The annual Thanksgiving message takes a Hebrew word as its key — todah — and spends its first stretch on what the research actually says about gratitude. Then three things it does: brings peace, opens the door, and wins battles.

James asks whether a faith that produces nothing can save anybody. Pastor Harry takes it without flinching — and lands somewhere unexpected: if nothing is being produced, the problem is not a works problem, and a list of nice things will not fix it.

Two men walk into the same room — one in a gold ring, one in rags — and James watches which seat each is offered. Pastor Joshua Pigg takes partiality as seriously as the letter does: faith that favours is faith that falters.

Eight weeks of build-up and the fire falls. Pastor Adam asks what being on fire actually means, rules out feeling — and points at a detail he says he only saw this week: the fire took the stones, the dust and the water too.

Elijah has the altar soaked until the trench overflows — deliberately removing every explanation that is not God. Pastor Adam separates that from wisdom, tells the story of a job he turned down with two thousand dollars to his name, and lands on preparation.

Before any fire falls, Elijah does two ordinary things: he tells the people to come near, and he rebuilds what was torn down. Pastor Adam turns twelve stones into twelve areas to inspect, and names the four quiet things that pull an altar apart.

Four hundred and fifty on one side, and Elijah says out loud that he is the only one left on the other. Pastor Adam builds on the arithmetic — conviction against consensus — and asks whether you have handed God a sacrifice and then kept interfering with it.

Where you sit matters. Back from sabbatical, Pastor Harry reads Ephesians 2 on being seated with Christ, answers why that was necessary at all, and passes on the question he was asked twice while away: what would you do if you knew it would not fail?

A father takes out a newspaper advertisement for his estranged son — all is forgiven — and eight hundred young men named Paco come to the meeting place. Elliott Stearns takes Hemingway’s story, and the life behind it, into what a father actually supplies.