The Beneficial - Lent to Easter 2026

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

Look carefully at the house names on the left as you come down Lansdown Road towards St Stephen’s, and you will see one called ‘Innisfree’. I had the privilege of conducting the funerals of the couple who lived there, both over a decade ago. I took Yeats’ poem as my text. The poet was living in London when he wrote it: it’s a deep heart’s cry of yearning for the countryside of his native Ireland. The second verse begins, ‘For I will have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow …’ Beautiful evocation of the calm such a place would bring. When we seek peace where we live it’s not quite the same. It does not descend from on high, much as we’d like it to. Peace, I believe, emerges from within. If the love of God is that which is buried deepest in us, then this love is the source of peace. It’s in our quiet aware-ing, some call it prayer, that our restless minds can be invited to settle, and for our hearts’ cries to be heard. We look forward to Easter, a story that for the most part is anything but peaceful. But the resurrection announces the coming of the Son of Peace who was heralded at Christmas, not parachuted into our lives, but emerging from the depths of earth and humanity; from our own hearts. Revd Philip Hawthorn