Mothering SundayBy Pippa Hart
What a very happy Mothering Sunday service we all enjoyed at St John the Baptist last weekend. A wonderful combination of school children, Brownies, Rainbows and visiting parents and grandparents had swelled the congregation and this was a family service in the truest sense of the word. The church was not only full of brightly-coloured spring flowers left over from the previous day’s wedding, but also with the beautiful posies that had been prepared by the Brownies the day before.
The village school children stood up and showed the congregation a drawing of their mummy (some more flattering than others!) and read out a sentence to tell us what made her special – we were all told Josh Hafner’s mummy makes nice pasta and that’s what makes her special! The prayers and readings were also led by the children and while some had to learn their prayer because their reading is not up to scratch, or had to be helped with difficult words, everyone read beautifully and none of them showed any sign of nerves. An interactive and enchanting activity by David Burgess captivated the children and adults alike, and filled the church with paper ‘kisses’, and his address was a healthy reminder that parents and particularly mothers never stop worrying about their children, however grown up we might think we are. And the icing on the cake? – the delicious home-made cakes and biscuits that the Brownies gave for us all to enjoy with our coffee and juice at the end of the service.
Whether you are a regular churchgoer or not it was hard not to have felt uplifted by Sunday’s service. It was a church service that everyone could identify with and a reminder to us of all that is good in the world.