Facebook Prayers

Alongside the terrible weather in Cumbria, South East Scotland hasn't escaped this last week or so - This was taken on Friday 20th November, the day after the collapse of the bridge which leads to neighbours' properties who live across the river from my sister in Selkirkshire.
They are now marooned without access to their homes except by 4x4 over the fields, but I think they avoided being flooded on account of being a few feet higher above the river. My sister's family were not so lucky; the waters rose and despite valiant sandbagging, flooded the ground floor of their house "over their wellies". The water table rose until it seeped in through the floors. Thankfully, after much furniture shifting, they managed to save as much as was reasonable, and things are starting to be dried out with good support from the insurers.
Thanks to many local friends with offers of practical help, my mum for taking care of the kids and a lot of hard work, hopefully it won't be too long before they're back to normal. Facebook ensured that members of the congregation here in Peterborough and many local friends of ours were also thinking of them; saying prayers and/or sending positive vibes their way.
Several people had crossed the Yarrow River on Thursday in the hours and minutes before this bridge was lost. It could so easily have been a tragic story. Our thoughts are also with the family of Pc Bill Barker, who died in Cumbria last week, saving people from venturing out onto Northside Bridge in Workington which was subsequently swept away.

Rest Awhile

This was the theme for our Sunday service on 19th July. We based our "3rd Sunday Praise" worship on the lectionary gospel passage Mark 6: 30-34 & 53-56. Jesus was seeking an opportunity to get away from it all for a while and his attempt met with limited success. We considered how the opportunity just to stop and reflect, to pray or meditate gives us a refreshing opportunity to sit back from the busy-ness of life and re-connect with God.
Just being still is something which some of us find difficult and in our planning meeting, we were led to propose a game of "sleeping lions" - something which some of the congregation found easier to enter into than others! In an "out of the box" moment, this led us on to the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" which has appeared in various guises in the music charts over the years, but has recently been popularised once again by the Disney film and stage show of "The Lion King". Adam provided an excellent set of words which allowed us to use it as a worship song which reflected on the words of the gospel reading - complete with the Wimoweh refrain!
We suddenly wondered what this word meant (should we have been singing it in church?!) But I'm relieved to report that it is simply a mishearing of the original song's chorus of 'uyimbube' which means "you're a lion" in Zulu. Sandra hoped for inclusion of this YouTube classic, pictured above, which I couldn't get organised, but maybe watching it from here would suffice?
A sleeping lion or not, we took part in an act of worship with a slightly different flavour which I hope encouraged us all to rest awhile.