Dear Friends,

I hope you had a happy Easter and have been enjoying this very warm spring of late. As I am writing this letter for May we have just celebrated Easter at our churches. It was a blessed occasion and it is so wonderful to fill the church with flowers after the floral austerity of Lent and Good Friday to welcome once again our risen Lord Jesus! If you visit our churches you will see the Easter or Paschal Candle in a prominent position – a rather larger candle than usual this year – which symbolises the resurrection of Christ. We have a new Paschal Candle each Easter and I love that it is there to remind us that Jesus is the light of the world. It has wax carvings on it indicating different aspects of God and it always has the Greek letters alpha and omega, which symbolise that God is the beginning and the end. In fact this year in our opening liturgy on Easter Day we said these words:
Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, Alpha and Omega,
all time belongs to him, and all ages.
I love this, that all time and all ages belong to him. It is like the view from a mountain top, or even from the valley below looking up – giving us a sense of perspective on our lives and giving us a sense of the divine, that there is more out there than we can possibly imagine.

Recently we had our Annual Parochial Church meeting, a time to review the past 12 months and recognise and acknowledge all that has been done in the service of God in the life of our churches through worship, prayer, pastorally and socially in many different ways. We began by electing our Churchwardens for each church. This happens every year and we are thankful that our wardens are happy to serve for more than one year only!! Norman Ede has been a Churchwarden for over 10 years and this year made the decision to stand down so that he has more time for family and other commitments. Thankfully Norman will still be very much supporting us in many ways with our various projects. We wish him and George and the family every blessing for the future. Even more we are pleased that Stuart Cole has agreed to stand as Churchwarden in Norman’s place, along with Andy Carr, as a deputy warden ( kind of deputy sheriff!!) Joy Harman has agreed to continue, despite some aches and pains of late, and we hope that she will soon be back in action. For St Margaret’s at Ockley, James Lee-Steere kindly continues as Churchwarden supported by their wonderful church wardening team… All in all as we read through the annual report for 2024/25 much has been achieved and accomplished by all who attend and support our wonderful beautiful village churches. A huge thank you to everyone and especially you our parishioners! We shall soon be gearing ourselves up for our season of fundraising at our local shows but one very special project is soon to get underway later this year. We now have the necessary permission to prepare and establish a new Garden of Remembrance at the top left of our Churchyard. Full of brambles at the moment we hope to transform this area into a beautiful space for folk to sit a while and experience some quiet and peace, to remember those whose ashes will be interred there, but most of all perhaps to ponder those words we said on Easter Day above.

Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, Alpha and Omega,
all time belongs to him, and all ages.

With my love and prayers as ever
Liz

Revd.Liz Richardson
liz@hostmyserver.co.uk