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MCT Prayers 1st March

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Hello everyone

LENTEN REFLECTIONS —WEEK 3

Simon the Zealot

Scripture tells us almost nothing about Simon. In the Gospels, he is mentioned in three places, but only to list his name with the 12 disciples. In Acts 1:13 we learn that he was present with the 11 apostles in the upper room of Jerusalem after Christ had ascended to heaven. Church tradition holds that he spread the gospel in Egypt as a missionary and was martyred in Persia. Like most of the other apostles, Simon the Zealot deserted Jesus during his trial and crucifixion. Clearly there must be more to the man who was referred to as a Zealot.

Opening Prayer

Lent is a time to learn to travel

Light, to clear the clutter

From our crowded lives and

Find a space, a desert.

Deserts are bleak; no creature

Comforts, only a vast expanse of Stillness, sharpening awareness of

Ourselves and God

Uncomfortable places, deserts.

Most of the time we’re tempted to

Avoid them, finding good reason to

Live lives of ease; cushioned by

Noise from self-discovery.

Clutching at world’s success

To stave off fear.

But if we dare to trust the silence

To strip away our false security,

God can begin to grow his wholeness in us,

Fill up our emptiness, destroy our fears,

Give us new vision, courage for the journey,

And make our desert blossom like a rose.

From – ‘Waiting for the Kingfisher’ – Ann Lewin

Simon the Zealot

Coming down from the hills changed me. I met him first in that desert, where I’d bloodied and battered and been bloodied and battered, on the steep road to Jericho. We’d both known the force of the law, the brutality, the demands of the military, and the homes smashed during so-called searches, and the homes destroyed as punishment. A cowed people nursed their bitterness in strong community, closed against the other. It was during my second time in prison, when my body ached from the beatings and the years stretched out ahead, that he visited, and brought cold water, clothing, food, and dignity.  

 I fell in love with the romance of faith in a different journey, the knowledge that the hills where we trained were the hills where he prayed. I could see why I needed him but not why he wanted me. In the years of the dirty war we’d lost sight of what we were fighting for: it was more tit for tat, keeping up the fear so we might survive. But he brought me back to the centre, to the goodness and truth and different way to live that I’d known as a child, then a youth. He refreshed my soul.

But follow him? Ex-taxmen, small business-folk, women with histories, there was a place for everybody in his company, I found. And being with him made us start to be kind again. Soldiers have bonds – we look out for each other: this was deeper. We gave without counting the cost, without hope of return. Not just to each other, but we turned aside mistrust and took the risk with strangers. And enjoyed the results. We laughed on the road. Yet I wasn’t much good at the end. I wasn’t the hand-to-hand combat type, more the bomb-maker at a distance. I’d given up on hurting people but it was bombastic Simon Peter who was better at security guard roles. I’d seen so much pain: I was scared at the thought of what it would be like. Going all the way with him. I’d seen my mates executed: even the toughest fall apart. In those hours, those days. That’s the point: it doesn’t pay to cross authority. I did not think, my friend, that I could love so little, or could be so self-absorbed I could not see your body on the other tree, that I could miss in this, my life’s extreme, your living company. You did not love the loud thief less then, love, though he could only hear his groaning anger at the world in pain which you have held so dear. So, Christ, if we should turn from you at last, you are forever near.

Afghan sacrifice 2001

The mild-mannered man on the city council declared himself a former soldier and an atheist. He’d seen too much in Afghanistan. Then he told a story, just one.

They had been far out in the lawless areas, to the north. They scurried to leave the hostile village as tempers flared. All got in and, the door still open, the helicopter took off. At that moment, through the crowd two women ran and each threw something through the door.

‘We thought we were done for.’ But the explosion, their lives’ final sound, did not come. The pilot flew upwards. There were two bundles, each a desperately ill baby. ‘What mother could do that, so desperate she risked her child with strangers?’

They cared for the two as best they might. One died on the flight, the other lived and was taken to hospital and then to an orphanage in Kabul.

