LiFT 15th June
Good evening everyone,
I trust all is well with you? I am well and truly on the mend now, thank you for your prayers, your care, and your patience.
Sometimes I have stuff to tell you, sometimes I don’t, today I have a request –
A friend, Nick, is going to be taking specifically requested items to Ukraine in a couple of weeks and asked me for your help. He is specifically collecting prescription glasses that people are no longer using, and I wonder whether you have any please? There will be a box by the font in Usk church for you to drop them off if you have any spare, and you can be sure they are going to be very useful and get directly to people who need them. If you would like to make a financial donation to Nick’s trip then please drop your offering into the wall safe in the church in Usk and we will ensure that Nick receives it all. Please note, no other items are being collected or requested so please only leave us your glasses, nothing else!
Secondly, can I put out a final call for any cake offerings people might be willing to promise for either Sarah Rosser’s service on 25th June in Raglan, or Sue Davies Fletcher’s service on 2nd July in Goytre. It’s not too late and any donation will help the parties go well – churches march on their stomachs don’t you think?
Last, prayer! It’s just not possible to pray too much and so I’d like to share this short writing with you, that I’m finding huge right now, please join me in praying it, for all of us. It sort of sums up my prayer life right now – the messiness and the deep heart that comes with that. Let me know what you think 🙂
Much love to you, and you know where I am, Sally xxxx
Neither I nor the poets I love have found the keys to the kingdom of prayer and we cannot force God to stumble over us where we sit. But I know that it’s a good idea to sit anyway. So every morning, I kneel, waiting, making friends with the habit of listening, hoping that I’m being listened to. There, I greet God in my own disorder. I say hello to my chaos, my unmade decisions, my unmade bed, my desire and my trouble. I say hello to distraction and privilege, I greet the day and I greet my beloved and bewildering Jesus. I recognise and greet my burdens, my luck, my controlled and uncontrollable story. I greet my untold stories, my unfolding story, my unloved body, my own body. I greet the things I think will happen and I say hello to everything I do not know about the day. I greet my own small world and I hope that I can meet the bigger world that day. I greet my story and hope that I can forget my story during the day, and hope that I can hear some stories, and greet some surprising stories during the long day ahead. I greet God, and I greet the God who is more God than the God I greet.
Hello to you all, I say, as the sun rises above
the chimneys of North Belfast.
Hello.
in the shelter – pádraig ó tuama
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–Please note I will not usually reply to emails received on Fridays as this is my rest day. If you need me urgently please send me a voicemail on my mobile number. Thank you for your understanding.
07813 264429