Post on 31-Jan-2022
transcript
If the shelves are devoid of all rolls
And the internet’s peopled by trolls
Don’t tremble and fear,
Shed no frightened tear
For God the Almighty controls!
If your eyesight with tears is blurred
It may not quite yet have occurred
That God through the years
Has dried up our tears:
So see what it says in His Word:
The people, surrounded by sand
En route to that old Promised Land
No food did they lack
For God had their back
He had their nutrition well planned!
Jesus cared, as the family cried
For the daughter of Jairus had died
He entered her room
Said ‘Talitha koum’
And she rose and stood there by His side!
Just two of the Bible’s great tales
That show us that God never fails
To come to our aid
If we’ve sought Him and prayed
When the devil with evil assails.
So do not be scared, but be smart -
No virus can tear us apart
From God up above
Who shows us such love
So be of good courage and heart!
By Nigel Beeton
From Father John trying to keep in touch with parishoners
and friends during this time of Covid-10
Unfortunately I do not have everyone’s email address so if you are receiv-
ing this and know of anyone else who would like it and they are happy for
you to pass on their email address to me please do so, in that way we can
encourage one another as fellow Christians
In spite of this strange time we are living through may
we all be able to celebrate God’s love at Easter
Holy Week & Easter 2020
Dear friends,
This must be the most emptiest of Holy Weeks we have ever known in our
lives. The WEEK when we want to be close to our Lord through our worship,
in his suffering and death so that we might experience the joy of Easter.
We are now half way through Holy Week, whereas we do not know how far
we are through this state of crisis brought about by the Coronavirus, now being
referred too as Covid-19.
But perhaps it is appropriate that we are living through Holy Week at this time.
As I have reflecting through my prayers over the past couple of weeks, the
whole world is living through its own experience of Holy Week. In a sense our
Christian faith and our living through all our previous experiences of Holy
Week should help us grapple with Covid-19. Holy Week confronts us year by
year of the innocent Lord living through his suffering and death.
But start first of all with Maundy Thursday and the Last Supper. The Gospel
appointed for the evening Eucharist of the Day does not give us an account of
the institution of the Mass, but the washing of the disciples’ feet. We are called
to serve one another. What a wonderful picture
to encourage us to pray for those in our hospitals
who are working to care for the sick, to minister
to their bodily needs, and at this particular time
they risk their own health in nursing others. So
we pray especially for those in the NHS caring for
all those who are sick.
Nigel Beeton writes: There's only one subject on anybody's lips at the moment, so I'm sorry
to be boring, but both my poems this month have the coronavirus in mind.
I shall let St Paul do the introduction via his words in Philippians 4:4-7
Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evi-
dent to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situa-
tion, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And
the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and
your minds in Christ Jesus.
May our kindness be witnessed by all
When the things of the world seem so dark and so grim
When disease and despondency call,
Rejoice in the Lord and the nearness of Him -
May our kindness be witnessed by all!
When the pillars of life seem to crumble and creak
When our walls seem to tumble and fall.
In prayer and petitions our Father we seek –
May our kindness be witnessed by all!
The tempest may rage, but His wondrous peace
Stills the storms that may rage in our soul
In our hearts and our minds shall the turmoils cease
And our kindness is witnessed by all!
I'm reluctant to try to be funny at a time like this, but I wonder if God might be wanting to
remind us that while this might be very scary for us, He's seen far, far worse than this over
the centuries. So maybe it is right to remember some good cheer, hence my use of the
Limerick form:
Faith in a crisis
If a crisis is coming to stay
Getting worse, with each passing day
It’s ever so easy
To get somewhat queasy
When normality passes away!
Loneliness
From one who is ill or isolated O God, help me to trust you, help me to
know that you are with me, help me to believe that nothing can separate
me from your love revealed in Jesus Christ our Lord.
We are your people
For the Christian community
We are not people of fear: we are people of courage.
We are not people who protect our own safety: we are people who protect
our neighbours’ safety.
We are not people of greed: we are people of generosity.
We are your people God, giving and loving, wherever we are, whatever it
costs For as long as it takes wherever you call us.
Be our hope
God of compassion, be close to those who are ill, afraid or in isolation. In
their loneliness, be their consolation; in their anxiety, be their hope; in
their darkness, be their light; through Him who suffered alone on the
cross, but reigns with you in glory, Jesus Christ our Lord.
______________________________________
In His shadow By Megan Carter
(Based on Psalm 91)
As we dwell in the shadow of Mighty God
We will know all the blessings that He will bring,
His faithfulness will be our shield
Under the covering of His wings.
Protected by His sheltering love
Our refuge we take in Him each day,
If we call on His Name His answer will come
As angels will guard us in all our ways.
What comfort and peace we all can know
That God Himself will hold us fast,
And keep us safe engulfed in His love
Until these days of danger have passed.
