Elgin Portland United Church Council
Congratulations to Rev Kimberly Heath, longtime minister at Wall Street United, Brockville, right next door, on her election as the 45th Moderator of the United Church of Canada.
Doors Open Ontario takes place this weekend. Local sites will host interested visitors. Locations are identified by Doors Open signs. The Tipped Ship and the Red Brick School are two in Elgin.
Elgin is featuring a walking tour on Saturday and Sunday, 10 am Saturday and 2 pm Sunday, starting at St Columbanus RC Church and ending at the Red Brick School. Both St Columbanus and Elgin United will host short interpretative visits.
The Young at Heart Breakfast Club meets on Thursday, August 21st, at 9 am at the Junction Restaurant. All are welcome, but let Clint or Ted know by noon on the 20th if you are going to attend………..Thanks……..Ted
County Road 44, Saturday, August 23rd, 2025 @ 7:30 p.m., Portland United Church. This is a Fundraiser for the Portland Foodbank. A free-will offering will be received. Refreshments will be served. Reminder: PUC is air-conditioned. And as an added “BONUS”, you can visit our craft table and purchase any of the following: Canadian-themed luggage tags, a colourful variety of handbags, eyeglass folders, various-sized food-sage baggies, zippered pouches, gift bags, and more. All proceeds go to the outreach programs of PUC. Air-conditioned building.
Only three more weekends to catch the Historic Rideau Canal display at the Red Brick School, which closes August 31st.
Sisters on the Rideau
Location: Portland United Church, Highway 15 Portland Ont.
Date: Tuesday September 2nd 2025
Time: 1:00-3:00p.m Women@Heart Program Ambassador,
Presenter Marion Martell, Canadian Women’s Heart Health Centre, University of Ottawa Heart Institute. What everyone needs to know about women and heart disease.
Heart disease is under-studied, under-diagnosed, and under-treated in women. It is the number one killer of women over 35 worldwide, accounting for more deaths every year than all cancers combined. Better understand how to prevent women’s heart disease and ways to develop a heart-healthy lifestyle. We Welcome Men and Women of all ages and All Cultures.
Mary’s Merry Minstrels, Saturday, September 27th, 2025 @ 7:00 p.m., PU. This is a Fundraiser for the Portland Foodbank. A free-will offering will be received. Refreshments will be served. Air-conditioned building.
Devotional Reflection
August 16, 2025
For a few moments, I feel like a hawk. I am sitting outside, top floor balcony, at my daughter’s house. Many of the tree-tops are visible as I look down. And above is clear, cloudless, blue sky. The scene is interrupted with an airplane heading toward Pearson International.
I fall back into the serenity of my surroundings. Scurrying across the ground I watch as a chipmunk runs through the undergrowth. A rabbit peeks its head out from a bush. Butterflies, bees, and other tiny flying creatures seem to carry on without worry.
And of course, I forgot to mention, a hawk circling high, watching attentively the animal activity, waiting for his chance of a morning snack!
Nature, in its glory and at its most ruthless – captured in a moment, as I wait for the outcome!
And my wandering mind remembers those verses in Scripture from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. So much of life explained in a few short verses of wisdom. We read them and we realize what the expectation is – to accept and find meaning in all things. The intense moments when we want to hide; the beautiful moments that we want to recall and live over and over; those moments of joyous laughter. We appreciate those.
But our writer, most likely King Solomon, says just as we see all the good in life, we also need to grasp those moments of hurt, or failure, or death, those moments of dread.
It is all those moments together that make up our lives, that allow us to be a people who love, a people of faith, a people of hope.
I come back again to my little retreat and a new realization hits me. I do not feel like a hawk. I feel like a God-created being – a being given the opportunity to breathe in the same air as this hawk; the same freedom to move through life and choose to be a child of God; a living being who chooses to love, and laugh; a person who knows love, who gives love, who loses love. I am the same person who today will laugh when I hit my funny-bone and tomorrow will cry over a broken dish! I am that person who today has no issue with helping out and tomorrow may not see those who need my help or my time.
I am a complicated person and yet simple. And you, my dear readers, kind of fit right in there with me – your joys, or sorrows; your tears or laughter; a new-born baby or an adult moving on to the next exciting journey. We are all God’s children, made in His image.
And before I move from this idyllic hiding place, I will take one more glance above me – beyond the hawk, beyond the sky, beyond the universe. I will attempt to comprehend the depth, the width, the height, the expanse of God’s love. Only then will I take my rest because only then will I truly know my Creator, the Giver of Life!
You are blessed and loved.
Liz Church, Director of Pastoral Care
Elgin/Portland Pastoral Charge
