David Jones writes:

Like many people, I have become more and more unsure what our approach should be to COVID-19. The return to lockdown in some parts of England felt like a big backward step, just when we could see daylight and a better future.

I have no wish to delve into the politics. Has Wales, with its more conservative stance, been wiser? Or have we just been fortunate in lagging behind the spread of coronavirus, able to wait and watch what happens elsewhere before we make our changes? Whatever the rights and wrongs of relaxations and restrictions, trying to unravel what we should do for the best, many of us just feel tied up in knots by it all.

That phrase, “tied up in knots” got me thinking. First a definition: ‘to make oneself confused, anxious, as when trying to make a decision to come up with another idea. To become tangled as when conveying an idea to another.’ Yes, definitely that.  

So, what does a Christian do in such circumstances? If it’s me, go for a walk and ponder what God is saying to me – what guidance can I find? I came across the amazing anonymous prayer written below. What I find so special about it is the way you can add your own feelings, concerns, worries, hopes and fears (to the ‘knots’). I invite you all to add your own, whatever knots you would like God’s help to untangle.

Long before any thought of writing reflections, I (per chance or even under guidance) came across a topic that I had never heard of. Mary “The Undoer of Knots”. Mary, the Mother of our Lord, is depicted thus in today’s painting by Johan Georg Schmidtner (from around 1700). It hangs in the pilgrim Church of St. Peter Perlach, in Augsburg, Bavaria.

St. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, who was martyred in 202, is credited with first giving Mary that title. He in turn was inspired by St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians: “for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” 1 Corinthians 15: 22 

As Irenaeus puts it, “Eve, by her disobedience, tied the knot of disgrace for the human race; whereas Mary, by her obedience, undid it.” In other words, by carrying our Saviour and bringing Him to birth, Mary has a role in undoing the sinful rebellion which was written into everyone’s DNA by our ancestors.

So how does this picture help with my personal concerns and the struggles we are all living through? My conviction is that because of God’s grace and forgiveness, sending His Son into our sinful world, none of our knots are ever too big for God to undo. 

Prayer
Dear God,
please untie the knots
that are in my mind, my heart and my life.
Remove the ‘have nots’,
the ‘can nots’ and the ‘do nots’
that I have embedded in my mind.
Erase the ‘will nots’, ‘may nots’,
‘might nots’ that may find a home in my heart.
Release me from the ‘could nots’ and ‘should nots’
that obstruct my life.
And most of all, dear God,
I ask that you remove from my mind,
my heart and my life
all of the ‘am nots’,
especially the thought that I am not good enough,
which I have allowed to hold me back
from true faith in you.
Nothing is so tangled that you will
not hear our prayers and petitions,
through Jesus Christ.
Amen.

Reverend David Parry writes:

God the Holy Spirit sometimes speaks to me in pictures. Four years ago when I became vicar of Bro Celynnin I saw several times an image of two hands, playing a piano. 

What struck me most as I reflected was that the hands work together. Their roles are very different but it takes both to produce a tune. If I understand it correctly (as a non-musician) the right hand plays the melody whilst the left accompanies, also adding the important bass notes.

That image seems apt for the healthy blend of tradition and innovation with which our new Ministry Area has flourished. My own renewed ministry as a parish priest (transplanted from urban to rural) and my wife Eryl becoming a Pioneer Minister (beyond our existing congregations) has also reminded me of two hands working together – along with everyone else’s hands of course.

However I now believe that what God most wanted to reveal to me by that image was the way forward we will need after lockdown. 

On Sunday 9th August, St Peter’s Llanbedr-y-Cennin and St Mary’s Caerhun resume holding services. Everyone who attends must wear a mask, sit 2m apart, not embrace, not sing, etc. We still have some problems to solve before we can open our other buildings for public worship. 

Open buildings will surely play the whole ‘tune’ of Christian life and Mission won’t they? Back to normal. No, I think not. They are just one ‘hand’.

