Ebenezer!

I blame Charles Dickens - if you mention Ebenezer, people tend to automatically think of Scrooge. In fact the original meaning of this Hebrew word is 'stone of help' It is used in 1 Samuel 7; 12, in the sense of 'God has helped us get this far'

It is the name of a lovely old Welsh hymn tune - we sung it in Norfolk last week, and Neil the Pastor reminded us of the meaning of the word.
I thought about it again this weekend - we had the Grand Opening our our newly extended/refurbished building yesterday. Look at the chapel as it used to be when we arrived last January

And here it is now - bright and light and much larger

We are so blessed to have such lovely new premises and look forward to using them in coming months to reach out into our community. 
And we can echo Samuel's words - we acknowledge that we could never have got this far without God's help.
Then Samuel set up a stone between Mizpah and Shen, and said "The Lord has helped us all the way - and he named the stone Ebenezer"