw it on his desk. I did so reluctantly because his desk was covered with such a heap of papers that I feared my homework would be lost there forever. But about six weeks later, one Sunday morning about eight o’clock, [my wife] Anne and I were awakened by someone banging on our front door. It was Dr. Neyman. He rushed in with papers in hand, all excited: “I’ve just written an introduction to one of your papers. Read it so I can send it out right away for publication,” he said.
For a minute, I had no idea what he was talking about.
To make a long story short, the problems on the blackboard that I had solved, thinking they were our homework, were in fact two famous unsolved problems in statistics generally referred to as “unsolvable”.
Dr. Neyman had put them up on the board to make a point. They were supposed to be examples of problems the world’s greatest mathematicians worked on for lifetimes, and yet had still gone unsolved for generations. I had no idea. I just thought they were hard so I put my mind to it. The two problems took me about 6 hours. Later, when I asked my advisor about the direction for my doctoral thesis, he just looked at me like I was crazy. He pulled my two “homework” assignments out of a file, punched holes in the pages and placed the four pages in a binder in front of me. “This is your Thesis and not a single mathematician on earth can challenge it”.
That was my Doctoral thesis. It was already done. And my advisor was correct – it went through uncontested.” (1001 Illustrations)
You know what I think. I think George Dantzig solved those problems, because he didn’t know they were “unsolvable”. He had a mind focused on the positive, and that changed absolutely everything. The greatest minds in math and statistics had worked on them for generations, but they had always assumed they would likely fail. George had no such fear. And so, he did what countless could not in two 3-hour segments of homework in between doing dishes and chatting over dinner with his wife.
What are we to be focused on? Where should our minds be?
Joy was right. Danzig was right. Paul was right. Jesus is right.
We should all be focused upon the light and not the dark (from the moment we put our shoes on in the morning) we should start by thinking “this is going to be a good day”. Our minds should be on “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, whatever is excellent; whatever is praiseworthy.”
The world is round; we don’t know what tomorrow brings. But I know this: I plan to die with my shoes on, full of faith and thinking positive. Amen.
Song: Great is thy faithfulness (324)
We respond to serve God
Our time of giving
Prayers of the people
Gracious and generous God, we offer our gifts in gratitude for all we receive from your hand. Bless and multiply them, just as Jesus multiplied a few loaves and fishes to bless others. Use them so others can taste your love in our community and in your world, through the grace of Christ our Lord.
Generous God, on this Harvest weekend, we thank you for all things great and small,
for moments of wonder and for ordinary exchanges that fill our lives with meaning and offer us a sense of wellbeing. May our friends see in us the signs of a grateful heart.
God of all goodness,
Receive our prayers.
Generous God, as we give thanks for the harvests of the earth and all the goodness that sustains us, we pray that you will show us how to live respectfully in creation and protect all that is precious to you.
Wherever harvests have been disappointing, show us how to share what has been produced so that no one goes hungry.
God of all goodness,
Receive our prayers.
Generous God, we pray for the good of your world and the common good in our community.
Where there is strife and hostility between peoples and nations, inspire leaders to show wisdom and courage in their decision making.
We pray for people and places hard hit by flood or fire, tornado or hurricane, epidemic or earthquake
(Hold silence for ten seconds)
May neighbours with resources maintain generosity and compassion for the long work of reconstructing lives and livelihoods.
God of all goodness,
Receive our prayers.
Generous God, we pray for our neighbours and those of our number who are facing health challenges or difficult times for any reason …
(Hold silence for ten seconds)
And we pray for family and friends under stress or in sorrow whom we name in silence before you …
(Hold silence for ten seconds)
Make us generous in compassion and understanding for each one.
God of all goodness,
Receive our prayers.
Generous God, in Jesus Christ we have met your generous love and mercy. Today we bring these expressions of our Thanksgiving!
Thanksgiving offerings
Everyone to come forward with an offering. And we will begins signing a song of celebration once everyone is in place.
Song: We are marching/Siyahamba (639)
Sending out with God’s blessing
Go on your way rejoicing this day, and let your gentleness be known to others.
Keep on doing the things you have learned from Christ Jesus our Lord, and be grateful.
May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in the coming days through the grace of Jesus Christ and the company of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Response: Sing Amen
Music postlude
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Numbers in brackets after a song/hymn indicate that it is from the 1997 Book of Praise of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Those and other songs are being used in accordance with the specifications of Dayspring’s licensing with One License (3095377) and CLC (A735555).
The Rev. Brad Childs retains the copyright (© 2025) on all original material in this service. As far as Brad Childs is aware, all of the material that has not been attributed to others is his own creation or is in the public domain. Unacknowledged use of copyrighted material is unintentional and will be corrected immediately upon notification being received.
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