Poppyland Benefice Bulletin , , , , , ,

Sunday 18th April The third Sunday of Easter

Services for April

18th April: 10am Northrepps 25th April: 10am Southrepps

Service in remembrance of Prince Philip

Norwich Cathedral will be holding a full choral service at 6pm on Friday 16th April for invited guests which will be live-streamed the link is https://youtu.be/GlXAjo8ZF1I .The Cathedral will remain open after the service, with the last entrance at 9:30pm, if people want space to pray and light candles.

If you wish to sign the on-line book of remembrance the link is https://www.churchofengland.org/remembering-his-royal-highness-prince-philip#prayer

God of our Lives, we give thanks for the life of Prince Philip, for his love of our country and for his devotion to duty. We entrust him now to your love and mercy as we pray for comfort and support for Elizabeth our Queen and all members of the Royal Family, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

God - The Agnostic

SHERLOCK Holmes could reason: The person who sat in that chair was a pregnant lady in her thirties, blond hair, anxious about something and had left in a hurry against her own will. Absence can be as compelling - if not more so - than presence - what you don’t know than what you do know.

A young friend, Karen, suffering from anorexia, asked me in the midst of her despair, ‘Philip is it OK to doubt?’ Sometimes I feel that the evidence of absence shows that God is around. Graham McFarlane speaking on the ‘Divine Agency of Creation’ wrote: “There is a harrowing silence in the cruellest moments of creaturely existence.” He quoted the theologian M Edwards: “The fallen world and ourselves as part of the world, neither reveals God evidentially nor evidentially disproves him - they point to him as being not there: nature . . . everywhere indicates a lost God, both within men and without.” Sometimes we are more conscious of God’s absence than his presence - as was Jesus on the Cross.

Absence can provoke as much passion as presence - loosing as winning - doubts as much as certainties. INTIMACY is built on the longings created by separation (absence) the intense uncertainties of presence (of the lover).

Paul, speaking to the intellectuals on Mars Hill in Athens, a city full of idols where you were as likely to see an idol or its shrine on the streets of that city as you are a human, even noticed an inscription to ‘An Unknown (Gk agnostic) God’. “This ‘unknowable’ God I make known to you. “(Acts 17) He compared this God with their gods made through the design, skill, ideas and imagination of man (verse 27) - with all their unquestionable certainty and reality. And yet Paul declared that the ‘unknown’ (unknowable?) God ‘is not far away’ - “even as your poets have pointed out.”

The unknowableness of God: - for he can only be experienced through our meagre neurobiological pathways and their activity - as only can all experience or reality which is ever ‘beyond ourselves’ - known to us only through symbols, stories, rituals, myths and metaphors.

Luke records how, after the crucifixion of Jesus, two of his disciples on the afternoon of Easter Sunday, while they were on the road, talking and discussing all that had happened, Jesus came near and journeyed with them.” (Luke 24:15) If they were discussing the price of petrol this would never have happened.

Philip Bligh

Prayer Chain and Pastoral Support

Confidential requests for prayer can be sent to Rev Siân either email [email protected] or ring 01263 833790 (please leave a message) and I am happy to receive calls or emails about any pastoral matters and very happy to have a chat with anyone if they ring so please do get in touch. Thanks.

For General enquiries or for Liz: [email protected]