We give thanks …

For those who can change their way of life and show us the humanity within the enemy.

For those who recognise their own failures and return to show us how to be braver than they.

For those wars that have ended,

For unseen acts of gentleness or of withholding from slaughter, expected or ordered.

We pray …

For an end to violence, and a recognition that speaking at the table earlier rather than later saves much suffering.

For child soldiers and all they have seen and been brought to do.

We pray for those who have suffered at their hands, and for all who seek to work for the future of all.

For the places in the world where violence dominates; for an end to suicide bombing and for an understanding of the cost and casualties.

For a just, peaceful, rapid and lasting solution in Israel-Palestine, the lands where the soles of your feet have touched the earth.

Our own prayers …….. Lord’s Prayer ……

KEEP SAFE ….KEEP PRAYING……

Peter

Lent Reflections – Part 2

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During the period of Lent, Rev’d John is encouraging us to think about fellowship. This week we will be thinking about UNITY.
You can watch the second of these reflections by Rev John using this YouTube link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUkZMlZntVk

Although we can’t all physically meet together currently, you’re welcome to join us on Sunday Evening at 6pm to virtually meet together on Zoom to reflect, pray, share thoughts, and ask questions. You can join via the link below:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81465422204?pwd=QjJGRGQ0dk5HdTdqekVaclE0T2tQZz09

Meeting ID: 814 6542 2204
Passcode: 109433

You can also read the transcript here, or print out to pass on to those without access to the online video.

Lent-2-Transcript Download

The real love story

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We are planning to celebrate the Real Love story of Easter ( see https://vimeo.com/509894747/9feb33b1d7 ) and we need your help. Felt hearts will be given out to school staff and children and to care home staff and residents. We need about 1000! They will be accompanied by a card with an appropriate message. They are very simple to make (see the picture above). If you think you could make some felt hearts, we will provide the materials.

Please send me a message via email stating how many you can make. I’ll then email the pattern.
We know that the schools and the care homes think it’s a good idea, so we now need to get busy!


Thanks.


alisonwhiteley@ntlworld.com

Parish Magazine for March 2021

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Welcome to March edition of the #Meltham Parish magazine. There’s lots of love and kindness flowing around this months edition with a history of Mother’s day and lots of examples how we have shown kindness to each other during the past year.

Read all about it here: ParishMagazineMarch2021Download

We have managed to get copies for delivery printed again this month. These can be collected for distribution as normal.

MCT prayers 22.2.21

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Hello everyone

LENTEN REFLECTIONS WEEK 2

Last week Ash Wednesday heralded the beginning of the Season of Lent. Almost over a year ago we sent out our first prayer letter to our Churches Together. We have journeyed together praying for the world-wide pandemic Coronavirus and its effects on us all. On the journey we have had the opportunity to deepen our relationship with God through the many different avenues of prayer that we have been using. We have prayed, meditated, and reflected on God’s Word through the Scriptures and the thoughts of others.

Recently we have been using P.R.A.Y praying in the shape of LECTIO 365 a National & International Aid which exists to help us pray in groups or as individuals. The aim is that our prayers, wherever we are, at whatever time we pray, are being prayed to our Father in heaven 24-7 every day of the year.

Our opening Prayer will serve us for each week of Lent.

Christine and I are following the “Lenten Reflections on thirteen lesser reported followers of Jesus’ passion” By Rosemary Power’ A Wild Goose publication. www.ionabooks.com We invite you to join us each week for seven of these  Reflections as we lead up to Easter Day.

Opening Prayer

Lent is a time to learn to travel

Light, to clear the clutter

From our crowded lives and

Find a space, a desert.

Deserts are bleak; no creature

Comforts, only a vast expanse of

Stillness, sharpening awareness of

Ourselves and God

Uncomfortable places, deserts.

Most of the time we’re tempted to

Avoid them, finding good reason to

Live lives of ease; cushioned by

Noise from self-discovery.

Clutching at world’s success

To stave off fear.

