Tag Archives: look-in

‘Look-In’ in Lockdown #6

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the latest issue of our church newsletter. Hope that you are all continuing to keep well and stay safe. This newsletter is one of our ways of trying to maintain contact and a sense of community during this time when we cannot meet together as a church family. You can find previous issues of the newsletter here. We would love to hear from you and are looking for uplifting and encouraging content to share in future issues of this newsletter.  If you have any ideas or content that we can share, please do email them to Louise (publicity@christchurchuxbridge.org.uk)

We start with an opening prayer:

God calls you here:
Part of a community of disciples, Part of a church family.

God calls you here and asks you to be ready to be in the presence of the Creator.

Are you ready to worship?
Are you ready to listen?
Are you ready to think?
Are you ready to notice?

For it is God who calls us here – lets be ready to meet our Saviour.

The living God calls you.
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‘Look-In’ in Lockdown #5

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the latest issue of our church newsletter. Hope that you are all continuing to keep well and stay safe. This newsletter is one of our ways of trying to maintain contact and a sense of community during this time when we cannot meet together as a church family. You can find previous issues of the newsletter here. We would love to hear from you and are looking for uplifting and encouraging content to share in future issues of this newsletter.  If you have any ideas or content that we can share, please do email them to Louise (publicity@christchurchuxbridge.org.uk)

We start with our opening prayer:

In your love we trust, creator God:
your love for your world;
your love for each one of us;
your love that invites us to love others,
to love ourselves, and to love you.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
receive our love now, and our thanks.

Amen.
(Taken from ROOTS at Home)

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‘Look-In’ in Lockdown #4

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the latest issue of our church newsletter. Hope that you are all continuing to keep well and stay safe. This newsletter is one of our ways of trying to maintain contact and a sense of community during this time when we cannot meet together as a church family. You can find previous issues of the newsletter here. We would love to hear from you and are looking for uplifting and encouraging content to share in future issues of this newsletter.  If you have any ideas or content that we can share, please do email them to Louise (publicity@christchurchuxbridge.org.uk)

This week’s prayer is a hymn that was shared in our virtual church parade service last week. The words for this hymn have been re-written by Denise Creed to fit the circumstances that we are currently living in. Denise is currently a Deacon in the South Holderness Circuit, but some of you may remember her when she was at South Ruislip and was our District Chaplain. Hope you find these words helpful for the current times:

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‘Look-In’ in Lockdown #3

Hello everyone,

Hope that you are all keeping well and staying safe. This week, we’re sharing ways to take part in Christian Aid week, stories from lockdown life and the Bible readings from this week’s lectionary. We hope that you have been enjoying reading our newsletters so far.

We are always looking for uplifting and encouraging content for our newsletter and would love to hear from you if you have any stories, reflections, poems, photos or news to share. You can email any content for the newsletter to Louise at publicity @ christchurchuxbridge.org.uk

We start with an opening prayer:

Dear God
When we feel down at this very difficult time;
When we are worried by the excessive, and often negative, news;
When we are even a bit scared about how the future will be,
Help us to remember that you are always with us and there is nothing that we cannot manage when you are by our side.
Be with those who are grieving for lost loved ones.
Be with those who are missing family and friends.
Be with those who are ill and those who have lost hope.
Be with all those who are working on the NHS and those who are working hard to ensure that we are kept safe.
We ask all this through your son, Jesus Christ .
Amen
(written by Val Bailey)

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‘Look-In’ in Lockdown #2

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the second issue of our new church newsletter – ‘Look-In’ in Lockdown. I hope that you enjoyed our first newsletter last week if you received this (if not, you can find some of the content from it here).

