Today
Our preacher is Jane Dronfield. We look forward to hearing what she has to say.
Next Sunday 22nd May
Ellie will be continuing with her thoughts on the Beatitudes. Come along to hear what she has to say to us.
Christian Aid Week
It’s Christian Aid Week this week! Envelopes are available in church. Please be ready to donate to a good cause. Carol
Call to Ukraine from the Isle of Wight
Just over six weeks ago during worship at Freshwater MC Nigel Watson, (husband of Frances, Methodist Minister in the Island Circuit) received a powerful call from God to travel to help the refugees fleeing Ukraine. He is understandably anxious, as well as sensing God’s peace that this is the right thing to do.
Nigel is funding the trip himself, taking a van of donated aid, and donations of money to enable him to provide specific aid while he is there. Thank you for all this who have supported so far. If anyone wishes to provide small financial donations for additional aid, these can be sent to myself and I can pass these into the account Nigel has set up to use while he is away.
The trip is open ended as Nigel wants to be open to the Holy Spirit’s leading while he is there.
Please would you pray for Nigel over the next weeks, for all those who are called to ‘go’, and for those who will have some of their needs met.
Thank you, Frances
Jokes from Simon
My son accidentally glued his autobiography to himself. That’s his story and he’s sticking to it.
A clock walked into a shop. “Is this a wind-up?” asked the assistant.
My wife dramatically took the blankets off me last night. Don’t worry I will recover.
I couldn’t understand why one of the cakes in the café was much more expensive than all the others, until the owner explained, “That’s Madeira Cake.”
Smaller babies are delivered by a stork, but the heavier ones need a crane.
Why don’t vultures check their luggage into the planes hold? They prefer carry on!
Two Clues in One: FESTIVALS
You know how this works by now: the words in the clue should lead to an answer, but more, the initials of the words in the clue are the initials of the answer.
So if the category is “Prime Ministers”, the clues might be “Bumbling Jackass” or “Brilliant Jouster”, according to your point of view. This would indicate a PM with the initials BJ, if you can think of one.This time the category is songs – a mixture of Christmas, Easter and Harvest songs.
OPINION – Extract from Ann Widdecombe’s Autobiography “Strictly Ann” published in 2013
“Gradually freedom of speech has been eroded in this country, until we have arrived at a point, which once we condemned in the Soviet regime, where expressing a view which contradicts State orthodoxy means losing one’s livelihood or facing disciplinary proceedings or even finding the police on the doorstep.
A couple in Lancashire was questioned for an hour and forty minutes after asking to place Christian literature in register offices, alongside the Council’s own literature on civil partnerships. The Council could simply have said no, but instead actually complained to the police. So did listeners when Lynette Burrows, a respected children’s author, said on the radio that she thought homosexual couples should not adopt and who was subsequently rung up by police, while Trafford Housing Trust demoted a man and imposed a 40% pay cut just because he had written on his PRIVATE Facebook page that he was not in favour of gay marriage and in the words of the judge, who ruled his demotion unfair, expressed himself very moderately upon the subject. Those who had complained simply took the view that he had no right to express the opinion at all.
Then there has been the rising number of cases of people disciplined just for wearing a religious symbol or saying something innocuous as “God Bless” or offering to pray for someone. If a Muslim makes some religious comment in my presence, I do not become offended. If, when I was a Protestant, a Catholic offered to say a “Hail Mary” for me then I would have replied merely “thank you”. Britain, once the most tolerant of nations, is becoming intolerant of one of the most basic freedoms: the right to express an opinion or to proclaim a faith, and more dangerously is moving to a point where its citizens can be forced to affirm that which they do not believe.”
(Thanks to Ruth Colling for sending us this extract)
Please send any contributions that might be published by next Tuesday morning to: andy