Bowland Benefice
Pews News 13 April 2025
Palm Sunday - Collect
True and humble king,
hailed by the crowd as Messiah:
grant us the faith to know you and love you,
that we may be found beside you
on the way of the cross,
which is the path of glory Amen.
This week in the Benefice

Sunday
13 April

10.30am

Family Service
in White Ladies
Aston

10.30am

Holy
Communion in
Upton
Snodsbury

Tuesday
15 April

7.00pm

Holy Week
Quiet Service
in Upton
Snodsbury

Thursday
17 April

7.30pm

Maundy
Thursday Holy
Communion in
Peopleton

Good Friday
18 April

9.30am

Stations of the
Cross Service
in Peopleton

6.00pm

Service of
Meditation in
White Ladies
Aston

Sunday
20April
Easter Day

6.30am

Holy
Communion
with breakfast
in Upton
Snodsbury

9.30am

Holy
Communion in
Upton
Snodsbury

11.00am

Holy
Communion in
Peopleton
On Tuesday 15 April - in Upton Snodsbury at 7.00pm
Walking with Christ to the Cross.
A contemplative service of music and words for Holy

Week.

Thursday 17 April – in Peopleton at 7.30pm,, the
Maundy Thursday service of Holy Communion
Friday 18 April – in Peopleton at 9.30am for Good
Friday, The Stations of the Cross followed by coffee

and Hot Cross Buns…….and
in White Ladies Aston at 6.00pm, a Service of

Meditation.

We continue to follow Stuart Townend as we enter
Holy Week and Christ’s journey to the Cross.
The sixth week’s theme is Gethsemane, Suffering,

Pain

The reading for this week Matthew 26:36-56
(a passage describing Jesus in Gethsemane)
The idea of worshipping in the midst of suffering and
pain can be an incredibly difficult one. And yet, we are
called to be worshippers all the time, in every area of
our lives. This does not mean, however, that we try
and sideline our pains and struggles when we come
together on a Sunday; in fact, the Bible seems to
continually encourage us to bring those pains and
emotions before God, in all their raw agony and
confusion. God is not just the God of Sunday morning;
He is also the God who cares enough about our
individual pain that He became human and walked an
even greater road of suffering than we do. He knows
what we feel, not merely sympathetically as an
omniscient stranger, but empathetically as the man
who was despised, abandoned, brutalised, and

unloved.

The Psalms, and books like Ecclesiastes and Job, are
full of people bringing their suffering and righteous
anger to God, asking ‘why, God, are you letting this
happen?’ This is an important and legitimate form of
worship and neglecting to do this will only serve to
remove those areas of our lives and emotions from
our relationship with God. This can all too easily
become a dangerous habit.

Jesus wept when he learned that His friend Lazarus
had died, even though he then immediately went to
raise him from the dead! God doesn’t just say to us
‘you’ll get through this’; he says ‘I know how it feels’,
and weeps alongside us. A resolution or a miraculous
outcome further down the road does not lessen the

integrity of current pain.

Holy Week is a time to remember Christ’s pain and
suffering in the garden of Gethsemane, but it’s also a
time for us to bring our own pain and loss to God,
asking God to ‘take this cup from us’, while also
ultimately encouraging each other to say ‘yet not our

will be done, but his’.
A prayer

God, you walked the road of pain far further than any
of us ever will. You know us in our sadness, our anger

and our frustration.

Thank you for becoming like us and sacrificing
everything just so we might know you. We pray for
those of us in deep anguish and pain, and we ask that
you will be with them in the depths of their

experience.

Thank you that you don’t offer us trite answers, but
instead you give us your blood, your humanity, and
your peace that is beyond all understanding. Be with

us on our journey. Amen.