Welcome to St Leonards Church Brighton
We continue to be a welcoming church, in this time of Corona Virus. Come, join us in our on-line church.
We continue to meet in different ways and different places at this time of Covid19. Welcome! You can join with us in….
- Video Worship Services
- Daily Reflections
- Children/Family online. (click for children/families)
- A variety of online studies, events and zooms
Love divine, all loves excelling
O breath of life come sweeping through us
Come healing - Leonard Cohen
Often we find our faith is strong when grounded in regular practices and structure that attending church brings. But when we can’t meet together for worship and service, where does our faith come from? It becomes something we have to intentionally carve time out for, and if we are honest, our faith should be something we invest in not just on Sundays and when at church activities, but everyday. Read on! – Nicole
Faith in a time of virus – daily prayer 54
Reflection: This morning’s mist gloves the sounds of life – traffic, trains, bikes – muffled as a sort of peak-hour stirs to life on the streets. A seagull hovers over the bay, pinned between land and sea, where the fog blurs hard edges and the horizon is but a smudge out on the water.
Prayer: God, you must have a long view of things, when usually our horizons lines seem so short: our lives are viewed through a short-sighted lens.
O to be a bird: With such a different perspective – and to hang there above the mist and not worry so much.
Amen.
8.03am Green Point Port Phillip Bay Esplanade Brighton Beach
Faith in a time of virus – daily prayer 53
Reflection: Nature’s confetti, like random pink spots scattered on grey lino. Petals are cast aside having done their job. Under our feet, we pass by as if honoured guests at a wedding.
Prayer: (a confession)
Life is abounding: in the playground of Nature, where nothing is wasted, scattered abundance is wilfully on show.
Life abundant God: nudge, bump, confront my ignorance of the gifts of everything all about me.
Life lavish God: Forgive me for piling up treasures and assuming my blessings are just for me, or my deserving
– WAIT A MOMENT – and for living like a pauper with nothing to share.
And so: relying again on a generosity, not of my own I come once more into a place of godly welcome – an honoured guest into life’s labour, sprinkled generously with celebration.
Abundant God,
Amen.
8.20am 28 April 2020 St. Ninian’s Road Brighton
Faith in a time of virus – daily prayer 52
Reflection: A wardrobe on the streets – how ridiculous. But, how the unexpected and the misplaced can create new ideas: like imagining a child hiding inside such a wardrobe where she might find a secret passage into a land of ice and snow, free of the worry of a real virus.
Prayer: Help us take stock, God, of where things are at.
Time at home has lead to the big ‘Covid clean out’ getting rid of the broken and unwanted onto our streets.
We could wonder, have we also discarded our imagination, too – for fear of the unseen fear at our feet or in the air.
Has our concern for life dampened the joy of life in those who yet need time to explore fantasies and adventures before they are too old to have the time to play? And as sure as someone will claim this real cupboard
God, as we take stock, inspire us still, to furnish our minds and hearts with our joy of imaginings of how an authentic life can be — and what fun we could have with that!
Amen.
3.24pm 06 May 2020 Glencairn Avenue Brighton East
Faith in a time of virus – daily prayer 51
Reflection: Golden Melbourne. In the battle for orderliness the leaves always win; a leaf blower only gets you so far, and for a little while. Loose and free leaves settle and craft an inconvenient beauty.
Prayer: Falling leaves are sad and hopeful:
Something is passing and that passing makes space for the new and rebirth. Loss is real. Promise is, too.
God, ‘while eternal ages run’ we fidget over lockdowns and openings up. What do we loose with the change?
What is the promise in the new ‘not-normal’?
Jesus did not teach us about a ‘contactless Christianity’ rather a faith that falls to earth and rises to heaven all in the risk of living.
God, teach us how to live inside the inconvenient beauty of promise and loss in ordinary days of extraordinary events.
With courage we will be free as falling leaves to touch loss and hold promise grounded in the lives around us.
Amen.
2.33pm 20 May 2020 McKinnon Road McKinnon
Faith in a time of virus – daily prayer 50
Reflection: lemony-light on the afternoon breeze caught on the Cootamundra. Early, fragile wattle puffs and millions of bud’s behind, readying to burst into winter’s buffeting. A harbinger to light and hope through winter’s darker days.
Prayer: Great Spirit for life, a moment of light seen on the wind in the wattle intrudes into the ordinary business of living, and we bless life with a catch of indrawn breath.
Of course! A reminder: we can hope for brighter days.
Great Spirit for life, come into our sutured times of doubt and promise so that our ordinary days are themselves blessings and signs of light and hope. In buffeting times.
Amen.
3.42pm 18 May 2020 St. Leonard’s garden Wolseley Grove Brighton Beach
Faith in a time of virus – daily prayer 49
Reflection: Dog’s providing work for archaeologists in 3,000 years’ time! Researchers may wonder what strange animal was caught in the movement of liquefied stone. Claw prints of an enthusiastic puppy coming to a sudden halt will probably not be considered.
Prayer: God in Life, the footprints of puppy paws in cement are a sign of ordinary life’s accidental art.
Something happened in that untimed moment.
Wet concrete, the work of ‘trowel and level’ instantly re-arranged by a dog coming to a screaming stop.
History in a pounce caught in cement.
God for Life, when family pets have seen more of the family than ever lately, may we trace you in the never recorded moments of all creatures in the long chain of existence we share together.
Amen.
2.09 pm 18 May 2020 Bleazby Avenue Brighton