From the Vicarage January

As we start a New Year we enter into Epiphany, with the Wise Men entering the Christmas story in Matthew’s Gospel. Epiphany is about ‘revealing’ of things previously hidden. Jesus, the baby king, was revealed to the Wise Men as someone special, after they had faithfully followed a mystery star to the place of his birth in Bethlehem. Amongst their gifts for this baby were gold, traditionally given to earthly kings; but also myrrh, symbolic of suffering and death. It is unlikely the Wise Men fully understand the implications of this morbid gift, and we can only speculate as to why the gift was given.

Through the giving of myrrh, perhaps we are reminded that our lives are like the life of Jesus, we will not be free from suffering at some point during our earthly existence.

It would be wrong to simply wish you a happy and prosperous 2019. We all know that many people in our community will struggle against adversity in a number of different ways in the coming year. Indeed, they may already be doing so. Of course, I do wish you well for the future, but, more importantly, I hope you will be blessed in your walk with Jesus, that in whatever experiences you go through in life he will be with you, giving you strength and peace as your future is revealed.

I leave you with the Collect for the Feast of Epiphany, perhaps it can be your prayer today:

Creator of the heavens,

who led the Magi by a star to worship the Christ-child:                                                     

guide and sustain us,                                                                                                    

that we may find our journey’s end in Jesus Christ our Lord.                                             

Amen.

God bless,     Tim and Norma

Extracts From The

Parish Magazine

Lesson Readers

If you are unavailable on your allocated date, please arrange to change with someone else.

Sidesmen Rota

Items for inclusion in the next month’s magazine should be

sent to Judith Dewdney by the 20th January.

30 Henbury Rise Henbury

Tel:-  01625 439753 email:- judith.torview@gmail.com

Pastoral Care

If you know of anyone who you think would benefit from a visit by one of our Pastoral Care Team, please contact Tim or Norma (425510), Carole (611477), Christine (511784) or Linda (424505).

MOTHERS’ UNION

Happy New Year to everyone and I hope you all had a very good Christmas.  This year we in Mothers’ Union have so much to look forward to with the start of a new triennium.    We welcome Sheron Harper our first overseas Worldwide President, a new Trustees Board and more locally, June Houghton from Liverpool as our new Provincial President and Wendy Sykes as our new Diocesan President.  I think most of you know by now that I (Di Waller) am the new Deanery Leader and that is why the Deanery Banner is now hanging in Church.  The commissioning service for all the new appointments within the Chester Diocese will take place during the Diocesan Festival at Chester Cathedral on Saturday, 9th March at 11 a.m.  There will probably be a coach arranged nearer the time but it would be good to see more members attending the service.  Members from Rainow MU will be forming the choir at this service so it would be good to support them.

2018 was an incredible year for us as an organisation with MULOA (Mothers’ Union Listens, Observes and Acts), Thy Kingdom Come, 16 Days of Activism, many sponsored runs and walks and to end it all the Provincial Service in York Minster.

The day before our Christmas party nine Henbury members attended Nether Alderley MU for their Christmas meeting and we were warmly welcomed despite the fact that we have won the quiz for the last few years.  Embarrassingly, Henbury won it yet again and several raffle prizes.  To make team numbers more equal I moved to another table so was not part of the winning team although they did share the sweet prize out around the room, including me!  

As usual we had a full house at the Christmas party in December and it was nice to welcome special guests Bishop Willie and his wife Kate who are moving to Henbury later this month on his retirement from Gawsworth.  It was also made a special evening with the celebration of Dorothy Thompson’s 90th birthday and we all sang to her and had a birthday cake at the ready.  Dorothy became a member of MU in 2007and has not missed many meetings since.

Let’s try and start the year as we mean to go on and have a better attendance at the monthly meetings.  Speakers cost money and Chris Redfern works very hard putting an interesting programme together at as little expense as possible.  

This year we also look forward to learning who our new prayer partners will be for the next three years so watch this space!

Diary Dates

Thursday, 10th January 2019 – 7.30 p.m.    Natter and Easter Bunnies

Refreshments:  Jean Osborne & Chris Redfern   Raffle: Carole Curzon   Flowers: Rita Russell