Methodist Matters – January 2023
School Road Chapel News
A New Year Message
2022 has been a difficult year for our country and the whole world. With the death of our beloved queen, a new king, and three prime ministers, it will be remembered as a momentous year in the UK. It has been a year of increased poverty and harder lives for many. There is war in Europe, a global refugee crisis, and planet earth is straining under the ecological pressure we put it under. In many homes and families, this has been a year of sadness, illness and death.
As a church community, we have lost some dear friends: Betty Thorpe, Betty Byrne, Brenda Owens and Hazel Baxter. We remember them with fondness and love. There may be others you have lost in your own family or in the village. My own grandmother passed away in August. Our thoughts and prayers are with all who are missing loved ones, and all who are struggling on a daily basis.
Turning a corner
So, Christmas came perhaps with a heavy sigh, and a deep hope that 2023 would be better: that we would turn a corner as a community, as a country, as a planet. Jesus comes to be ‘God with us’ in our grief, in our poverty, in our struggles, in our crises. He comes to lead us with hope into a better kingdom; and where we get glimpses of that kingdom here on earth, with love, kindness, forgiveness, reconciliation, generosity, service and humility, then may we find the strength to persevere for this day and the next.
My prayer for you all this new year is that you will keep going. Keep holding on. Keep loving. Keep reaching out. But don’t be overburdened by anything God is not expecting of you. We need to rest too, and to look after ourselves and our minds, as we enter 2023 – which will be full of hope, and promise and new life. With every blessing to you all.
Rev Andrew Murphy
Enquiries: Roger Pier 07941 643809
E-Mail: kibworthmc@gmail.com
www.harboroughmethodistcircuit.org.uk
World day of prayer 2023
