The Benefice of St. Bartholomew

Baby Loss Awareness - Wave of Light Service, Semley - 15th October 2019

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Written by Anna Warhurst

Baby Loss Awareness Week takes place from 9th to 15th October every year.

It’s an opportunity for parents, their families and friends to acknowledge and remember their precious babies who have died.

It is led by SANDs in collaboration with over 60 charities in the UK.

Baby Loss Awareness Week is an opportunity:

• For bereaved parents and families across the world to commemorate their babies’ lives
• To break the silence around pregnancy or baby loss in the UK
• To ensure all bereaved parents in the UK get the best possible care, wherever they live, when they need it

Baby Loss Awareness Week culminates with the global ‘Wave of Light* on 15th October, which is also recognised as International Pregnancy & Infant Loss Remembrance Day

In 2011, our son, Jerome, was born still.

Richard and I would like to invite you to join us and other families across the world by lighting a candle at 7.00 pm on Tuesday 15th October and leaving it burning for at least one hour to remember all babies that have died too soon.

Last year a small group joined us in Semley Church just before 7.00 pm to light candles and we will be doing this again this year.

Wherever you do this, you will be joining a global ‘Wave of Light’ in memory of all the babies who lit up our lives for such a short time.

Each candle lit in memory of a precious and much wanted baby will be supporting SANDs’ vision of a world where fewer babies die and helping to ensure that every bereaved family, wherever they live in the UK, gets the care and support they need, when they need it, for as long as they need it.

If you’re unable to join us but would like a candle to be lit in someone’s memory - please let me know.

Anna Warhurst

Review of Weekday Services

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Written by The Rev'd Richard Warhurst

After reviewing attendance at our new weekly service pattern, we have decided to change the services we have during the week. During August 2019, we will have a simplified pattern of weekday services to allow for vacations. From September, we will run a revised pattern of weekday prayer to include Evening Prayer.

As a Diocese, we have our Mission of ‘Renewing Rural Hope: Pray, Serve, Grow.’ With our pattern of prayer during the week, we are seeking to promote times when we can ‘drop into prayer with others’.

Morning Prayer at 9.00am and Evening Prayer at 5.00pm will hopefully open up the possibility for people across the Benefice to find time to pray throughout the week. The service is about 20 minutes and is an informal gathering where we can pray the office from Common Worship.

From the Rector - October 2019

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Written by The Rev'd Richard Warhurst

Dear Friends,

September ends with the Feast of the Angels, the creatures who in various forms and guises acts as God’s ambassadors in both Old and New Testaments. But the word,‘angel’, is just a translation of the Greek word for ‘messenger’ and they can come with, or more usually, without wings!

From the feast of messengers, we move to the celebration of harvest. We concentrate on thankfulness for the good gifts of creation and, as part of our thank-offering, take our gifts to our local Food Banks. This is a right thing to do; things we often take for granted and presume will always be there for us, are to others, sought after necessities.

But when Jesus speaks of harvest in the gospels, he speaks of the harvest of souls. He commissions his disciples to go out to bring in a living harvest. He says to Peter and Andrew “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people” (Matthew 4. 19). His teaching is based on just that - equipping his disciples, his followers, with the tools of the Good News. Matthew’s gospel ends with a command “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations...”. (Matthew 28. 19) So the followers become messengers; the disciples become angels.

The same command holds now. It holds with an even greater urgency in a society which needs Good News, which needs to re-capture an understanding of God and salvation, a society which is becoming lost. It is a command based not on our need to welcome more worshippers (though they are welcome) but because we, who come to learn, need to follow our learning through to the end. To learn enough to become messengers, true bearers of a message which is not ours but His.

To end with a word from Isaiah “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” and I said, “Here I am. Send me!”

Yours,

Richard

Prayer Cycle and Prayer of the Month - October 2019

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Written by The Rev'd June Lane

Do keep asking for prayers and do please let the Minister know at the beginning of a Service if you wish them to pray for someone in the Intercessions. We tend to be careful about saying names unless someone has asked.

Prayer requests and Thanksgivings please give to The Rev’d June (tel: 01747 828427), Julia (tel: 01747 829166), Theresa (tel: 01747 829188), or The Rev’d Richard (tel: 01747 830174). Perhaps you have a special "Thank-You to God " in the Bounty of this wonderful Harvest Season. It is good to remind ourselves of good things.

This month's Prayer of the Month is by Lilian Cox

We dare not ask you bless our harvest feast
Till it is spread for poorest and for least.
We dare not bring our harvest gifts to you
Unless our hungry brothers share them too.

Not only at this time Lord, every day
Those whom you love are dying while we pray.
Teach us to do with less and so to share
From our abundance, more than we can spare.

Now with this harvest plenty round us piled,
Show us the Christ in every starving child.
Speak, as you spoke of old in Galilee,
"You feed, or you refuse, not them but me!”