If the shelves are devoid of all rolls

And the internet’s peopled by trolls

Don’t tremble and fear,

Shed no frightened tear

For God the Almighty controls!

If your eyesight with tears is blurred

It may not quite yet have occurred

That God through the years

Has dried up our tears:

So see what it says in His Word:

The people, surrounded by sand

En route to that old Promised Land

No food did they lack

For God had their back

He had their nutrition well planned!

Jesus cared, as the family cried

For the daughter of Jairus had died

He entered her room

Said ‘Talitha koum’

And she rose and stood there by His side!

Just two of the Bible’s great tales

That show us that God never fails

To come to our aid

If we’ve sought Him and prayed

When the devil with evil assails.

So do not be scared, but be smart -

No virus can tear us apart

From God up above

Who shows us such love

So be of good courage and heart!

By Nigel Beeton

From Father John trying to keep in touch with parishoners

and friends during this time of Covid-10

Unfortunately I do not have everyone’s email address so if you are receiv-

ing this and know of anyone else who would like it and they are happy for

you to pass on their email address to me please do so, in that way we can

encourage one another as fellow Christians

In spite of this strange time we are living through may

we all be able to celebrate God’s love at Easter

Holy Week & Easter 2020

Dear friends,

This must be the most emptiest of Holy Weeks we have ever known in our

lives. The WEEK when we want to be close to our Lord through our worship,

in his suffering and death so that we might experience the joy of Easter.

We are now half way through Holy Week, whereas we do not know how far

we are through this state of crisis brought about by the Coronavirus, now being

referred too as Covid-19.

But perhaps it is appropriate that we are living through Holy Week at this time.

As I have reflecting through my prayers over the past couple of weeks, the

whole world is living through its own experience of Holy Week. In a sense our

Christian faith and our living through all our previous experiences of Holy

Week should help us grapple with Covid-19. Holy Week confronts us year by

year of the innocent Lord living through his suffering and death.

But start first of all with Maundy Thursday and the Last Supper. The Gospel

appointed for the evening Eucharist of the Day does not give us an account of

the institution of the Mass, but the washing of the disciples’ feet. We are called

to serve one another. What a wonderful picture

to encourage us to pray for those in our hospitals

who are working to care for the sick, to minister

to their bodily needs, and at this particular time

they risk their own health in nursing others. So

we pray especially for those in the NHS caring for

all those who are sick.

Nigel Beeton writes: There's only one subject on anybody's lips at the moment, so I'm sorry

to be boring, but both my poems this month have the coronavirus in mind.

I shall let St Paul do the introduction via his words in Philippians 4:4-7

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evi-

dent to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situa-

tion, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And

the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and

your minds in Christ Jesus.

May our kindness be witnessed by all

When the things of the world seem so dark and so grim

When disease and despondency call,

Rejoice in the Lord and the nearness of Him -

May our kindness be witnessed by all!

When the pillars of life seem to crumble and creak

When our walls seem to tumble and fall.

In prayer and petitions our Father we seek –

May our kindness be witnessed by all!

The tempest may rage, but His wondrous peace

Stills the storms that may rage in our soul

In our hearts and our minds shall the turmoils cease

And our kindness is witnessed by all!

I'm reluctant to try to be funny at a time like this, but I wonder if God might be wanting to

remind us that while this might be very scary for us, He's seen far, far worse than this over

the centuries. So maybe it is right to remember some good cheer, hence my use of the

Limerick form:

Faith in a crisis

If a crisis is coming to stay

Getting worse, with each passing day

It’s ever so easy

To get somewhat queasy

When normality passes away!

Loneliness

From one who is ill or isolated O God, help me to trust you, help me to

know that you are with me, help me to believe that nothing can separate

me from your love revealed in Jesus Christ our Lord.

We are your people

For the Christian community

We are not people of fear: we are people of courage.

We are not people who protect our own safety: we are people who protect

our neighbours’ safety.

We are not people of greed: we are people of generosity.

We are your people God, giving and loving, wherever we are, whatever it

costs For as long as it takes wherever you call us.

Be our hope

God of compassion, be close to those who are ill, afraid or in isolation. In

their loneliness, be their consolation; in their anxiety, be their hope; in

their darkness, be their light; through Him who suffered alone on the

cross, but reigns with you in glory, Jesus Christ our Lord.

______________________________________

In His shadow By Megan Carter

(Based on Psalm 91)

As we dwell in the shadow of Mighty God

We will know all the blessings that He will bring,

His faithfulness will be our shield

Under the covering of His wings.

Protected by His sheltering love

Our refuge we take in Him each day,

If we call on His Name His answer will come

As angels will guard us in all our ways.

What comfort and peace we all can know

That God Himself will hold us fast,

And keep us safe engulfed in His love

Until these days of danger have passed.

