Issue 33

Chaplain's letter

 

The Chaplain’s Letter

Dear Friends,

 

Firstly, may I take this opportunity to thank all who lead and attend our prayer groups for their perseverance in prayer during these last few challenging months. For many of us God has indeed been ‘doing a new thing’ as our prayer groups have continued to meet socially distanced in gardens, in tiny (legal) numbers in homes, and of course, increasingly now on-line! We are all so grateful for the strength of fellowship that comes from your commitment and diligence. I’m sure it will continue to be needed as we move through the winter with colds and a second wave of COVID. No doubt this will bring with it a different set of challenges, but whatever it brings, we can be grateful for the support we draw from our unity in prayer. Be assured that, especially on Wednesdays, the Council prays for you all, as we know we too are prayed for.

 

However, we are well aware that the reality of living with this ‘new normal’ when meeting with family and friends is restricted, is daunting to many. It does seem that we are entering the darkness of winter in more ways than one. Here in the Cambridge Fens we prayed last months with this Word from Isaiah 45.3

“I will give you treasures hidden in the darkness— secret riches. I am the Lord, the God of Israel, the one who calls you by name”.

We reflected that despite the darkness of the long months of Lockdown and the anxiety surrounding more disruption, there have been riches which we neither expected or could have predicted, for example, greater awareness of the needs of others and a generosity of community spirit hitherto rarely seen. And there has been a remarkable shift in prayer resulting in many more people being open to God’s calling to all of us to pray not only for our own loved ones, but for the needs of so many others whose lives have been turned upside down by the Coronavirus.

 

It has reminded me that God works in us and through us as we draw closer to him in prayer, and what better way than with the Fellowship as we rest in God’s presence and allow Him to draw us into being the people He would have us be. And for those who don’t usually pray – to realise that they do! The past months have perhaps drawn them to begin to know a Saviour who walks alongside us through the night time and stays with us as a new day dawns. Even in the most disastrous of circumstances, God has indeed been active and doing many ‘new things’ and challenges us: “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland” (Isaiah 43.19)

 

 

May God continue to give us the grace to have faith and trust in him to bring us through this time, knowing that Jesus walks alongside us through the darkness….

With my love and prayers,

Jenny

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