On Friday 20th March, Session decided that in light of the present health crisis, all church meetings will cease for the foreseeable future. Thus there will be no Sabbath School classes, prayer meetings or worship services on March 22nd. We will be seeking to have something in place for March 29th so that everyone in their own home will have an opportunity to hear God’s Word read and preached. A letter will be sent out in the post in a few days time about this interruption to our normal pattern of meetings. This is new to all of us, so we will be trying to piece together suitable arrangements. Further information will also appear on this website.
As those who are accustomed to joining with others on the Lord’s Day for public worship, it will be sad to not have that opportunity for a time. Let us continue to worship God in our own settings and let us pray for God’s mercy in these testing times. In Psalm 42, the writer was downcast and disturbed at no longer being able to join in the public worship of God and had to counsel himself to continue to put his hope in the Lord. That is what we must also do.
Psalm 42:4,5 (NIV) – “These things I remember as I pour out my soul; how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng. Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God for I will yet praise Him, my Saviour and my God.”
In my own life, a time of ill health was used by God to enable me to value ordinary things that I had taken for granted for so long. I learned to see how good an ordinary day was. Through what we are all facing with this coronavirus pandemic, perhaps we will all learn to value the blessings of public worship and we will come to see what a blessing an ordinary Lord’s Day is.
Rev. David Fallows