Christmas gives us the opportunity to be joyful and grateful with those we know and love.
The Christmas season also heightens our emotions, and struggles that have been encountered during the year or long buried emerge, or relationship difficulties or loneliness from the loss of loved ones or their job can make any of us feel low.
Life can hurt deeply.
Many of those accessing support with The Magdalene Project face deep difficulties and losses.
It is my joy to write this June Prayer Letter and talk about our generous and faithful God. Faithful in every way! We have much to thank and praise Him for, not least as we see Him at work in people's lives, including our own If you have been able to join us, you will have experienced the fantastic prayer meetings that we have enjoyed, and been blessed by.
Please feel free to join us, you will be very welcome.
‘God weeps with us so that we may one day laugh with him.’ ‘The God of freedom, the true God, is... not recognized by his power and glory in the history of the world, but through his helplessness and his death on the scandal of the cross of Jesus.’ ‘When the crucified Jesus is called "the image of the invisible God," the meaning is that this is God, and God is like this.’
These thoughts of German theologian Jürgen Moltmann in The Crucified God over 50 years ago have helped us come to understand the humanity of God in Jesus, one who shares our sorrows and grief, and who is far from indifferent to our struggles and suffering, and not one who is distant or unfeeling. Jesus shares our sorrows and pain. It was radical thinking at the time but Moltmann was asking the searching question where is God when we have difficulties or suffer. Whatever our experience, God is with us, to give us hope and a future.
In the days leading to Easter I’d like to share some thoughts below from Sarah Ann from ‘Faith Along the Way,’ "To the hopeless and the hurting." Please join us if you can to pray for the work of The Magdalene Project to help and support hurting people in our local communities.
We meet to pray in the morning on the 3rd Thursday each month 9.30-10.30am at The Magdalene Project in Bacup - dates in the diary on this page.
"THE EYES OF THE LORD GOD ARE CONTINUALLY UPON (THE LAND) FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR TO IT'S END..." DEUTERONOMY Chapter 11 verse 12.
As you/we look ahead to another year, God's Word gives you a glimpse into some of the wonderful things He has in store for you / us. Listen, the land you are about to enter and possess is not like, where you have come from; it is a land of hills and valleys with plenty of rain - a land that The Lord your God personally cares for! "His eyes are always upon it, day after day throughout the year". (Deuteronomy 11 v10-12).
You / we are about to enter a year where God promises you / we have everything we need to succeed! No matter what you / we left behind in the old year, this new one offers us a fresh start. God says He will not remember our sins and shortcomings (Isaiah 43 v 25), so close the door and move forward.
Dear Friends,
Dear Friends,
