FROM THE MINISTRY TEAM Do you remember the jingle that used to listen to when we were children? “Stop, look and listen before you cross the street. Stop look and listen before you cross the street. You use your eyes, you use your ears and then you use your feet”. Instilled in us so many times as children, that after a few years, it became automatic: look right, left, then right again. So much so that, if you go somewhere where they drive on the other side of the road, you have to concentrate really hard to ensure you look left, right, left, instead of right, left, right! It would actually be a good maxim to live our lives by, wouldn’t it? Stop, look and listen, before we embark on a course of action. It’s certainly a good approach to how we communicate with one another. We first of all have to stop. If we try to carry on a conversation while we are doing something else, then chances are we will not be sharing anything very personal. If we have something important to say to someone, we don’t want to compete for their attention with a phone, the television or a book. How many times have you said – “stop……..and listen to what I’m telling you.” Whether it’s to a child, a friend, or a partner. Both parties to the conversation need to stop whatever they are doing so that they can give one other their full attention. They then need to look at one another. The simple act of facing another person--looking at that person’s face--is a strong sign that you wish to make contact with that person. Finally after we have stopped and faced one other, it is time to listen carefully to the other person. Listening is as important as talking, and in many cases is more important. Through listening we are able to come to a better understanding of the other person. Taking their words seriously means that we may have to re-think some behaviour or attitude of ours towards them. Communication has a powerful role in any relationship. And when we listen, really listen to someone, learn to understand them, value them, then that relationship can grow and flourish. And all of these things apply also to our relationship with God. If we think that we have a close relationship with God, but never stop to look at him and listen to him, our relationship has no foundation in reality. We are half way through Lent - the period of 40 days in the lead up to Easter, when, as Christians, we are asked to reflect on how we are living our lives and what we can do to change for the better. Our first task perhaps, is to stop. We don’t have to stop doing everything. But we can stop trying to fill every available moment with something, whether television, phone, or spending hours surfing the internet. It’s true that we can’t create any more hours in the day, but we can re-arrange our lives, so that we have a little more time to spend thinking about our relationships and how we could look and listen better. Whatever our background or our faith, these weeks are a good time to reflect on and try to improve our relationships, with one another or with God or indeed, both! A good time for all of us to reflect on how we are living our lives and what we can do to change for the better. A good time to stop, look and listen! Rev Helen Norris
FROM THE MINISTRY TEAM 5th March this year is Ash Wednesday, so called because it is the day starting Lent when, from the Middle Ages, it became a custom to be marked in ash with the sign of the cross. (There will be opportunities for that at the services that day.) Lent is the period when we are reminded of Jesus’s 40 days in the wilderness prior to the commencement of his ministry. Mark’s gospel simply records, after Jesus’s baptism, ‘At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals and angels attended him.’ But Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels have fuller accounts of the ways in which the devil tried to tempt Jesus, and Jesus’s responses. When the devil said to the starving Jesus, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread”, Jesus answered “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ” When the devil suggested that Jesus should throw himself down from the highest point of the temple, on the basis that if he was the Son of God, he would be kept safe, Jesus replied, “It is written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” And when the devil stated that he would give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world if Jesus bowed down and worshipped him, Jesus responded, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’ ” Oscar Wilde famously quipped, ‘I can resist everything except temptation’ but Jesus was very different and resisted all the devil’s wiles, in each case citing words from the Jewish scriptures, our Old Testament. How well can we remember words from the Bible? Traditionally Lent is a time, according to my Common Worship: Times and Seasons book, of ‘self-examination, penitence, self-denial, study and preparation for Easter’. May we find time this Lent to reflect, to study God’s word in our Bibles and to draw closer to him. Henry Stanford -Reader