But if we dare to trust the silence

To strip away our false security,

God can begin to grow his wholeness in us,

Fill up our emptiness, destroy our fears,

Give us new vision, courage for the journey,

And make our desert blossom like a rose.

From – ‘Waiting for the Kingfisher’ – Ann Lewin

WEEK TWO: A  SEEKER:  – MARTHA, PROPHET,

Martha (Luke 10:38–42; John 11:1–44,12:1–3)

I spread a table before him within reach of his foes. God called me to that.

I learnt at the hearth. God called me to that.

I witnessed his truth, I spoke the Word, Christ in the world, Resurrection and Life.

My sister surpassed me.

All time has remembered me.

When they retold the tale, they made Martha the fusspot, the irritant, interrupting the serious business with domestic detail. This was Martha, one of the few women Jesus called by her own name, dropping the usual formal title. ‘I have called you by your name, you are mine.’ ‘You are the Christ, who was to come into the world.’ ‘Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.’ Against all convention her name comes before her brother’s.

Martha the homemaker witnessed before them, that Jesus is the Christ. Who could bring the dead to life. Simon Peter witnessed in front of Jesus’ followers when he made his declaration of faith; Martha spoke it before the village and the visitors, some doubting, others hostile. When their enemies plotted to kill Jesus, and Lazarus too, Martha and her sister were in danger. She came to the party and served the meal, knowing of the plotting and what impact her words had had.

Jesus had once calmed Martha his host, brought her back to the central matters. Martha stood aside and let her younger sister surpass her. She cared for her brother, served Simon the Leper, saw Jesus for what he was,  and  risked repercussions.

We meet her in hospitals and churches, in the kitchen, in the meeting-place, in the wrong place, at the wrong moment, rustling the papers, keeping the church running, ordering the necessities, speaking the startling word of truth and generosity that comes from a lifetime of understated prayer. Martha is the necessary irritant, the reliable voice, the host with a heart for Christ. She hid Jews from Nazis, Tutsis from Hutus, Yazidis from Daesh, the trafficked from gangsters. The fusspot at the cooking served Christ in the world.

We give thanks …

For the people we underestimate, for those who appear to have no specific

talent but who make other work possible.

For those who have made the Word of God the study of a lifetime.

For those who take the call to hospitality to its fullness in welcoming the

needy and life-worn, the hurt and the homeless, the refugee and stranger.

We pray …

For the silent witness of courage and the public act. That we might have the

insight to speak of Christ in the right place, at the right time.

For the times when we see our work as undervalued by our fellow humans

and by God when it seems that the easy path is on the road of others.

For the people in our lives who have been scarred by sickness, isolation, and

neglect, that they may enjoy the fullness of life and may serve our society.

For the insight to understand and bear witness to God in the world, in the

light of the Resurrection.

We give thanks …

For the unsung witnesses who have passed to us the stories that make our

faith real.

For the steadfastness of friends who have stood by us in our times of trial.

For the joy that breaks through in unexpected ways.

We pray …

For those who follow, pray and pray and keep us practical.

For those who walk through the corridors of power and keep their eyes on

goodness.

For the strength of the marriage bond, that it may bring blessing on its partners

and on all whose lives it touches.

That we may be able to recognise the risen Christ in our daily lives and

among the people we meet.

Our own prayers …….. Lord’s Prayer ……

KEEP SAFE ….KEEP PRAYING……

Peter

Lent Reflections – Part 1

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During the period of Lent, Rev’d John is encouraging us to think about fellowship. You can find further information in the links below. You can watch the first of these reflections by Rev John using this YouTube link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWgFJnzRiQM

Although we can’t all physically meet together currently, there will also be an opportunity on Sunday Evening at 6pm to virtually meet together on Zoom to reflect, pray, share thoughts, and ask questions. You can join via the link below:

https://us04web.zoom.us/j/78999432826?pwd=OUR4WkVPUU82RVM1TDRZVzNQcmsrZz09

Meeting ID = 789 9943 2826
Password = 5EBn91

Lent 2021 Introduction Download
Lent 1 transcript Download