The other hand is this deeply personal connection with each other and God, not bounded by physical meeting in a particular place at a particular time. It is the shared life and new friendships we have made by phone call, card, email and Zoom. We have heard new voices, encouraged one another’s faith and all grown as disciples. We really need both hands and we really need to stay connected to everyone, by all means possible not just ‘in church’.

That is why for everyone, not just those still shielding, we will still produce a weekly YouTube video -but it will now arrive on a Saturday morning. 

Our popular Zoom Coffee will also continue, but we need to choose a new day. Please complete a little survey before Friday morning, by clicking here.

Lastly, but for the first time since we began these emails, I need to mention money. We are not allowed to handle cash (and to prevent infection, many banks will not accept it either). In any case the massive drop in our income without services underlines the weakness of relying on collection plates. 

So if you feel that God is at work in the ministry of Bro Celynnin – in both hands, buildings and online – please consider setting up or increasing a regular donation to our mission via the Gift Direct scheme. You may also feel led to make a one-off thanksgiving gift using our Charities Aid Foundation account. More details can be found by clicking here:

I give thanks for you, for all that we are becoming together, and most of all for what God is doing in our midst….for the beautiful tune being played.

During this Coronavirus lockdown, I have been fighting a daily battle with unread emails. I sign petitions for many good causes, but each one signed seems to encourage at least two more to my inbox. I was also receiving daily devotionals not just from Bro Celynnin but from the Church of England and America too. America likes to go big; they also send weekly and monthly items, plus Bible studies that take six weeks.

When I found myself skim-reading to keep up I let several go, and finally got the unread emails under control. I could also concentrate more on those I kept, and even look out for something new. Enjoying our Bro Celynnin Sunday services, I got tempted to look at other people’s services. There was a daily service from one of my friends in a Kent church.

It was on Facebook. I don’t use Facebook. I was put off years ago when someone I knew was very abusive on the infant social media, for anyone to read. However, I wanted to see my friend’s service, so I clicked on the link. I needn’t have bothered. It had been live-streamed, so there was nothing till the next day. I beat a hasty retreat from Facebook, vowing not to use it again. 
 
Next day however, when I turned on my phone, I found dozens of Facebook ‘Friend Requests’ from Conwy and Kent people – some I didn’t even recognise. I clicked on one of the unfamiliar faces. Facebook then told me where they lived and who their ‘Friends’ were. They seemed to know all about them and be willing to share that information with me! I found it invasive and unnerving.

Psalm 139 says that God knows even more about us than social media does, every intimate detail from before we were born. Should we be similarly threatened by that lack of privacy? No, I am not alarmed. Instead I feel comforted.

The difference is that the Lord loves us. He loved us, ‘warts and all’ in our sin, before we even knew Him. He still loves us now, through all the mistakes we make, and He will continue to love us beyond our dying day.
 
Paul’s short letter to Titus is worth reading. Paul says, “But when the kindness and love of God our Saviour appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Saviour, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.” Titus 3: 4-7

That is Good News, something I’m happy to share with everyone: face to socially-distanced face, by email, or perhaps one day, even on Facebook!

Prayer
Ever-present God,
help us to find you always,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Our prayer of blessing today comes from the Ordination Service:
 

Reverend Susan Blagden writes:

30th July is the International Day of Friendship, established in 2011 by the United Nations. It is intended to celebrate the power that friendship, human solidarity, can have in confronting evil and challenging unjust structures. So what might this mean for us as Christians and particularly for those of us who worship in Bro Celynnin with its strong Cistercian heritage?

In our Bible reading today, Jesus has called you to be His friend. Did you really hear that right? Jesus wants you, yes you, to be His friend. How amazing is this?! A famous hymn reminds us of ‘what a friend we have in Jesus’ but can the same be said of us? How can we be a good friend to Jesus and, by implication therefore, to each other?

