The Welland-Fosse Benefice: Prayers and Notices.

 Sunday 10 May 2020:  Easter V

• Please remember in your prayers those who are sick: Bishop John and his wife and Janette Saunders (all with Coronavirus), Barry Broughton and Derek Barker.
• Pray too for the souls of the departed, including Sandy Scotney.
• We pray also for all those who put their lives in danger to serve others suffering from Coronavirus.
• Why not join us via Zoom for Morning Prayer each day at 8.30am – or Compline on Mondays and Wednesdays at 7.30pm? Our prayers have never been more vital!  If you wish to join, download Zoom on your computer and obtain the Daily Prayer App on your mobile phone and email Simon Aley (sialey@aol.com) who will send you an invitation to the group.
• From 17 May, Sunday worship will move from 8.30am to 10am, presenting a short 20 minute service with brief address. Join us in the usual way via Simon’s email address.
• Bored – like the rest of us? How about something lighter in the middle of the week? Quiz? A course? Art or photograph meditation? Favourite poem and why? Please respond to the Priest-in-Charge, Tel. 01572 748634.

 

MORCOTT: Well done everyone who celebrated VE Day 75 with Operation Bunting Up – we strung some along the churchyard wall – and at 3pm tea parties. It is good to see the benches in the churchyard used for reflection, and that people have taken some of the prayers pinned to the noticeboard in the church porch. We hope to have a Foodbank Box in the church porch soon.

SOUTH LUFFENHAM: Another thank you – three tubs of food collected for the Rutland Foodbank this week.

We celebrate the anniversary of two baptisms – James (Jay and Michael’s son) was baptised a year ago on Tuesday and Joan’s grandson Oscar two years ago on Wednesday. 

Last Sunday we put out colouring sheets of flags and bunting for people to use in their VE Day decorations. This Sunday we will be giving away sunflower seeds – Seeds of Hope – help yourself, from the green, if you are passing on Sunday. 

TODAY’S MEDITATION:

This is a time of bewilderment for us all. It gives birth to anxiety, fear, depression and worse. Such was the feeling among the friends of Jesus after the crucifixion as their hopes of a better life seem to be dashed. How should they now live their lives? How may we?

 St. John in today’s gospel (14.1 – 14) throws them a lifeline, reminding them that they already walked in the Jewish tradition. It told them which way to go but Jesus came and led them by the hand. He did not tell them the way from a distance; he led them by the hand and still does. Jesus is the Way.

And we are always searching for truth – at least truth which will fit into our world view. Moral values cannot be declaimed from pulpits or Downing Street rostrums. There is every danger that it will sound hollow. Rather it has to be lived, explored and acknowledged among us and that always demands change for no-one of us can encapsulate all truth. We need to give God wiggle-room! Jesus is the Truth.

And then there is life, even in the lockdown.  It’s not a matter of breadth but depth. We will know some of those events in our own lives which act like lightning conductors or scales falling from our eyes revealing life in all its fullness. Some last; Jesus walks with us forever. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

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

The Very Rev Christopher Armstrong and the churchwardens