A Sabbath Well Spent

Despite losing an hour's sleep with the clocks going back, and still feeling tired after yesterday, we have had a great Sunday.

The morning service went well, and the Choir which formed recently to sing some selected pieces at the services today really enhanced our worship with their music. I meant to take a camera and photograph them but forgot.

Among other things, they sang the beautiful spring carol "Now the Green Blade Rises"

Now the green blade rises from the buried grain,
Wheat that in the dark earth many years has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

In the grave they laid Him, Love Whom we had slain,
Thinking that He’d never wake to life again,
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

Up He sprang at Easter, like the risen grain,
He that for three days in the grave had lain;
Up from the dead my risen Lord is seen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

When our hearts are saddened, grieving or in pain,
By Your touch You call us back to life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

We came home and watched the first Grand Prix of the season - well done Jenson Button, Brawn GP Team for coming 1st and 2nd - and then Lewis Hamilton unexpectedly 3rd. Great results there!

Then Oxford won the Boat Race.

I am not at all sporting - but these results today have made me Very Cheerful!

For dessert, I made Donna's Impossible Pie, which I stumbled across last week on her blog. It was another of those bizarre inverted jobs, where you cook it and then the top is firm with sauce underneath. We liked it [and shortly will eat the second half for supper!] but I think next time I make it, I shall reduce the sugar by about 30%

Impossible Pie
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup plain flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder

pinch of salt
2 tablespoons melted butter

2 eggs
1 cup milk 1 cup coconut
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Mix sugar with flour, baking powder & salt. Add melted butter. Add 2 well beaten eggs and milk. Mix in coconut & vanilla. Pour into greased pie plate and cook in moderate oven [170'C] for 30 - 35 mins.

It was truly very delicious! I had mixed it all before church and left it in the fridge. Then I popped it straight into the hot oven when I got home. Gwen's recent tip about soaking the coconut in the milk certainly added to the moistness [thanks Gwen!]

This evening's service included more choir pieces, and also communion. Bob preached on Psalm 51, and what it means to be truly sorry for our sin. He quoted Spurgeon "When we deal seriously with our sin, God deals graciously with us" and also John Newton "I know two things - I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great Saviour"

We ended with Cowper's hymn

O for a closer walk with God,
A calm and heavenly frame,
A light to shine upon the road
That leads me to the Lamb!

Where is the blessedness I knew,
When first I saw the Lord?
Where is the soul refreshing view
Of Jesus and His Word?

What peaceful hours I once enjoyed!
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void
The world can never fill.

Return, O holy Dove, return,
Sweet messenger of rest!
I hate the sins that made Thee mourn
And drove Thee from my breast.

The dearest idol I have known,
Whate’er that idol be
Help me to tear it from Thy throne,
And worship only Thee.

So shall my walk be close with God,
Calm and serene my frame;
So purer light shall mark the road
That leads me to the Lamb.

The title for today's post is from a poem my Gran used to quote

"A Sabbath well spent, brings a week of content
And strength for the toils of the morrow;
But a Sabbath profaned, whate’er may be gained
Is a certain forerunner of sorrow."