Dear friends,

As we continue through the year we continue to read surprising and often worrying news stories from around our country and the world. Some of us have also been reading reflections as part of our Stations of the Cross Lent practice and so often they speak to our current situation and offer us fresh perspective, more on that shortly.

This week has been a good one with flowers featuring in church twice – first as part of our Mothering Sunday services and then again on Wednesday when the Sunshine Preschool came to visit. They brought with them a lovely Easter garden as a gift for St Martin’s. This can be seen on the right hand side at the front of church over the next few days. Hopefully the flowers which were lovingly added by the children, will survive for those of you who can’t make it until Sunday. The children sang songs, listened to the Easter story (complete with early palm crosses) and enjoyed seeing some of the smaller details of the lady chapel with me. We thought about all the signs of new life we see around us in Spring and I told them about how the church celebrates new life every Easter.

Whether it is through something like Stations of the Cross, a daily Bible reading or me of prayer, our spirituality and faith based practices, should encourage us to have a new perspective on things. Sometimes what we read may inspire us to action or to speak differently about someone. We may find that a passage of the Bible has wisdom to offer us. Or it could be that we take comfort in a sense or a feeling of continuity or God’s sovereignty. Certainly for me, as I looked at the image of Jesus speaking to the women of Jerusalem, I was struck by how these events that unfold on the global stage can feel overwhelming and unprecedented and yet, we see evidence in history of how crisis happens but then things normalise. Often there is a birthing that happens on the other side of the pain.

The recent news of a police raid on a Quaker meeting house will have shocked and appalled many of us. Regardless of our view on how the police should deal with significant disruption to our capital city by peaceful protest, the feeling of violation of a sacred place of worship catches our attention. In reality the acts relating to policing of peaceful protest passed in 2022 & 2023 have led to many similar incidents with people even being jailed for talking about a planned action. These are the types of real-life situations that our faith in Jesus should help us to navigate. The cliché Christian mantra What would Jesus do? comes to my mind. How would Jesus respond to this? Perhaps with silence as he did at his own unjust trial? Or perhaps with anger as he did in the temple courts?

I would be interested to hear how you feel your spiritual practices equip you to make decisions and to hear how your faith has an impact on your everyday life.

This Sunday Rev’d Simon will take both our services of Holy Communion, at 8:30 & 10:30. The la er will include hymns and Sunday Spirit.

Hope to see you soon, Rev’d Phil