Hope that you are all continuing to keep well and stay safe. This newsletter is one of our ways of trying to maintain contact and a sense of community during this time when we cannot meet together as a church family. We would love to hear from you and are looking for uplifting and encouraging content to share in future issues of this newsletter.  If you have any ideas or content that we can share, please do email them to Louise (publicity@christchurchuxbridge. org.uk)

Let’s start with an opening prayer:

Loving God,
We come before you as unique individuals,
Ready to acknowledge our strengths and weaknesses,
Ready to recognise the value of others, to value the difference,
Ready to hear your call as it morphs and changes,
Ready to hear your accepting voice and all that frees us to consider,
Ready to notice,
Amen.
(written by Jane Bingham, taken from The Vine at Home)

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Fear – Faith – Fortitude

In June I returned to ‘normal duties’ following my sabbatical, which I wrote about in my last letter for Look-In way back in February.  Due to family health problems things didn’t go entirely to plan (do they ever), but having the sabbatical when I did meant I was able to offer a lot more support to my parents and Sue’s parents than I would have been able to do under normal circumstances.

 

Anyway, now life has returned to normal.  Except it hasn’t.  The last few weeks have shown a side of life that is far from normal.  Terrorist attacks on Westminster Bridge, London Bridge and at the Manchester Arena; the attack on worshipers leaving a Mosque in Finsbury Park (was this a terrorist attack?  It was certainly an attack designed to create terror); and the horrific fire in Grenfell Tower; not to mention the Brexit negotiations (oh dear, I mentioned them) have all shown that these are not normal times.

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Bee Active

At our Harvest Service last month, Nick spoke about bees and their importance in providing the food that we eat.  Bees are essential for pollinating crops and other plants and it’s estimated that they play a key role in providing at least a third of the food that we eat, if not more.  What is worrying though is the decline in the numbers of bees since the start of this century – since 2010 alone, the bee population has reduced by 45% in the UK, and this is thought to be mostly due to the use of pesticides.  Two species of bee have become extinct in the UK since the start of the 21st century and several more are now endangered.

A bee on a white flower

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My Childhood – Part 2

The Church played a considerable part in our lives and the family were members of the Old Meeting House Congregational Church. My parents were married there and my Sister and I were christened by the Rev’d Luther Bouch. From the age of five we were taken to Sunday School each Sunday morning and again in the afternoon. At the end of Sunday school in the morning the children filed into the Church but only stayed for the first half of the service; we came out prior to the sermon. When Mother couldn’t take us in the mornings we were taken by Eva Keen, Ethel and Win Bright or Vera Newport; all lived locally to us. From about seven onward I was able to go alone.

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Lenten Sacrifice – Easter Thanksgiving (New Life)

You might have noticed that something was missing in the life of the church during Lent this year (and I don’t mean some of the chairs).  It has become common practice in many churches in recent years to have a special Lenten appeal for a charitable cause or project.  Such appeals are a natural development of the idea of giving up something for Lent to giving up something so that others can gain something.  In recent years we have supported:

 

  • Christian Aid’s ‘Count your Blessings’ plan, daily bite-size reflections to inspire us to give, act and pray to bring justice to our world and change the lives of people living in poverty across the globe.
  • Water Aid’s ‘Jars of Change’ appeal, turning loose change into clean water.
  • Practical Action’s ‘Human Waste’ campaign, tackling problems faced by toilet-pit cleaners in Bangladesh.
  • And some have followed the ‘40Acts’ programme, encouraging people to give back, do good and live generously.

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My Childhood – Part 1

I was born in a house in New Windsor Street in October, 1920. The house was one of a terrace and had three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. The bathroom had no hot water and the bath was so large that to get sufficient hot water for a bath would have meant carrying probably 10 to 15 buckets up the stairs. In any case there was no means of heating such a quantity. A tin bath in the kitchen was therefore used for bathing.

 

There were two reception rooms, a kitchen and scullery downstairs. The only WC was outside but actually built into the house abutting into the scullery. The weekly rent was ten shillings. Cooking was carried out on a cast-iron cooking range in the kitchen. As a schoolboy my job each Saturday was to black-lead the range and polish the fire irons with emery cloth. There was a brick-built boiler in the scullery which was used for the weekly wash, and outside the kitchen door was a very large wooden-rollered mangle to squeeze most of the water from the clothes.

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