Church Notices

EASTER DAY

The Welland-Fosse Benefice: Prayers and Notices.

 Sunday 4 April 2021:  Easter Day.

 

• 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.
• Today, we are back in church! South Luffenham at 9.30 am and Barrowden at 11 am (with Zoom).
• Zoom Morning Prayer continues on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 8.30 am.
• Next Sunday we are in church at Duddington, 9.30am, Morcott at 11 am and on Zoom at 11 am.
• ‘The Lord is Risen. He is risen indeed, Alleluia’!  A Happy Easter to you all from the ministers and wardens in the benefice.

 

MORCOTT:

The church is open all day on Easter Sunday for private prayer. Please follow Covid rules. 

SOUTH LUFFENHAM
There are still spaces available out our Easter Sunday Service (Communion by Extension led by Ann) in Church at 9.30am. Please email sally@saltlane.com or phone 01780 729515. 
There is a large wooden cross outside Church – ready for you to decorate with flowers. 
Easter Egg Windows Sunday and Monday around the village. Mini chocolate eggs for children on the Village Green.
Our Church will be open for private prayer every day from 10am to 4pm. Please pop in to see the fantastic Easter flower arrangements. (Thank you to the Flower Arrangers).

 

The Meditation: Cracking Easter

The sale of Easter Eggs will have soared in the last few days and rightly so. Eggs have become a fashionable symbol of new life, which is at the core of our Easter celebrations. A bottle of Gin doesn’t quite hit the mark. I’ve tried to find a bottle for a close friend, but her favourite tipple is out of stock.  It will have to be an Easter Egg after all.

 

Easter Eggs are very attractive, very accessible but – in my experience – they can be disappointing.  What promises to be an egg full of luxury chocolates is found to be enclosing a cellophane pack of disappointment. Cracking eggs is easy; finding satisfaction is illusive.

 

How then do we crack God to find that promised joy and delight? Well we don’t. Rather it is God who has to crack us. God is the unmoved mover whose power lies in and beneath all life as we know it and yet He seems to struggle to speak to us directly. True, we sometimes hear him loud and clear; we feel his direct touch; we see his influence all around. But then He disappears; He becomes illusive; He even disappoints.

 

Could this be because God can’t get access to us – or we won’t allow it? We can be pretty closed up, inaccessible – the fashionable term is self-sufficient. God of course could wield the heavenly sledge-hammer to break us open but that is not in his nature. Yes, He is all-powerful – or so we believe – but forcing himself upon us would not be consistent with the God of Love and neither is there much evidence that He worked that way in the past. Rather, He bides his time. He shares his gifts with us; He gives us all the rope we need (sometimes to hang ourselves); He even gives his own life for us on the cross and crowns it with resurrection. He is all gift. And so He waits. ‘The Hound of Heaven’ waits. He waits for us to respond, which is what worship is all about. It is why our ancestors built our beautiful churches, to house his worship. And still He waits – and when we concede and cracks appear – when we respond – there is joy in heaven as He pours into our broken lives the balm of contentment. Happy Easter!

 

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

The Very Rev Christopher Armstrong and the churchwardens