Mothering Sunday in the UK is held on the fourth Sunday in Lent and it enables Christians to honour their Mother Church usually where they were baptised. So it was that last Sunday our steward, Keith Harrison, read a lesson on the fourth Sunday in Lent which told of Jesus washing his disciples feet on his journey for his trial and eventual crucifixion. We welcomed the Rev’d Graham Horsley to lead our worship and Rod Smith to provide our music.
After our opening hymn we said our prayers of praise and adoration followed by two bible readings. The first, read by Keith Harrison, was from St Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, chapter one, in which Paul gives thanks to God for all his help in times of trouble. The second, read by Jill Harrison, was from John, chapter three, which tells of God’s love for the world to which he gave his only son so that everyone who believes in him my not die but have eternal life.
Graham in his sermon led us to think about good and evil in the context of the Easter story. “There are those who do evil and those who live by the truth”, said Graham “and in times of difficulties we think about the eternal things of life”. In sharing our faith, often a simple word can be of help to others in their need, and experience of the big things in life can help other to come to faith. He described instances of this in his personal life before he led our prayers for mothers everywhere.
We sang our final hymn by Charles Wesley with great feeling, “Love Divine, all loves excelling” and at the close Penelope Lomas, from our Junior Church, read a short poem she had written to mothers, before the children distributed a daffodil posy to each member of the congregation as a token of their love.