The Benefice of St. Bartholomew

Plough Sunday - 23rd January 2022

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Written by Tony Gowers

Plough Sunday

A Celebration of the Agricultural Year

at

St Leonard's Church, Semley

on

Sunday 23rd January 2022
at 11.00 am

Speaker: Mrs. Ros Fraser

Mulled cider and victuals afterwards

All are most welcome

Come, all you jolly ploughmen, of courage stout and bold
That labour all the winter in stormy winds, and cold;
To clothe the fields with plenty, your farm-yards to renew,
To crown with contentment, behold the painful plough!

From the Rector - January 2022

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Written by The Rev'd Kate McFarlane

Uncertain Times

I have struggled this month to know quite what to offer you because everything currently seems so uncertain. I am writing this in the week before Christmas, unsure whether we may be heading into a new lockdown, whether the new Covid variant is a more or less serious threat than previous variants, whether our services can go ahead as planned and whether I will see any of my wider family or not.

Most of us, I suspect, find this now recurring uncertainty very unsettling. We love to be able to see ahead and to plan, to know what is happening and when, yet for a second year we are being forced to accept being in the dark about the future.

Perhaps though, far as these feelings are from the cosyness and appealing predictability of our customary Christmas and New Year traditions, unsettling uncertainty is at the heart of the story of Jesus' birth, Jesus is born far from home, in makeshift surroundings and among strangers, and is forced to begin his human life by fleeing all that Joseph and Mary had ever known, seeking safety in a foreign land. Even the 'wise men' of our nativity stories don't know where they are going, choosing to ask guidance from the worst possible and most threatening of sources - Herod. Their search for Christ is full of the darkness and perturbing unpredictability we are experiencing now.

As we look towards 2022, a very well-known poem seems particularly apt:

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
"Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown."
And he replied,
"Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way."
So I went forth, and finding the hand of God, trod gladly into the night.
And he led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.

Written in 1908, this poem was used by King George VI in his 1939 Christmas broadcast, catching the public imagination and offering comfort and inspiration at a time of immense fear at the beginning of World War II. It holds such power, perhaps, because it acknowledges the darkness of uncertainty while promising we won't find ourselves alone there; God, who entered into our bewildering world at Christmas, will be our companion, through even the darkest times, and it is he who will lead us, eventually, to the light.

Prayer Cycle and Prayer of the Month - January 2022

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Written by The Rev'd June Lane

Please do continue to make your requests for prayer known to us. Prayer changes things. Contact any of us: The Rev’d June (tel: 01747 828427), Julia (tel: 01747 829166), or Theresa (tel: 01747 829188). There are many of us in need of that extra help and comfort that comes from knowing someone is praying for us.

Prayer of the Month

O Lord our God,
teach our hearts this day
where and how to see you,
where and how to find you.
You have made and remade us,
and you have given us all the good things we possess,
and still we do not know you.
We have not yet done that for which we were created.
Teach us to seek you,
for we cannot seek you unless you teach us,
or find you unless you show yourself to us.
Let us seek you in our longing,
let us long for you in our seeking.
Let us find you by loving you,
Let us love you when we find you. Amen