Starting again

Starting to keep this Blog up-to-date again.  Starting a New Year again.  At 10.30 a.m. on Sunday 5th January we will be keeping up with the Three Wise Men in St Michael's.  These are the figures in the huge Christmas Crib there - their faces reflect an old tradition that they represent the whole world so one looks more western, one more middle-eastern and one more far-eastern.

Catching up

Walking to the altar

These pictures come from St Nicolas', great Coates' Facebook page and were taken on Sunday.  In the first you can see some of the people drawing round their feet to produce the pathway you can see in the second.

Sixth Sunday of Easter

We have been getting ready for tomorrow.  Some members of the Youth Group have helped prepare a version of a sixteenth century picture in church.  We have bought thirty metres of ribbon to form a river flowing from the church’s east window.  This will all pick up what the church is due to hear on this particular Sunday.

The Sunday after Easter

This is the small Easter Garden (notice the stone rolled away from the entrance to the empty tomb bottom right) in front of the altar at St Nicolas'.  The picture comes from St Nicolas' facebook page and was posted on Easter Day.  We meet at St Nicolas' for the First Sunday thing next Sunday (the Sundaty after Easter - 7th April) at 10.30 a.m.

The mercy of God

This fruitless apple tree was a highlight of yesterday's service for me.  People were asked what to do about it.  Many suggested pruning, and many suggested talking to it or even singing to it.  Some suggested cutting it down.  Only the young person who'd been given Jesus' parable about it to read afterwards countered the cutting down argument with the gardener's suggestion "leave it one more year while I dig round it and manure it again".

The stupidity of God

... or so it seems to many people.  We'll be exploring the way the generosity and forgiveness of God seems to go way beyond anything we might think of as sensible.  What does that mean for us?  We'll be meeting in our winter venue (St Michael's) for the last time until October.  Next month (7th April) we will begin to meet in our summer venue (St Nicolas').

Where we meet

We are at St Michael's as usual on Sunday (3rd February) and again next month (3rd March) before we begin our six summer months at St Nicolas' (beginning on 7th April).  Did you know that St Nicolas' Church, Great Coates has its own Facebook page?

What matters to us

We had fun yesterday with the idea of Christmas presents including golf, frankinsence and myrrh, but it is interesting to report back on just two things.  We asked 'What does Gold mean to you?'.  More people mentioned their wedding rings in their answer than mentioned wealth.  'What was the best Christmas present you ever had?', was one of the other questions we asked.  More than a quarter of the answers written up were about a new member of the family or about a family getting together.

Happy New Year

Here are the words from the Bible reading for the twelfth day of Christmas on Sunday.  The larger the letters the more times the word appears in the reading.  So it looks as if the day comes when the glory of the Lord will be dawning and will be covering his people.  We will be exploring gold, frankincence and myrrh as well.