Stephen’s sermon title harks back to a 1970s comedy series featuring accident-prone Frank Spencer and his tolerant wife, Betty. In the case of Mary, however, she was a mother who really did have a special child!

What set Mary apart, making her God’s choice to be the Saviour of the world? We cannot know for certain, but what the Bible does reveal about her shows us several important facts:

1. Her betrothal to Joseph meant that she was marrying into the line of David, and the promised Messiah would come from that house.
2. She was a virgin, thus fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy about the Messiah (Is 7:14). The conception of Jesus truly was unique, a case of the Word becoming flesh (see John 1:1-14) and in this way ‘Immanuel’, God with us, came to live on earth. All mothers think their children are special, but Jesus definitely was! Fully God and fully Man, He was born to be the Saviour of the world.
3. Although young, Mary already had a close walk with God and her attitude of submission to God (see Luke 1:26-38) was key to her role as the mother of Jesus. She remained faithful to God all her life and was faithful to her Son in every aspect of His life and death. Her attitude (‘I am the Lord’s servant. May Your word to me be fulfilled’) exemplifies how each one of us should live. Her submission and obedience to God are characteristics to which we should all aspire.
4. In experiencing the ‘overshadowing’ of the Holy Spirit, Mary knew closeness with God. We too can experience the indwelling of the Holy Spirit with us. He is the key to accessing the presence of God. Like Mary, we can know the presence of Jesus, the power of the Holy Spirit and the blessing of the Father as we learn to serve our God with the same willingness and acceptance which Mary showed.

This year’s Dearne Community Arts’ Festival will be on Friday 31st August and Saturday 1st September from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m. at Dearne ALC. Last summer’s festival was a great success, but the Dearne Playhouse is fully booked on Saturdays throughout 2018, hence the change of venue. The school has more rooms and indoor and outdoor space on offer, so we are hoping that this year’s festival will be even bigger and better.

The festival is aimed at championing creativity and celebrating community in our local area, and we are so glad that local people are taking the opportunity to be involved in the festival through exhibiting their creativity (paintings, photographs, creative writing, crafts, sewing, embroidery, hardanger, woodwork and so on) and through the performing arts (dance, music and drama). We already have many people booked in, including Garry’s Grumpy Old Men and highlights from last year returning (the Pins & Needles Fashion Show, Thurnscoe Harmonic Male Voice Choir and Julia Arts Face Painting & Body Art, as well as art exhibited from local art classes and local artists Lily Dorritt and David Noble.) However, if you would like to be involved in the festival in any way, now is the time to let us know!

In addition to exhibitions and performances, this year we are also running a variety of workshops, including the opportunity to learn to play the ukelele, take part in a variety of crafts and much more. Some of these workshops depend on funding (e.g. the Art of Mining’s amazing virtual reality shows about our coal-mining heritage, featuring Pit Mouse for the children, and a circus skills workshop), but quite a few workshops for children are already booked in (e.g. pirate crafts run by the WEA and making jewellery, bath bombs and origami-based crafts, led by Zoe Green), and we are pleased to announce that Ian McMillan, Barnsley Bard, will be returning to run a creative writing workshop for adults on the Friday. (Photo courtesy of Bob Dickinson).

A range of refreshments will be available at the festival; for further details, please see the DearneCommunityArtsFestival Facebook page.

Prior to the festival, we will be running two competitions in photography and creative writing, both with the theme ‘Loving Your Local Environment.‘ Entries are invited in 3 age categories (under 11s, 12-18s and adult) and can be emailed to julie@gpcchurch.co.uk. The creative writing can be in prose or poetry, with a word limit of 500 words. Digital photographs can be emailed. If you’d prefer to hand in hard copies or printed photographs, just see Julie. The deadline for the competitions is 12 noon on Wednesday 11th July… which may seem a long way away, but there’s no reason to delay!

Our creative God has blessed us all with the capacity for creativity, and this festival is an ideal opportunity to show the world how blessed we are in God!

Jesus’s disciples asked Him how to pray and the Lord’s Prayer was essentially the framework He gave them (and us) for prayer: focussing initially on God (‘hallowed be Your name‘) and God’s kingdom (‘Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven’), then looking for God to meet our daily needs (‘give us today our daily bread’, acknowledging that we are physical creatures as well as spiritual beings) and asking for help in living in right relationship with Him and with other people (‘forgive us our debts, as we have also forgiven our debtors’) and for help in avoiding temptation and the ploys of the enemy (‘lead us not into temptation and deliver us from the evil one’). If we keep to this framework, we will be able to pray according to God’s will.

