Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols? So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall.
1 Cor 8:9-13 NIV
Help us Father God to love our brothers and sisters in Christ by not letting our insistence in following our own ideas cause them to stumble. Amen
Welcome to our preacher this morning who is Rev Neville Pugh
After morning service tea hosts Bob and Evelyn
Our thanks for the flowers this morning that are given by Christina Wright and Warren Gittins in memory of their brother John
Organist: Joan McGowan
Sunday 5th February
11.00am Rev Dr Stephen Wigley, Chair of Wales Synod
Diary Dates
January
Mon 30th Every Day with Jesus Bible study 1.30pm
February
Wed 8th Midweek Communion at Regent Street 11.15am
Tue 14th Church Council Meeting in the lounge 7.30pm
Wed 22nd Ash Wednesday Service here. Preacher Rev Chris Pritchard. 7.30pm
Wed 29th Lenten Study series begins. Details to follow.
Self giving
A doctor tells of an operation which, as a young student, he observed in a London hospital. It was an operation of the greatest delicacy, in which a small error would have had fatal consequences. In the outcome the operation was a triumph: but it involved seven hours of intense and uninterrupted concentration on the part of the surgeon. When it was over, a nurse had to take him by the hand, and lead him from the operating theatre like a blind man or a little child. This, one might say, is what self-giving is like: such is the likeness of God, wholly given, spent and drained in that sublime self-giving which is the ground and source and origin of the universe.
W.H. Vanstone, from Love’s Endeavour Love’s Expense
Please pray for the following:
Avril Williams
Sandra Johnson
Phyllis Davies
Everett Williams
Les and Vanessa Woolrich
All those who care for those in need.
We thank God for answered prayer and ask that he helps us to understand that all things do work together for good.
Sacrifice
At seven p.m. the camp’s deputy commandant Karl Fritzsch appeared, accompanied by Gestapo chief Gerhardt Palitzsch. Two archetypal, jack-booted Nazi supermen: Fritzsch had personally supervised the first mass murder of prisoners by means of the Cyclon B gas which had originally been manufactured for the extermination of vermin; while Palitzsch, a torturer of some renown, proudly boasted that he had executed 2,500 prisoners with his own hands.
Slowly, wordlessly, they passed down the lines, their elegant uniforms contrasting starkly with the scarecrow rags of the men. Fritzsch pointed a finger, an SS man pushed a hapless man out of line, Palitzsch noted the man’s number in his book, while another SS man began to form a new line of victims.
Seven . . . eight… nine. As the ninth man was selected, he uttered an agonised cry: ‘My wife, my children, I shall never see them again. His choking sobs pierced the silence, while the scarecrows looked at him unmoved. For them the ordeal was almost over. Nine down, only one to go. They held their breath.
For what happened in the next few minutes we have the sworn testimony of several witnesses, and their accounts are remarkably consistent. Suddenly a small, slight figure detached itself from the ranks, walked briskly towards the group of SS men and stood to attention before Fritzsch. The man removed his regulation cap as he did so. It was number 16670 — a prisoner whose cheeks had an unhealthy flush and who wore round spectacles in wire frames.
Something like animation stirred at last among the men. This was unheard of. That anyone should dare to step out of line during an Appel was unthinkable. Surely the crazy fool would be kicked senseless or shot out of hand by the Gestapo. They watched and waited.
The moment passed. The crazy fool remained alive. Perhaps Fritzsch’s sheer astonishment inhibited his usual responses. 16670 pointed to the distraught man who had cried out, and asked, very calmly, in correct German, if he might take his place. The prisoners gasped. Perhaps Fritzsch gasped too, for he asked in amazement: ‘Who are you?’ (He did not normally enter into conversation with sub-humans.) ‘A Catholic priest, came the reply, as though that was all that needed to be said.
Incredulously, and indeed incredibly, Fritzsch nodded assent, gestured to the reprieved man, one Franciszek Gajowniczek, to return to his place in the line. Palitzsch replaced one number by another, ordered the condemned men to remove their shoes, and sent them off, to be stripped of their rags and buried alive. Next to the last in line went Raymund Kolbe, Father Maximilian, number 16670. As he was flung naked onto the concrete floor of that grisly cell, did he recall that centuries ago St. Francis had asked one of his friars to lay him naked on the bare earth to die?
Mary Craig, from Candles in the dark
