The Welland-Fosse Benefice: Prayers and Notices.

 Sunday 12th July 2020:  Trinity V

 

• Please remember in your prayers those who are sick: Bishop John and his wife and Janette Saunders (all with Coronavirus), Barry Broughton, Graham Robinson, Catherine Tanser, David Bradshaw and Derek Barker.
• We pray also for all those who put their lives in danger to serve others suffering from Coronavirus and for those who have lost their jobs in the crisis.
• Why not join us via Zoom for Morning Prayer each day at 8.30am – or Compline on Mondays and Wednesdays at 7.30pm? Sunday worship is at 10am, presenting a service with music and brief address.  Join us in the usual way via Simon’s email address, sialey@aol.com
• “5 More Steps to Kick-start Prayer”?  Go the benefice website: wellandfosse.org
• Zoom bible studies in St. Mark’s Gospel will continue on Tuesday 14 July at 7.30pm. Please contact Christopher for further details: armstrong60@yahoo.com
• The Wardens and ministers are working on a plan to re-open our churches gradually for communal worship. It is quite a challenge. Please remember them in your prayers.

 

SOUTH LUFFENHAM

Church is open 10am – 4pm daily for private prayer. 

MORCOTT

The church will open 10am-4pm each Sunday for private prayer. 

Today’s Meditation: Harvesting Gooseberries.

My gooseberry bushes have been laden with fruit this year.  I like to think it was all the effort to prepare the ground in the last few years. Whatever the reason – God knows – the yield is big and, with space in the freezer, I attacked the picking with a rare passion. Well, it produced a vast pile of fruit but the cost, the cost was appalling!  My arms were shredded, with enough thorns to keep my medically-orientated wife busy for ages with her sterilised needle. The sting from the wounds will eventually die down as the smell of the disinfectant disappears.

Sunday’s gospel reading is the Parable of the Sower (Mt. 13).  You know all about it. Simon’s sermon takes an unusual approach: worth reading when it comes around.  It’s a very optimistic story, the way Jesus told it. In spite of all the wasted seed, there is an excellent harvest at the end of it all.

If you read the parable closely – which you probably won’t, now the cricket is back – you will note that Jesus spends a lot of time describing the problems of the poor soil but dismisses the good harvest with the briefest comment.  We too can spend a great deal of time moaning about life – and this pandemic gives us just cause to do that – but take the good things for granted.  I fear that we take our farmers and food producers like that but the reality is quite different.  Yes, the harvest is often excellent but even so, someone has to work hard to make it happen. Time during this lockdown may encourage us to quietly give thanks for all who toil on our behalf.

 

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

The Very Rev Christopher Armstrong and the churchwardens