Prayer is more than kneeling in a room and saying the words of the Lord’s Prayer, however, and the Day of Prayer on 16th March at Furlong Road Methodist Church is an opportunity to pray for extended periods of time (if possible, though any time spent there will be useful!) By opening the building from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m., we are acknowledging that it is good to set longer periods of time aside for God and to explore our relationship with Him in different ways. So there will be the opportunity to take part in meditative colouring, praying as we walk a prayer labyrinth, using ‘forgiveness stones‘ to let go of past hurts and ‘act out’ the need to forgive others as we have been hurt and wounded, creating ‘hope blossoms’ to tell God of our deepest longings. These are not ‘magic’ ways of praying, but creative ways of digging deeper into our hearts to share our hopes, fears, desires and wounds with the God who knows us intimately and loves us profoundly. There will also be the opportunity to share in Communion during the day and meditate on the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I would urge all who can to attend the Day of Prayer and for those who can’t to commit to a time of prayer in your own homes or workplaces. Prayer can be anywhere (I find boring bus journeys particularly useful for praying; others like to pray while out walking the dog.) It can be words said out loud or whispered in our own hearts. It can be in just about any format you like. What matters is that we learn to pray every way we know how for everyone we know! (1 Tim 2:1, The Message)

On Friday 16th March, we are involved in the Dearne Churches Together Day of Prayer at Furlong Road Methodist Church. The building will be open from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m., with ‘prayer spaces’ created to encourage us to pray and focus our attention on different aspects of prayer. Prayer can be creative: we can pray as we make craft things or share in communion, meditating on all God has done for us and asking Him to work in life’s difficult situations and bless our churches and communities. Please feel free to drop in during this time and stay as long (or as short) as you can. It’s so good to set time aside to pray and we believe that our lives need to be rooted in the rhythm of prayer.

Not everyone is able to gather in a church building, but that doesn’t stop us praying! We can pray at any time and in any place! So even if you can’t make it to Furlong Road, we would encourage you to sign up for a 30-minute slot betweeen 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. on that date when you commit to pray. A sheet with a ‘prayer wall’ will be at our church this weekend and you can sign a ‘brick’ to commit to pray at that time. Let’s make a prayer chain on that day so that we cover our area with prayer.

Paul urged the Thessalonians to pray continually. (1 Thess 5:17) It’s a privilege to be able to call on the name of the Lord wherever we are. May each one of us learn the joy of setting aside time to seek God’s face, listen for His voice and intercede for our families, friends and communities. The news is often full of woe, but we have a God who cares and is eager to listen to our prayers. Let’s make the most of that opportunity! Even if circumstances won’t let you get to Furlong Road, don’t let circumstances stop you from praying!

In reading through the book of Leviticus in my daily readings, I was struck by the range and physicality of much of the priestly work: killing animals for the offerings (more suited to being a butcher, I would have thought!), reviewing skin diseases (a doctor’s role) and inspecting houses for mould and mildew (building contractors?!) Part of me wondered when the priests ever got any time to spend in the temple with God, but this reminds me forcibly that there is actually no division between ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’, that God is interested in every aspect of our lives, not just the ones we can visibly see as being connected to worship.

We find it difficult to see life in this way, and therefore constantly need our thinking renewed and transformed. Rom 12:1-2 in the Message version says, ‘So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognise what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.‘

The Bible teaches that worship involves all we are and everything we do; it is not limited to the hour or so we spend in God’s house on a Sunday. God is in everything we do, and therefore our ordinary, everday lives – involving accountancy, washing-up, fixing cars, cleaning schools, engineering, teaching, looking after children and so on – can be part of our acts of worship as we seek to allow God into every area of our lives. I can imagine if I’d been a Levitical priest grumbling about checking out infectious skin diseases (‘it’s not my job!‘), only to be forcibly reminded that we don’t get to pick and choose the ‘bits’ of jobs we like and have to take the whole package. God does not want us to live divided, disconnected lives, but to acknowledge all of life is a gift from God and He is interested in every aspect. If your day involves boring, repetitve jobs that don’t seem to ever amount to much, take heart! God is still there in the mundane and monotonous and is working in all. Our attitude is laid out in Col 3:17: ‘Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.‘

We had two birthdays to celebrate tonight:

There’s no escape, even for visitors!