Bowland Benefice
Pews News 6 April 2025
Lent 5 – Passiontide Collect
Most merciful God,
who by the death and resurrection
of your Son Jesus Christ
delivered and saved the world:
grant that by faith in him
who suffered on the cross
we may triumph in the power of his victory;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
This week in the Benefice

Sunday
6 April

10.30am

Family Service
in Upton
Snodsbury

11.00am

Holy
Communion
Service in
Peopleton

6.00pm

Evensong in
White Ladies
Aston

Monday
7 April 7.00pm

Broughton
Hackett Annual
Meeting

Wednesday
9 April

7.00pm

Upton
Snodsbury
Annual
Meeting

Sunday
13 April
Palm Sunday

10.30am

Family Service
in White Ladies
Aston

10.30am

Holy
Communion in
Upton
Snodsbury
On Monday (7 th ) at 7.00pm, the Annual Parochial
Church Meeting will be held for St Leonard’s,
Broughton Hackett in church.

On Wednesday (9 th ) St Kenelm’s, Upton Snodsbury will
hold its meeting at 7.00pm in church.
Those on the Electoral Rolls of each church are

entitled to attend.

Details of Holy Week events and Easter Services will
be in next week’s Pews News.
A Prayer for Passiontide
Almighty and everlasting God,

who in your tender love towards the human race sent
your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ to take upon him
our flesh and to suffer death upon the cross:
grant that we may follow the example of his

patience and humility,

and also be made partakers of his resurrection;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Lent is a time of preparation, waiting and penitence
and the five weeks of Lent leading up to Holy Week
make for an appropriate time to reflect upon our own
lives - our struggles, our goals, our prayers - in light of
Christ’s life, death and resurrection.
We continue to follow Stuart Townend as we near the

end of our Lenten journey.

The fifth week’s theme is Waiting, Anxiety, Trust
The reading for this week is Isaiah 40:3 (a passage
about the strength gained by waiting on God)
We spend a lot of our lives waiting for things.
And we sometimes find some time on a Sunday to
wait on God and see what he wants to do or say to us
in a service. Learning to see a period of waiting as
valuable is so important if we want to live life to the
full, whether that be five minutes in Church or a few

decades in our private lives.

The longer you wait for something, the more you have
to trust it will arrive; and the more you have to trust
that the waiting process is happening for a reason,
and that God might be teaching you things through
the waiting that might otherwise pass you by.
Further, living in a state of anxious waiting has the
potential to remind us of God’s centrality in our lives.
It often takes the prospect of losing something to
remind us, albeit perhaps painfully, that God is indeed
bigger than the thing or scenario we were waiting on

and hoping for.

Waiting can help us not only to deepen our trust, but
to heighten our listening and desire for God.
Learning to see and partake in these gifts in the midst
of waiting can be a life changing shift for a Christian.
I think it’s important, especially during Lent, that the
days we spend anticipating Easter are days of value, of

learning and of growing.
It might be helpful to consider how this can be
reflected in sung worship on a Sunday; some hymns –
Great is thy faithfulness and The Lord is my Shepherd
for example - are ones that focus on God’s
unchanging faithfulness through our changeable and

hidden futures.

If we can enter into a place of worship, where we are
seeking God’s peace in and through our worries and
our waiting, without sidelining or diminishing them
and yet without allowing them to become obstacles
that rival God in size and importance, then I think we
are in a healthy and expectant place.

A prayer

God, help us to see our times of waiting as
opportunities to grow in our relationship with you.
Thank you that you are with us in uncertainty, offering
peace, joy and unchanging hope in all moments of our
lives. Guard our hearts from trusting too heavily in
earthly things and help lift our vision to the eternal
picture of who we are and what we have in you.

Amen.