The Welland-Fosse Benefice: Prayers and Notices.

 Sunday 3^rd January 2021:  Christmas II

 

• Please remember in your prayers those who are sick: Janette Saunders, Bishop John Holbrook, and Will Beattie.
• Pray to for the soul of Ann Hensby and for all who mourn her loss. Ann’s funeral is at 2pm on Tuesday 5^th in Barrowden Church.
• Today, Holy Communion will take place at Duddington, 9.30am.The Zoom Service will be at 11am.
• Zoom Morning Prayer continues on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 8.30 am., given that the pandemic still rages around us.
• Next Sunday, 10^rd January, Holy Communion will be at South Luffenham, 9.30am and the Zoom Service at 11am.
• The Foodbank collections have gone really well during the past year. There will be so many folk locally who are hugely grateful to you, whether you contribute occasionally or regularly.

 

This Week’s Meditation.

 

There is in each of us the opportunity and the ability to choose good and evil. Even among Jesus’ chosen apostles we can read of their stupidity: Peter, the hot-head starts a fight in the Garden of Gethsemane; two of them argue about being the greatest; Nathaniel was disparaging about Nazareth. This freedom to do good or ill is itself a gift of God.  We can do as we wish. It’s called Free Will. Without it we would be automatons. The challenge to us all is to use this freedom to live sensibly, peaceably – discerning what God’s will might be for each of us in any given moment.

 

But from whence does evil come? Is it self-protection which we might translate as Original Sin?  Is evil more powerful than good? Some might say so, especially when we are in the vortex of danger, fear or temptation. For Christians, the battle between good over evil has been won in the life and specifically the death of Jesus on the cross. It is in the example of Christ’s life and death that we find inspiration to avoid evil. Evil then is finite. It has been overcome.

 

But there still remains temptation.  Even Jesus was tempted; it is part of the human condition. That phrase in the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Lead us not into temptation’ seems to suggest that God might even try to snare us!  That cannot be an accurate translation for it has been changed in modern versions to, ‘Do not abandon us to temptation’. God continues to watch over us, willing us to choose the best and staying with us as we wrestle our way through such evil diversions. Even the experience of wrestling is part of the answer to our prayers.