Palm Sunday 2020 activities
You can download some Palm Sunday 2020 activities – from making your own cross to making a palm leaf garland
This weeks Bible study
Attached are this weekend’s Bible Studies, which are, really, preparation for Sunday’s sermon. You can download this by clicking on the download buttons on each of the four documents, below.
Prayers for Palm Sunday
Dear Lord, on Palm Sunday our two congregations would normally join together in a procession between the two churches. This year we cannot do this and we cannot even be in church. We pray for our two congregations at this time. Be with those of our number who are lonely and let them know that their fellow Christians here in Kew are thinking and praying for them. Give strength to all of us to deal with the current crisis and we look forward to the day when we can all worship together once again.
Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer
On Palm Sunday you arrived in Jerusalem, knowing the pain and insults and cruelty that would be directed at you in the coming days, even from those you loved. In Holy Week the human frailties of cowardice and fear and denial were demonstrated by your disciples. But, through it all, shone your love and your compassion and you proved your devotion to humanity by going through pain and torture and death for us.
Forgive us when we are like the disciples and fail you and deny you and cause you pain. Help us when we have doubts, help us to turn these into opportunities to learn more about you; to develop and intensify our faith. Help us to be true to you, never to deny you; to be bold to speak the words that you have taught us and to be true witnesses of our faith in you
Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer
We praise you for you have redeemed us. You have welcomed us and the whole church into your family and we look forward to the day when we will join you in your Kingdom. You, Lord, are always with us, caring for us – the beginning and the end of everything. The true Alpha and Omega.
Lord, lead your church in the way of righteousness, to work for you with confidence, selflessness and faith. We thank you for your loving kindness and your generosity towards us. Please forgive us when we are ungrateful; when we fail to recognise the good things you have given us and ignore them while focussing only on the problems we face and the difficulties of life. Give to us, our families, friends and neighbours the spirit of gratitude for all we have received. For you are a generous God, who loves all his children everywhere.
Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer
We pray for our church here in Kew and for other church communities in London and the UK. We pray for the church throughout the World, especially in places where our fellow Christians suffer for their faith or where people are prevented from hearing the good news of Jesus Christ.
And we pray for leaders throughout the World, especially at this difficult time of Coronavirus . Guide them all so that they will make wise decisions to protect their people and defeat this awful pestilence.
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer
We pray for those who have been affected by Coronavirus in whatever way – both by infection or fear of infection; those whose lives have been disrupted and who may fear for their jobs and futures; for those who may be suffering loneliness because of self-isolation; for those in less fortunate countries who may not be able to put bread on their tables as they have no money because of the many economic effects of shutdown.
May our own experience of pain create compassion and not bitterness in our lives, so that we may understand the suffering of others and be better able to serve and understand them. Have mercy on the sick, especially those suffering from Coronavirus, and also those who have no hope of cure. Give them courage to face what lies ahead; perseverance and new hope. Give them the vision to see you when all appears hopeless and may they find your presence in the shadows when they are in their darkest hours. And today we pray especially for:
Shelagh Cochrane, Alan Hay, Juliet Low, Joan Pritchard, Johanna Procter, Mary Smith, Kevin Willoughby, Max Weston
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer
We pray for the departed, especially those have died this week from Coronavirus or in other tragic circumstances. And today we pray especially for:
Juliet Daley and Mary Allman.
May they rest in peace and rise in glory.
Merciful Father, accept these prayers for the sake of your son, our Saviour Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Reflections for Friday 3rd April
Bind us together, Lord, bind us together
With cords that cannot be broken.
Bind us together, Lord, bind us together, Lord,
Bind us together in love.
One of the saddest effects this current situation is now having is at the very start of life and at it’s end. Many expectant fathers-to-be, are now being told that they cannot be present at the birth of their child. Both prenatal classes and postnatal care has become so much a joint venture for expectant couples, as well as the actual birth, and this is sadly no longer able to happen in many cases. Then there was the very saddest of cases, as in Northern Ireland of a gentleman who after 57 years of marriage saw his wife having to go to hospital with the coronavirus, where sadly she died without her husband being able to be with her. He was even unable to attend her burial being ‘self isolating’, this was sorrow beyond words.
As I have said on numerous occasions, however lovely or grand our churches and Cathedrals may be, it is us who are the true body of the church, you and me. It is not canon law, church doctrine or theology that binds that church together, but love, kindness one to another, patience and understanding. These are qualities that have been so very evident more and more throughout this pandemic. Those many, many people who have put their own wellbeing to one side for the sake of others. In just a week’s time it will be Good Friday when the greatest of self sacrifices was made, on the cross, for all human kind.
So as we approach Easter week let us all be bound together in love, one for another, and give grateful thanks for all those who show that love and care, as our Lord did, in their selfless daily actions.
Amen.
Michael Tonkin
3rd April 2020
Reflections for 2nd April
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit Priest, Philosopher and Palaeontologist. He lived from 1881 to 1955 and he was not always popular with the Roman Catholic authorities because of his work on the origins of our species. I have a small book of his work called “On Suffering”, which contains excerpts from his works. I think that one that he wrote in northern France, at the height of the First World War in November 1916, is worth quoting now as we face another time of uncertainty:
“And I’ve come to think that the only, the supreme, prayer we can offer up, during these hours when the road before us is shrouded in darkness, is that of our Master on the Cross: ”Into your hands I commit my spirit”. To the hands that broke and gave life to the bread, that blessed and caressed, that were pierced; ….. to the kindly and mighty hands that reach down to the very marrow of the soul – that mould and create – to the hands through which so great a love is transmitted – it is to these that it is good to surrender our soul, above all when we suffer or are afraid. And is so doing there is great happiness and great merit.”
We are going through a dark period at present and at such times it is so important to be aware of, and grateful for, those powerful and loving hands.
Richard
2nd April 2020
Reflections for 1st April – Peter’s 60th Birthday!
Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday Sara, ( my daughter-in-
law) happy birthday Father Peter!!
I should perhaps point out there is a slight age difference between the two, although I
hope that they are both able to celebrate a little with some birthday cake and a glass of
cheer!
We also heard last week of two other people who shared a birthday, on 29th March, Bob
Weighton and Joan Hocquard were both 112 years old!
They both lived through the ‘Spanish Flu’ pandemic of 1918 which, world wide, was
believed to have claimed between 50 to 100 million lives, more than those lost in the
two World Wars, and believed to have been spread by those soldiers returning from the
First World War. We may all hope and pray that the present coronavirus does not reach
those proportions!
Thinking of birthdays I was reminded of a lovely lady that we used to know in Dorset,
the mother-in-law of one of my fellow Readers. Dorothy was born on Christmas Day
and actually died on Good Friday, well into her nineties. She was a very religious
person, with a good sense of humour, and always compared our time here on earth as
books which had been ‘lent out’ from God’s own Library, some for a long period and
others for shorter times, but all in the end would be returned to God’s loving care.
In these present times it is good to take comfort in our faith and the knowledge that we
never ‘walk alone’, wherever or however we may be, and that as our Lord promised,
each and everyone of us will in the end, have a place in his eternal Kingdom.
Amen.
Michael Tonkin
1 st April 2020