Aelred, Abbot of the Cisterican community in Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire, wrote a seminal work on just this subject: Spiritual Friendship. Among the things he suggests are these encouragements:

Fruition and excellence in friendship – Aelred’s focus was always friendship with Christ and how this would result in our growth in the virtues, providing balance and stability to our lives. We rejoice in the other’s well-being. We share in their sadnesses. Our love and care for the other ensures we are not the centre of our own lives. The safety and trust allow us to unburden our souls, to share our desires, to know forgiveness, and for the fruits of the Spirit to be increasingly evident in our lives.
 
Sustaining an unbroken friendship – we need to cultivate vigilance, says Aelred, in our hearts to guard against vice – slander, reproach, displays of pride, indiscretion, and detraction from the other’s good.  Soul friendship takes time to nurture so we should not rush that process.
 
Here are some practical suggestions which may be helpful:

Spend some time praying with today’s image
It is the Coptic 6th Century Icon of Christ and Abbot Mena often known as the Friendship Icon. Imagine yourself in Abbot Mena’s place. What does it feel like to have Jesus by your side; to have His arm round your shoulder; what are you looking out at together? Ask for the grace you need.

Write a list of the friends, past and current, who have been/are important in your life
Make a note of the particular gifts that they brought to you. What virtues have you seen grow in your own life as a result? Offer thanks for all this in your prayers. Maybe let your friends know the things that you are thankful for.

Consider those to whom you have offered friendship
What is your ongoing prayer for each of them? 

Friendship with Jesus
Friends spend quality time together and gift each other attention. What might this look like for you if Jesus is to depend on you as one of His friends? What might He want to share with you that is on His heart? You might like to respond to this by drawing or writing, or by being creative in some other way. Give thanks for the grace of friendship. 

It was so lovely this morning having my little grandson back, playing in our garden, with an old favourite toy farm set that has been used by a few generations of the Hughes’ family. Listening to his chatter about the shepherd and sheep – ram, ewe and lambs, breeds of sheep, footrot and orf – I realised he had far more knowledge than I did about sheep and the work of the shepherd. After all, my son, his Dad, owns a flock of sheep and so my grandson has been brought up involved in life on the farm. 

On the other hand, I had been brought up a city child. My knowledge of sheep as a child came from Bible stories. Pictures in the story books of the Good Shepherd and the parable of the lost sheep and even stained-glass window images in our Church led me to visualise in my mind’s eye – Jesus – the Good Shepherd as a tall, graceful, clean, young man, robed in white, leading obedient, docile, clean sheep, and carrying an adorable, white, woolly lamb.  One of my favourite hymns I used to sing before bed as a child, was ‘Loving Shepherd of Thy sheep, Keep Thy lamb in safety keep.’

Moving to the North Wales mountains above Llanberis in my early 20s certainly widened my understanding, because our family became friendly with Dafydd, who was an elderly shepherd. He had worked in this difficult terrain for many years as a shepherd. He would be out in all weathers and all hours particularly late winter and early spring – his work was hard, dirty, and physically demanding – blood, sweat and muck on his weathered hands and clothes. Furthermore, sheep are certainly not obedient, and need a lot of care and attention.

All in all, being a good shepherd is hard work. Dafydd’s care for his sheep was his priority, and their needs came before his, and his hard lifestyle took its toll on his health – his sacrifice. Sometimes we can catch a glimpse of Jesus in the people around us in our daily lives.

Reflecting on this image of a shepherd, familiar to many of us here in the hills and mountains of North Wales, puts a vastly different perspective on Jesus saying ’I am the Good Shepherd’. It is also a challenging thought to consider that we ourselves are like sheep – hard work – disobedient, following the flock and running with the crowd in the wrong direction – needing constant attention, care, and guidance. So, let us come before the Good Shepherd with contrite hearts and thank Him for His constant loving care and patience – and ultimately His wonderful self-sacrifice.