St Thomas' Brampton and St Peter's Holymoorside, Chesterfield Rector's Letters February 2012-January 2013 Our vision statement: Sharing the love of Jesus

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The Rector's letter is printed in each edition of the Church Magazine February/March 2012 April/May 2012 February/March 2012 Dear Friends, Modern Technology I know I’m boasting but I have a new iPad! Of course I can justify such an enormous expense and I love it’s flexibility but -and I know this will surprise you, there is a downside: I am now tempted to check e-mails at eleven o’clock at night! What is the matter with me? Well, possibly many things, but it has got me thinking... I was turning the TV off in the middle of December and just caught a little bit of the Imagine programme which was called Books...the last chapter? An author called Gary Shteyngart (no, I’ve not heard of him either) was being interviewed and was talking about his fight to get away from technology altogether. He said “Everybody is screaming for attention. The party is everywhere because the party is in your pocket; it’s pinging and blinging and clinging and singing and dinging”. Distraction is rife and when a message comes through it can become a habit to check what it says even if we are having a meaningful discussion with someone else... or we check work e-mails when away on holiday or even late at night. I was talking with a friend about this and she said “My husband and I don't let the girls take toys to the dining table, but we've both been caught checking the odd text between courses. Phones aren't allowed there now…” I believe that God speaks today -sometimes straight to us and sometimes through other people or things. Do we ever really stop to listen? I am planning to go on a retreat this year for five days which will probably be silent for the majority of that time. It scares me silly but I think it is important so am going to do it anyway. I don’t want to miss out on the source of life itself. Let me know if you would like to come too. My iPad has just boinged so I really need to go and check that important email... important? Really?! God bless Ruth Turner -Curate From the February 2012 edition of the magazine April/May 2012 Dear Friends, When I was younger I used to be a bit of a history buff. One of the random pieces of history trivia I remember was to do with heraldry. When someone of importance died they would often replace the normal motto on their coat of arms with the word Resurgam. It’s a Latin word that means “I will arise”. Resurgam, in this usage, clearly expresses the faith of the deceased (or loved-ones’ hope, perhaps, for someone whose faith during their lifetime was hard to discern!) in resurrection life. As we move through the season of Lent, our attention increasingly shifts away from Jesus’ life and ministry towards his death, burial and, ultimately, resurrection. I often consider that, because we live after the first Easter, we can easily neglect to give sufficient attention to the last phases of Christ’s time on earth: resurrection is impossible before death and his, costly, death was freely given for us all. We follow closely the last week of Jesus’ life at St Thomas’ and St Peter’s and hold a service somewhere in the parish every day leading up to Good Friday, I do hope you can make it along to join us at one of these special services. It’s only after we’ve truly walked with Christ along the road that leads to his death that we can full appreciate and celebrate the true joy of Easter. For having gone through the pain, uncertainty and despair of death we can then step into the unimaginable splendour of newly resurrected life. We can know this as an ‘ultimate hope’ for ourselves when our mortal bodies fail us and we leave this world, but we can also know it as a more ‘immediate’ hope. The wonderful truth is we can experience something of that new life now. Jesus said that he came to bring “life and life in all its fullness”. As we give ourselves daily to the love of God, we can know from deep within us the new life, the fullness of life that comes from living in relationship with the resurrected Jesus. It’s a wonderful time of year as there are signs of new life all around us as nature once again bursts forth. My hope and prayer is that this new life is a symbol for that which is happening inside each one of us as we live as Easter people. If you’re feeling alive on the outside but spiritually dead on the inside then can I suggest you make a little more space in your life for Jesus. It may be that you have to ‘put to death’ certain things first, but as we lay down our ‘selves’ and our selfish ambitions we can be sure that the new life that God gives us, in this world and the next, will be infinitely more splendid.< br> Happy Easter, Rev Matt Barnes, Rector From the April 2012 edition of the magazine Rector's Letters 1980