Daily ScriptureAbove all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. (1 Peter 4:8-10)Daily Reflection‘Love each other deeply’. What a charge! This is not just a bit of love, a token friendship, but the real stuff, from the bottom of our hearts. It is not romantic fellow-feeling, but the sort of love that will go above and beyond. The love that Peter commends to us is so profound, so all-encompassing, it blots out our weaknesses and covers up our mistakes. Its chief hallmark seems to be hospitality, the extending of invitation and service to all, and the sharing of gifts, whether spiritual or material. Knowing ourselves to be utterly dependent on God, we are only too happy to share what is not ours to hold on to anyway, with others, and in that sharing, we are ourselves enriched beyond measure. Deep love! Revd Ylva
Daily ScriptureWhen they had finished breakfast Jesus said to Simon Peter ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ A second time he said to him ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.’ (John 21.15-17)Daily ReflectionThe night that Jesus was arrested a terrified Peter had three times vehemently denied that he even knew him. Sitting together now at the lakeside, Jesus does not reproach Peter, but gives him the chance to reaffirm his love, mercifully wiping out the memory of his threefold denial by a threefold declaration of love. We have all, at one time or another, said or done things which we deeply regret. We have let people down, but perhaps even worse is the knowledge that we have let ourselves down. Like Peter, we cannot undo what is done; but God, whose whole nature is love, does not dwell on our past failures, but restores us, as he did Peter, to a life of renewed love and service. Revd Rosemary
Daily Scripture(from the Collect for Julian of Norwich) Most holy God, the ground of our beseeching, who through your servant Julian revealed the wonders of your love: grant that as we are created in you nature and restored by your grace, our wills may be so made one with yours that we may come to see you face to face and gaze on you for ever; Daily Reflection On this day in 1373, Julian of Norwich received her last rights. Just thirty years old, she was gravely ill and expected to die. But instead she received a series of sixteen visions primarily of Christ on the Cross. She was also completely healed. For the next twenty years Julian meditated in prayer upon the things she had seen, recording her reflections in a book, becoming the first woman anywhere in the world to publish a book in the English language. Julian chose to live in almost complete solitude in a small cell built onto the side of St. Julian’s Church in Norwich. Her writing is mystical and marked profoundly by a message of God’s all-encompassing love and the quote for which she is best known also captures her absolute certainty in the love of Christ - ‘All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well’ Perhaps that is something you may want to meditate on today. Lyn Hayes ALM
