Linda led us in a service which looked at freedoms mentioning both our own personal abilities to roam, even with the covid restrictions and areas such as Nigeria where Christians are persecuted openly. We recited the Psalm of David (psalm 29) and this related neatly to Linda recounting the story of how Michelangelo's statue of David was carved from a block of marble, which had been hewn over 40 years previous. After many artists failing to be inspired enough to carve the block Michelangelo described his work of David as releasing the "angel from within". The freedom of the birds was used to symbolise Gods power and Linda presented all the congregation with a bird of their own complete with a bible verse. Our Remembrance service was lead by Pauline and had many who contributed to the service. A range of people laid poppies on the alter, the church was beautifully decorated and even the post service cakes had poppy cases.
Our congregation seems to have a number of November birthdays to celebrate and today we all gathered to sing Beryl a "Happy 90th Birthday" with a cake to add to our after service tea and coffee.
Gina and Arthur stepped in to take todays service at short notice and gave us a flavour of the "open the book" sessions that a group of people take into the local primary school. This week they took the story of Noah and the Ark to school and we had a repeat performance today. Noah was seen building the ark with a large mallet, adding the animals including two large toy tigers (one of whom refused to sit properly, loading the ark with food and letting the dove fly from the ark. Even the congregation were involved making the rain sound effects.
"God gave me a sense of humour" was all that was needed to describe Jean on her cake as she celebrates her 90th birthday this week. All attending the service this morning lead by Gina and Arthur enjoyed the tea and cake after we had all sung "Happy Birthday" of course.
At the end of our service today a presentation was made to Mike and Anne who celebrated their golden wedding anniversary yesterday. Both support the church in many ways and had brought "golden foil covered chocolate sweets" to help the rest of us celebrate with them.
Today we were allowed to meet again inside the chapel and it felt good to be back amongst friends again. And what a joy to see the wonderful nativity tableau erected high on the outside wall for all to behold as we entered. Such creativity amongst our congregation!
We thought about resilience; thinking of the many examples of the same in the Bible and reflecting on our own resilience during these difficult months. “Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” Joshua 1:9 We thought about our ‘ring pull’ charity, the Purple Community Fund, who have been supporting some of the poorest people in the Philippines, and how amazingly resilient these people have been, not only locked down in slum conditions, but coping with a fire, a volcano eruption and three typhoons. And still strong and resilient! We looked at some of the beautiful crafts they create from ring pulls. £25 was sent to the Purple Community Fund for their Christmas appeal. We remembered lovely friends who have passed away since we were last in chapel together. Mary Payne, Dick Dale and of course the Reverend Derek Shaw who will all be sadly missed and who have all left us with happy memories which will never be lost. The chapel met to have an open air service today for the first time since the start of the Covid crisis. Twenty three people each in their socially distanced groups met for a short service of prayer and reflection as well as listening to the two set readings for this Sunday. The weather was kind and shone upon us too
As part of an ecumenical project to read the bible stories to young people in schools a group of readers have been trained many from our own congregation to deliver this programme in our local primary school. Shustoke is a C of E aided school and was one of the few in the area which was bereft of this programme. The first read happened today and was a great success judging from a few of the young people who were able to recount an outline of the event. Find out more about Open the Book here
Fifteen new "Singing the Faith" hymn books were dedicated this morning as part of the service by Farai. These have been donated by family in the memory of Mavis Coggins (1922-2019), who was a member of our chapel for over sixty years.
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February 2025
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