The Welland-Fosse Benefice: Prayers and Notices.

 Sunday 18 April 2021:  Easter III

 

• Please remember in your prayers those who are sick: Ray Bailey, Jean and Peter Bowser; Sylvia Martin and Jane Williams.
• Pray too for our PCC’s preparing for their Annual Meetings and especially for potential wardens to emerge in Barrowden where the current wardens are due to retire after many years faithful service. A limit of 6 years maximum has now been placed on warden’s service in Barrowden.
• Zoom Morning Prayer continues on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 8.30 am.
• Friday 23^rd is St. George’s Day. Holy Communion (BCP) at 12 noon in Barrowden Church.
• Next Sunday we are in church at South Luffenham at 9.30am and in Barrowden and on Zoom at 11 am
• The Rev. Dr. Sam Wells (Vicar of St. Martin in the Fields) is giving the first Peckard Lecture for Peterborough Cathedral on Zoom, 6 May at 7.30pm. Book via the Cathedral Website. He is very good and worth £7!

SOUTH LUFFENHAM:

The Church is open every day from 10am to 4pm.

Holy Communion by Extension this Sunday (April 18th) at 9.30am in Church.
Next Sunday (April 25th) at 9.30am in Church, Morning Worship led by Ann.

 

MEDITATION:  “The Kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21)

Bardsey Island – long-inhabited sacred place; often called the ‘burial ground of twenty thousand saints’; steeped in the spiritual intent of many pilgrims through the ages.

Making the arduous journey in devotion and faith would surely bring some encounter with God – some outward, objective sign of presence. But let us come in our imagination to where pilgrim poet RS Thomas stands, bemused; prompted to turn his attention inward:-

“……… Am I too late? / Were they too late also, those / first pilgrims? / He is such a fast /

God, always before us / and leaving as we arrive…….

……… Was the pilgrimage / I made to come on my own / self, to learn that in times / like these and for one like me / God will never be plain and / out there, but dark rather and / inexplicable, as though he were in here?”

London – long-inhabited metropolis, steeped in power and everything of this world – where lives easily slip into ruin.

Here we find poet Francis Thompson: ill, addicted to laudanum and in despair; down and out; alone and homeless. In our imagination, let us come to where he tries to rest, sleeping rough under a bridge, staring into cold darkness – and, making his inner cry, experiences a vision of Christ walking towards him over the wintry river.

 

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)

Cry: – and upon thy so sore loss

Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder

Pitched between Heaven and Charing Cross,

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,

Cry – clinging Heaven by the hems;

And lo, Christ walking on the water

Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!

 

 

See wellandfosse.org for much more information, including contact details for

The Very Rev Christopher Armstrong and the churchwardens