Friday 28th March 15:40  

w/c Sunday Mar 30^th 2025

Dear Friends,

This Sunday is Mothering Sunday, and we will be holding a joint Mission Community service at St Petroc’s at 10am, followed by coffee and cake!
Mothering Sunday can provoke a variety of emotions for many of us, but we can come together, acknowledging this before our loving God whose character is portrayed in the Bible with images of both Mother and Father. 
I look forward to welcoming as many as are able to join us on Sunday.

Thought for the week  2Cor 5 v16-end

In his letters to the Corinthians, Paul is writing to a group of people who are struggling to understand what it means to be a Christian in a multicultural society, and how to live a Christian life amongst all the secular challenges around them. Sound familiar?
In this passage Paul talks about living in a transformed reality.
Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we are “made new” and should have a new perspective and way of living.
This new world view is not just limited to our view of Jesus and what He has done, but extends to how we view each other. That’s a tall ask.
We are being asked to view each other as being part of this new creation, this transformed reality. We are called to reimagine, to stretch our hearts and minds to find Jesus in others, even if we have to work rather hard at times.

This isn’t always easy.
Are we being asked to just grin and bear it when someone cuts up up in the queue, or ignore the cutting remark or veiled insult?
What is clear is that more is being asked of us than sometimes we can give or are prepared to offer. We are being asked to see others as Jesus does, to take those issues that provoke strong emotions and responses to Him.
To see in each person the image of God within them. We are not asked to be doormats, allowing ourselves to be trampled all over.
Instead we are to be the door to the possibility of transformation through the grace and love of God.

I wonder if you remember the famous advert for a particular brand of chocolate which took place at an ambassador’s reception.
The idea was that the chocolates were so good that they were used on such auspicious occasions as these.
The ambassador is seen as someone of very good taste.
Paul tells us the amazing truth that we are God’s representatives on earth, tasked with transmitting some of the excellence of God’s love.
God’s love has no equal, it is simply divine, something to be savoured each day.

 We have, through Jesus, this inherited closeness to God, and we are called to maintain that closeness, to savour His love, through all the ups and downs of life, Through the good times and the bad we have to keep coming back to God to see the truth of who we are and who He is.
And as we do so, we find that God’s exquisite love is not just for us, not just for the selected few as in the ambassadors’ reception.
God’s love is for everyone, and we are asked to help people to experience this love for themselves. To be God’s ambassadors!

Notices and Diary

• Sun 30^th March joint Mission Community Mothering Sunday service at 10am at St Petroc’s. NB remember the clocks go forward!
• Our ecumenical Lent lunches at South Brent Methodist school hall on Wed at 12.30pm
• Lent course at St Luke’s on Tuesdays at 10am; S Brent Methodist church on Wed 2pm

Sun 30^th Mar                 Mission Community Mothering Sunday service at 10am at St Petroc’s

Tues 1^st Apr                  St Luke’s Lent course at 10am

Wed 2^nd Apr                 St Petroc’s Morning Prayer at 8.30am

                                    Thought for the week at 10am by zoom and telephone

                                    St Petroc’s Lent lunch in Methodist school hall at 12.30

St Petroc’s Lent course in Methodist school hall at 2pm

Fri 4th Apr                    Morning Prayer at 9am by zoom and telephone

                                    Landscove and Staverton joint APCM at Landscove church at 10.30

Sun 6^th Apr                   St Petroc’s Parish breakfast from 8.30am

 Know you are in my heart and in my prayers.
Rev Gina