Weekly news and services. Next service at St Nicholas: Sunday 6th March - Holy Communion led by Revd David Commander
Reflection & Scripture: Sunday 27th February and for the week aheadScripture:1 Timothy 2.1-2 Instructions concerning Prayer2.1 First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings should be made for everyone, 2for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.Reflection:I suspect that you are feeling pretty much the same as me in view of the news from Ukraine and Russia: feeling helpless, that you can’t do anything to change the situation.The verses above urges us to pray. We can all pray. Why are we urged to pray? A. “So that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life.” That is the life that the people of the Ukraine, I’m sure, want to live. Did you notice whom it is we are urged to pray for? A. “For….all who are in high positions”.Those in “high positions” includes world leaders; it includes President Putin. Surely, at this time, our prayer must be for a turn of heart of those who perpetrate evil and who seek war? As well as prayer for those innocent people caught up in the conflict. We can all pray. We cannot fight in the Ukraine. We cannot impose sanctions on Putin. We can pray for a change of heart, and for peace.Revd David
Next Service: Sunday 27th February10am Holy Communion at St Nicholas
From the Collect for today, the Second Sunday before Lent: Almighty God, you have created the heavens and the earth and made us in your own image: teach us to discern your hand in all your works and your likeness in all your children... Reflection:The Collects are a wonderful resource: encouraging, challenging, thought provoking. Today’s is one of my great favourites, one to which I constantly return and often quote from. It calls us to open our eyes to the amazing complexity and beauty of our planet, and to praise God for it. Not hard, living where we do, with signs of spring appearing all around us! Rather more challenging is the call to discern God’s likeness in ‘all his children’. In some blessed souls His likeness shines through; in others it is much harder to find. But if we look hard enough, and humbly enough, we may be surprised at what is to be discovered in apparently unlikely places.And more challenging still: How likely are people to discern something of God’s likeness in us? Revd Rosemary Lyn Hayes
