No-one saw my youngest son messing about before the service. Friends, I'm ashamed to say I threatened him with a quick drive to South Church if he didn't calm down. He calmed down.
Before the service, I played the Andante from Mozart's flute concerto, then Marche Romaine by Gounod. During the Offering, I played Ave Maria d'Arcadelt, by Franz Liszt. The outgoing voluntary was Coronation March, by Meyerbeer.
Not a good day for the organist, I'm afraid. I forgot to cancel the "pull out all the stops" registration after the last verse of the hymn before the sermon. So what happened? The gentle, meditative offering voluntary came out as a real belter. Sorry, everyone! Then I realised, too late, that I had decided to transpose the last hymn down a tone to make it easier for you all. The time lag was the time it took me to find the correctly transposed version in the hymn book.
Finally, you just try playing a loud, triumphant closing voluntary and taking a sticky chocolate biscuit off your sticky-fingered six-year old at the same time. He meant it as a peace-offering, but his timing was lousy! At least I kept going...
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Pause for thought ...
Don't forget to take a look at the Traidcraft website - if we all tried to use fair trading products wherever possible, what a difference it could make.
Food for thought - have you heard of Back to Church Sunday? It's an initiative by the Church of England. In Manchester, they're tempting people back to church with free-trade chocolate. Yumm! "The Church of England is launching a pilot scheme to attract people back to church - by offering a bar of fair trade chocolate to every worshipper." Read about it on the BBC news website!
Nebuchadnezzar - you can find out more about the subject of Alan's sermon, at ChristianAnswers.net. Or, for the kids, visit GardenOfPraise.com to see the story of the fiery furnace retold for children: it's called Three Brave Boys.
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