Below you can find prayers, reflections and favourite Bible passages from the worship team and other members of the congregation to be used as a resource for your own quiet time
If you have a favourite short prayer or reading, contact us and we will try to include it
WRITING
FROM THE RECTORY
Once more we are in the season
of exams and exam results: GCSE, A Level and the rest. And
even as the candidates carry out final revision and spend hot summer
days in steamy exam rooms, Imperial College, London University,
tells us that it does not trust any of the exam results and intends
to set its own entrance exam in addition to the A levels. We
are told that too many students get A’s these days.
Wherever the truth lies in this
debate, the constant stream of criticism levelled at many schools,
sometimes dubbed ‘failing’, is certainly discouraging to a great
many teachers and students. And yet, as I have been part of
the life of many schools over the years, including our own local
school in Sturton, I never cease to be impressed by the unremitting
commitment, energy and skill of our teachers. In addition, I
am often moved by the bright innocence, enthusiasm and goodness of a
great many children and young people. If sometimes innocence
is corrupted, surely it is adults who initiate the corruption.
Teaching and learning,
especially these days, is pressurised, unendingly reviewed and hard.
Again, I sometimes think that being young isn’t all it’s cracked up
to be. In this country too many demonise the young, as if all
young people were badly behaved hoodies, carrying knives, taking
drugs, drinking too much, and being promiscuous with it.
better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied
around his neck.”
God bless our
children and those who nourish, mentor, teach and care for them
Alex
Whitehead
THE MONTHLY PRAYER MEETING
On the first Monday every month
we continue a prayer meeting at the Rectory between 7.00 and 8.00pm.
The meeting usually includes introductory reflective music, prayers
for the day with prayer from the Stow Group’s Prayer Diary and a
space for silence and our own prayers. This links our prayers
with both the regular Sunday worship and also the bi-monthly Service
of Wholeness, Healing and Shalom.
The
next prayer Meeting is on Monday 7th
July. The next Healing Service will be on July 20th
at 3.00pm in St Edith Coates

COFFEE MORNING FOR WILLINGHAM BELLS
On Wednesday 30th
July from 10.30am there will be a Coffee Morning at Dale House
Willingham, hosted by Margaret and Peter Horsburgh to support the
restorative work to St Helen’s Church bells. All are welcome.
FROM THE REGISTERS
Holy Baptism
At St Mary, Stow
25/05/08, Rosie Grace Nelstrop
By one Spirit we are all
baptized into one body.
Holy Matrimony
Kaye Griffiths and Richard
Robinson of Sturton by Stow
My commandment is this: Love
each other as I have loved you.

THOUGHT
I have recently come across the
periodical, Magnet, produced for women and men by the
Methodist Church of Great Britain and was struck by the following
short meditation by Pat Haigh:
Reaching
Out
To
reach
out in love
is to touch another life
with the hands of Christ.
To stretch out the hands
in Christ-love is to open
one’s own heart to God.
Jan Whitehead