Just think what it must have been like for our Lord to see his followers and
friends desert him in his hour of need, leaving him with hostile guards and
with no support. Imagine being taken from your family into hospital on your
own. However kind and understanding the medics caring for you, they are
no substitute for your closest and dearest. We who have not experienced
this virus cannot understand what it must be like to be taken away from
family and friends.
On the cross Jesus died with only a handful of supporters to keep him com-
pany, the faithful women, and John, the beloved disciple. He had two com-
panions sharing in the agony of the Cross: the two thieves.
And their reactions were totally different. One
was to abuse our Lord, the other was to turn to
Jesus for help even at his last hour. And isn’t that
true for ordinary humans like ourselves. Some
will blame God for everything that goes wrong in
their lives, whilst others will turn to God for
help and strength.
Several generations back some of my ancestors went over to America
where they seem to have been a pretty godless lot. But one of my ances-
tors on his death bed wanted a minister of religion to come for reassur-
ance. The only cleric available was a Roman Catholic priest. He was bap-
tised on his death bed and made his family promise that they would become
members of the Church. So the family in America are still members of the
Roman Catholic Church.
In his darkest hour Jesus even felt God his heavenly Father had abandoned
him. There are times in life when some of us have felt like that if we have
lived with depression. We all hope that when it comes for us to die we may
be surrounded with love and prayers. To end one’s days on our own, in a
hospital despite all the care that is given by the NHS is one that none of us
would chose.
As we think of Our Lord’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane and in his
hours on the cross, then we can only pray for those with the virus and par-
ticularly those who face death.
In our Holy Week’s observance, Good Friday is followed by Holy Saturday or
Easter Eve. How many of us as Christians mistakenly call it Easter Saturday?
We may forgive those without a Christian background calling the day by that
name. But we should know better. For Holy Saturday is not just a day where
nothing happens between Good Friday and Easter Day (apart from putting
the church building back together and arranging flowers and Easter Gardens).
But there is great significance in observing Holy Saturday as a special day in
Holy Week. It is a day both of desolation and of waiting.
For the first disciples and followers it must have been a day of desolation
without any consolation. For they did not know what was going to happen.
They only knew that their Master, whom they had placed their hope in, was
dead and gone from them.
Living on this side of Easter, we know that it wasn’t the end. The apostles and
friends didn’t know that. They must have believed it was the end. The end of
all their hopes. They must have thought it was a total end of everything they
had lived with for their time with Jesus. Although we know that it wasn’t the
end, we mustn’t be tempted to rush past Holy Saturday and be in a hurry to
get to Easter Day. We must be able to find a spirituality in this day of empti-
ness. Not just waiting for the glory to come back, but living with the empti-
ness of the world.
And in my prayers this week, that’s where I think we are in our current cri-
sis. We are living a series of Holy Saturdays. Days of emptiness. Most of us
we hope, God willing, will not be directly affected by Covid-19. But we don’t
know, do we, if it will be us? And isn’t that a part of the experience of the
Passion carrying on beyond Good Friday and not quite arriving at Easter Day.
Because in the days of waiting we don’t know, we can only hope and keep
faith. But keeping faith and placing our hope in God saves us from despair.
The words of Gabriel to Our Lady Mary at the Annunciation were “For with
God noting will be impossible” or to paraphrase it “With God all things are
possible”
Perhaps this year we may see this experience of Holy
Week as a spiritual Holy Saturday. A time of waiting on
God, believing that Easter will come. And it will come
again in God’s own time. This year it may help us to know
what it must have been like for the apostles and followers
of Our Lord in that time between the cross and the emp-
ty tomb. Father John
Some prayers for your use
All published by “The Parish Pump”
Your dwelling place By John Sergieff, Russian priest, 1829 – 1908
Lord, grant me a simple, kind, open, believing, loving and generous heart,
worthy of being your dwelling place.
The following prayers on the coronavirus are found on the Church of England
website at: https://www.churchofengland.org/more/media-centre/coronavirus-covid
-19-liturgy-and-prayer-resources By Barbara Glasson, President of the Methodist
Conference.
Time of distress
Keep us, good Lord, under the shadow of your mercy in this time of un-
certainty and distress. Sustain and support the anxious and fearful,
and lift up all who are brought low; that we may rejoice in your comfort
knowing that nothing can separate us from your love in Christ Jesus our
Lord.
Give us strength
Lord Jesus Christ, you taught us to love our neighbour, and to care for
those in need as if we were caring for you. In this time of anxiety, give us
strength to comfort the fearful, to tend the sick, and to assure the isolat-
ed of our love, and your love, for your name’s sake.
Caring for the sick - For hospital staff and medical researchers
Gracious God, give skill, sympathy and resilience to all who are caring for
the sick, and your wisdom to those searching for a cure. Strengthen them
with your Spirit, that through their work many will be restored to health;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Heal them - For those who are ill
Merciful God, we entrust to your tender care
those who are ill or in pain, knowing that when-
ever danger threatens your everlasting arms are
there to hold them safe. Comfort and heal
them, and restore them to health and strength;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.