May 2024

Dear Friends,

This magazine gets delivered to you in May, but is printed a couple of weeks before – which means that all

contributions have to be written before that. So I am writing this just after Easter.

We returned from a holiday in Spain a couple of days ago, so my head is still full of the amazing places we saw, the delicious food we ate, the sounds of the language, and the sights that we saw as we travelled on the trains, in the restaurants, and the different attractions we visited - I even recall the conversations that we had throughout the week. Despite some weeks of regular practice on Duolingo beforehand, my Spanish could not exactly be described as fluent, but I enjoyed reading menus and street signs and anything else that I saw on the way. One of the things I noticed was the instruction esperar, which anyone who has learned a Romance language will know means both “wait” and “hope”. In English, we use completely different words for these two things. But, of course, we can see that “waiting” and “hoping” are related once you stop to think about it – because why would you bother waiting for something if you didn’t have hope that it was actually going to happen?

We have been waiting and hoping for spring, waiting and hoping for warmer and drier weather, and waiting and hoping for longer and lighter days all through the winter. All through the 40 days of Lent, and especially in the days from Good Friday until the Sunday morning, the Church waited for Easter and the good news of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. We waited - not in despair - but in hope and expectation. What are the things that you hope for? Is there some change or shift in your own circumstances (or in someone else’s life that you are waiting for) that you hope will happen? So often, waiting and hoping is all that gets us through bad patches. Jesus talked quite often to his friends about the importance of waiting in hope and expectation for God to act – “ Look for the Kingdom of God which is closer than your own hand” – but the Bible also makes it clear that it is also up to us to take action, in hope, that God is here and is involved with our lives.

We have to jump in and help be the change that we want to see to make the world a kinder, better place - that is one way of loving our neighbour as we love ourselves. But we don’t do that work by ourselves; instead, we can reach out and help each other in the knowledge and in the hope that God IS here, is present among us and continues to call us into a knowledge of His love for each of us, day after day, week after week, throughout all the seasons of our years.

God bless you, Rev. Jo Fielding

Revjo.eastvale@gmail.com

April 2024

Acknowledging the 40 Days

Do you remember when you were 40? I do - I had a big party for 40 family and friends. We’ve just had 40 days in Lent, and it was pouring with rain the other day (again) and I got to thinking about Jesus spending 40 days in the desert being tested, and about Noah being tested by the flood and building the Ark. Folklore has it that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights – can you imagine! No wonder it flooded. However, all ended well when God made the waters recede and the Ark came to rest on Mt. Ararat. This was because God made a covenant with Noah who had “found favour in the eyes of the Lord” (Gen 6:8).

When God beheld the corruption of the earth and was determined to destroy it, he gave Noah divine warning of the impending disaster and made a covenant with him that if Noah built the Ark to God’s specifications, God would save Noah, his family and all the beasts of the earth and birds of the air. The same covenant God made with Adam.

There is another Ark in the Bible: the Ark of the Covenant. According to the book of Exodus, God instructed Moses to build the Ark during his 40-day stay upon Mt. Sinai. Moses, like Noah, also made a covenant with God and was also given the dimensions of the Ark by God, and in it were placed the two stone tablets containing the 10 Commandments. It is said that the Israelites who were in exile in Egypt carried the Ark for 40 days to the Red Sea, where again God made the waters recede so that God’s chosen people could pass to the promised land, just as He saved Noah and his family.

I wonder how many of us have agreed a covenant with God to do as He commands and be saved by His grace? Personally, I am looking forward to having 40 winks in 40 degree heat on 40 sunny days in summer. You never know, miracles do happen!

Alan Bache LLM

March 2024

Dear Friends,

How connected do you feel with your village community?

Is this something that is important to you?

For some of us, that sense of connection is really important – for others, not so much. Very often, it is that sense of being known, belonging and being recognised or heard in some way by the people around us that helps us thrive. It can be key in giving us a sense of purpose in our lives. We get it in so many different ways, sometimes in major things like going to special events – or contributing to them – like the Christmas carol singing or the Big Help Out in the summer. But we can also feel connected with each other in really straightforward, apparently minor ways, like simply saying hello to someone we recognise in the shop or in the street on the way to the Rec.

I’ve been thinking about how this sense of connection can be so important since someone asked me if I had a big vision for our churches in the local area. I thought about the book on my desk, which has “THRIVE” in big multi-coloured letters splashed across its front cover. How do we thrive? How do we feel encouraged? How do we feel that our life has a purpose and is worth something?

The Bible says that God loves everyone and that God cares about us, and it also reminds us that we should love our neighbour as much as we should love ourselves. That tells us that God is all about connection - a relationship based on love and care between God and the world, and between one neighbour and another. Every week in our church services, we hear words from “the Gospel” (of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John), and we listen, remembering that “Gospel” means “good news”.For me, that good news is based on the belief that life does have a purpose (to learn more about God’s love, and to get better at showing that love and kindness to others in any way I can).

The “good news” is that every single person in our community is valuable, that we do belong, and that we are connected to each other in some way because we are all loved by God. So, I invite you to explore that sense of connection further if you would like to. There are lots of things going on in our villages where people come together to make some brilliant events happen within the community, and we also have quite a bit going on and events being planned within our church congregations over the next few weeks and months, too – watch this space!

But whatever you do, I hope that you feel known, valued and cared for, whether you have lived here all your life, or if you just moved in last week.

God bless you,

Rev. Jo Fielding Priest in Charge