The Welland-Fosse Benefice: Prayers and Notices.

 Sunday 7 February 2021:  2^nd Before Lent

 

• Please remember in your prayers those who are sick: Janette Saunders and Jane Williams.
• Today, 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. Compline is on a Thursday at 6pm. If you would like an invitation, contact Sally Smith.
• Studies in St. Mark’s Gospel begin again this week: Tuesday 9th February at 7.30pm. If you would like an invitation, please contact Simon Aley at simon@oakhamteam.org.uk
• ‘Just the Job’ – an entertainment for our 5 parishes. Starts on Zoom, 7pm on Monday 15 February and fortnightly thereafter. It brings together 3 people with similar career backgrounds who share something of their work for 5 minutes after which we are invited to ask questions. On 15 February: ‘The Artists’. Each session last for 40 minutes. Join us by emailing our Zoom host Martin Beattie at mfn.beattie@btinternet.com
• Compline on Sundays in Lent begins on 21^st February at 6pm. The short service will be followed by an 8 minute presentation on each of the 7 Virtues given by visiting speakers. Martin Beattie is our host. Please contact him if you wish to join the Zoom service.

 

BARROWDEN:

Now is your chance to join the 200 Club for the next year! Valuable cash prizes each month.  Contact Les Wilkinson, 4 Redland Close.

SOUTH LUFFENHAM:

Our church is open from 10-4 every day for private prayer. 

‘Coffee Gathering on Zoom’ Monday at 3.30pm. Details will be sent via email. 

MEDITATION:

Captain Tom is dead. He was admitted to hospital last Sunday; prayers were asked for him by the red-top papers on Monday and he died on Tuesday. Not only was he a war hero but he entered the national biography in his hundredth year by completing a hundred laps of his garden before his big birthday and raising £39m for the NHS. His life was a shining example to all of us of whatever age right up to the end. But now Captain Tom is dead.

 

Of course we will all die sooner or later. It is the one certainty in life and we prepare for it from the moment we are born. How we prepare for it varies enormously and one of the significant factors in our preparations is whether or not we believe that anything follows after death.  People of faith will consider this, often with great care but for most of us, we enjoy life as much as we are able.

 

So what happened to the Daily Mail and The Sun’s request for prayers to support Captain Tom? Did they fall on deaf ears?  I don’t believe they did. It would not be fair to expect our prayers to be answered by Captain Tom living even longer.  There is only so much we human beings can stand. No. Our prayers were answered by the natural turn of events but also by much else besides. Captain Tom was a very positive person. I don’t know if he had any religious belief but that is irrelevant.  We are all children of a power beyond ourselves which people in the Judaeo-Christian tradition call God.  And one of Captain Tom’s regular sayings was, “Tomorrow you will maybe find everything will be much better than today”. Those prayers were answered by the knowledge of a good life well lived; by his family gathered around him at the end; by the nations expressing its gratitude and by a natural optimism for the future.  Thank you Captain Tom.

See wellandfosse.org for much more information, including contact details for The Very Rev Christopher Armstrong and the churchwardens