Janet’s July 2016 letter to the Community
If you usually start this magazine from page 1 and work your way through it, you’ll have noticed that there’s something different about our monthly intercessions. We have started a new system.
On each day of the month we will pray for the residents, workers, businesses and institutions in one or more of the streets of our parish. I worked my way round the map and realised just how many streets there are! I hope I haven’t missed any out, but do let me know if I have. If you’re not sure where are the boundaries of the parish, a great resource is the website: “A Church Near You: www.achurchnearyou.com”. You put in a postcode and the site will bring up a map that shows the parish and its boundaries as well as the other local Anglican churches. It is fascinating looking at the boundaries – but that’s another story.
So – each month we will pray for all who live and work in our parish. We will also pray, on a two-monthly cycle, for our leaders, the schools and health care institutions that serve our parish, the charities we support, the local churches that we have relationships with, and for other groups. The aim is to strengthen our connection with this area that we serve, so that we stand in solidarity with them in their service and in their struggles, and hold them before God in times of joy and of difficulty. Prayer is one way in which we can do that.
We have created a 28-day cycle as there are always 28 days in a month, and in 28 days we will cover the entire parish. Feel free to pray whatever seems best to you in the days “left over”! If you are not sure what to pray, I suggest that you pray for God’s blessing, and ask that God will strengthen each person to become the person he or she was created to be, whatever challenges they face, or stage of life they find themselves in.
And remember, God knows their needs and yours, and loves us all with no exclusions and no partiality. In this there is great joy.
God bless, Janet