Just think what it must have been like for our Lord to see his followers and

friends desert him in his hour of need, leaving him with hostile guards and

with no support. Imagine being taken from your family into hospital on your

own. However kind and understanding the medics caring for you, they are

no substitute for your closest and dearest. We who have not experienced

this virus cannot understand what it must be like to be taken away from

family and friends.

On the cross Jesus died with only a handful of supporters to keep him com-

pany, the faithful women, and John, the beloved disciple. He had two com-

panions sharing in the agony of the Cross: the two thieves.

And their reactions were totally different. One

was to abuse our Lord, the other was to turn to

Jesus for help even at his last hour. And isn’t that

true for ordinary humans like ourselves. Some

will blame God for everything that goes wrong in

their lives, whilst others will turn to God for

help and strength.

Several generations back some of my ancestors went over to America

where they seem to have been a pretty godless lot. But one of my ances-

tors on his death bed wanted a minister of religion to come for reassur-

ance. The only cleric available was a Roman Catholic priest. He was bap-

tised on his death bed and made his family promise that they would become

members of the Church. So the family in America are still members of the

Roman Catholic Church.

In his darkest hour Jesus even felt God his heavenly Father had abandoned

him. There are times in life when some of us have felt like that if we have

lived with depression. We all hope that when it comes for us to die we may

be surrounded with love and prayers. To end one’s days on our own, in a

hospital despite all the care that is given by the NHS is one that none of us

would chose.

As we think of Our Lord’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane and in his

hours on the cross, then we can only pray for those with the virus and par-

ticularly those who face death.

In our Holy Week’s observance, Good Friday is followed by Holy Saturday or

Easter Eve. How many of us as Christians mistakenly call it Easter Saturday?

We may forgive those without a Christian background calling the day by that

name. But we should know better. For Holy Saturday is not just a day where

nothing happens between Good Friday and Easter Day (apart from putting

the church building back together and arranging flowers and Easter Gardens).

But there is great significance in observing Holy Saturday as a special day in

Holy Week. It is a day both of desolation and of waiting.

For the first disciples and followers it must have been a day of desolation

without any consolation. For they did not know what was going to happen.

They only knew that their Master, whom they had placed their hope in, was

dead and gone from them.

Living on this side of Easter, we know that it wasn’t the end. The apostles and

friends didn’t know that. They must have believed it was the end. The end of

all their hopes. They must have thought it was a total end of everything they

had lived with for their time with Jesus. Although we know that it wasn’t the

end, we mustn’t be tempted to rush past Holy Saturday and be in a hurry to

get to Easter Day. We must be able to find a spirituality in this day of empti-

ness. Not just waiting for the glory to come back, but living with the empti-

ness of the world.

And in my prayers this week, that’s where I think we are in our current cri-

sis. We are living a series of Holy Saturdays. Days of emptiness. Most of us

we hope, God willing, will not be directly affected by Covid-19. But we don’t

know, do we, if it will be us? And isn’t that a part of the experience of the

Passion carrying on beyond Good Friday and not quite arriving at Easter Day.

Because in the days of waiting we don’t know, we can only hope and keep

faith. But keeping faith and placing our hope in God saves us from despair.

The words of Gabriel to Our Lady Mary at the Annunciation were “For with

God noting will be impossible” or to paraphrase it “With God all things are

possible”

Perhaps this year we may see this experience of Holy

Week as a spiritual Holy Saturday. A time of waiting on

God, believing that Easter will come. And it will come

again in God’s own time. This year it may help us to know

what it must have been like for the apostles and followers

of Our Lord in that time between the cross and the emp-

ty tomb. Father John

Some prayers for your use

All published by “The Parish Pump”

Your dwelling place By John Sergieff, Russian priest, 1829 – 1908

Lord, grant me a simple, kind, open, believing, loving and generous heart,

worthy of being your dwelling place.

The following prayers on the coronavirus are found on the Church of England

website at: https://www.churchofengland.org/more/media-centre/coronavirus-covid

-19-liturgy-and-prayer-resources By Barbara Glasson, President of the Methodist

Conference.

Time of distress

Keep us, good Lord, under the shadow of your mercy in this time of un-

certainty and distress. Sustain and support the anxious and fearful,

and lift up all who are brought low; that we may rejoice in your comfort

knowing that nothing can separate us from your love in Christ Jesus our

Lord.

Give us strength

Lord Jesus Christ, you taught us to love our neighbour, and to care for

those in need as if we were caring for you. In this time of anxiety, give us

strength to comfort the fearful, to tend the sick, and to assure the isolat-

ed of our love, and your love, for your name’s sake.

Caring for the sick - For hospital staff and medical researchers

Gracious God, give skill, sympathy and resilience to all who are caring for

the sick, and your wisdom to those searching for a cure. Strengthen them

with your Spirit, that through their work many will be restored to health;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Heal them - For those who are ill

Merciful God, we entrust to your tender care

those who are ill or in pain, knowing that when-

ever danger threatens your everlasting arms are

there to hold them safe. Comfort and heal

them, and restore them to health and strength;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.