Benefice of Farleigh,

Candovers and Wield

Church Information - 11th July

11th July 2020

Benefice of Farleigh, Candover and Wield

Dear friends,

Sunday worship restarted last Sunday with services at both ends of the benefice – outdoors at Dummer in the morning, indoors in the morning at Northington and Wield, with an outdoor evening service at Brown Candover’s Buried Church; rebuilding confidence and overcoming fear are key elements as we re-establish a worshipping pattern across our communities.

The difficulties we face are shaded by the different opinions expressed by different scientific assumptions about how the virus spreads, whether air-borne or mainly prolonged close proximity to someone infectious, whilst we are living in a county where the number of known cases is very small, and very few currently needing hospitalisation. There appear to have been very few, if any, incidences of supermarket staff or delivery drivers catching it, which should add to the growing confidence that the worst is over, and that going about our daily lives mainly as we did previously, is safe. 

Where is God in all this? He is with us, as He has been with those who have had the virus and survived, those who have not survived, and walks with us every moment if we are spiritually “switched-on” to know it. God has never promised us an easy life; quite the contrary, being a disciple of Jesus is to live a life that offends others because we have different moral values, we believe in truth and justice, honesty and faithfulness, love and mercy. We also believe that every person needs to know Jesus Christ in order to experience true peace, true purpose, and it is only through Him we have a hope after death. That challenges different belief systems, especially the current howling mobs of Twitter and the like, who condemn and demand the removal from institutions, education, university, public life and perhaps even the face of the earth of anyone who dares to disagree with their skewed philosophy of life.

Such anarchy is a symptom of the deep spiritual malaise of our world, out of step with God, and rebelling against His revealed will, purposes and laws; we should not be surprised, for these are signs of the spiritual warfare being raged increasingly openly, between that which is true, honest, trustworthy and right, and that which are lies, dishonesty untrustworthiness and wrong. Jesus said, “Let not your hearts be troubled, Trust in God, trust also in me.” He is at work through it all, and we have seen some amazing things online of God’s work, of Christian people sharing Him with others in creative, positive ways – and as we come out of these difficult few months, maybe we will live and worship differently.

We are continuing online services for a few more weeks although we are both on holiday soon, so will make some sort of provision online before we get some annual and somewhat overdue leave. 

Parish magazines are either published or about to be, but to keep you informed about services for next 4 weeks, we have attached below the programme. As always we are available on phone, e-mail, or face to face over a garden gate or wall, for all matters. 

Prayer times Wednesday mornings 9.00 to 930 a.m. and fellowship group on Wednesday evenings 7.45 to 9.15 p.m. on Zoom – contact peter.c.w.raine@btinternet.com.

May God bless each of you this week, 

Every blessing, 

With our prayers and greetings,  

David and Stephen

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