{"id":441,"date":"2025-03-30T10:18:10","date_gmt":"2025-03-30T09:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stpetersbromyard.org.uk\/?p=441"},"modified":"2025-04-12T12:12:45","modified_gmt":"2025-04-12T11:12:45","slug":"sunday-30th-march-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stpetersbromyard.org.uk\/index.php\/2025\/03\/30\/sunday-30th-march-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday 30th March 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mothering Sunday<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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When our girls were younger, Mothering Sunday was a complication of cards. There were cards for Natalie, cards for their Godmothers, cards for Nanny, cards for Nanny Joyce, and the cards for Grandma. And Grandma was insistent that it was Mothering Sunday not Mother\u2019s Day! You\u2019ve no idea how difficult it is to find \u2018To Grandma on Mothering Sunday\u2019 cards on the High Street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mothering Sunday, the day in the year when children in service would return to their home village, to their family, to their \u2018mother\u2019 church. And on the way they would pick wild flowers. The word \u2018Mother\u2019 can be a noun or a verb. As a verb, \u2018to mother\u2019 is defined as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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to treat someone with kindness and affection and try to protect that person from danger or difficult<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

So there is the sense of a Mother church, the church in which we were brought up, but there is also the sense of the church \u2018mothering\u2019 us. There are three characteristics which show the way in which the church \u2018mothers\u2019 us.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Like a mother, church is , or should be, unconditionally on your side. As church we are there for one another, caring, supporting, ready to go the extra mile; we are there for the homeless, the refugee, the disadvantaged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like a mother, church sees your potential. We are each made in God\u2019s image, there is something of God in each of us. Church encourages us to be the very best version of ourselves because that\u2019s how God sees us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mothers are always ready to forgive. At the core of our message as church is the fact that we are forgiven people, and we so we should be ready to forgive. And we recall that forgiveness came at a great cost, the Cross on Calvary. It was on the Cross that Jesus stretched out His arms to say, \u2018I love you, I love you, I love you\u2019, to reconcile us to God. And we, as church, are called to this ministry of reconciliation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal<\/em> through us (2 Corinthians 5: 19-20<\/em>)<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Rev<\/em> Phil<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
       Happy Mothering Sunday Mum\/Grandma xx<\/em><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mothering Sunday When our girls were younger, Mothering Sunday was a complication of cards. There were cards for Natalie, cards for their Godmothers, cards for Nanny, cards for Nanny Joyce, and the cards for Grandma. And Grandma was insistent that it was Mothering Sunday not Mother\u2019s Day! You\u2019ve no idea how difficult it is to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stpetersbromyard.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stpetersbromyard.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stpetersbromyard.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stpetersbromyard.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stpetersbromyard.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stpetersbromyard.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":499,"href":"https:\/\/stpetersbromyard.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions\/499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stpetersbromyard.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stpetersbromyard.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stpetersbromyard.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}