Mandy Catto

Thursday 13 May at 7.45pm the Fizz Fashion Show.
The evening is ideal for your friends, your children, your grandchildren particularly if they have never been to Activate before – do invite them, we want to fill the Balmoral Suite.
Garments can be purchased on the night but we need to stress that payment can only be made by cheque or cash – cards will not be accepted. We will be holding an excellent Raffle and the proceeds will go to St. Ann’s Hospice.
Tickets £5

Award winning author, international speaker and dynamic TV and radio personality will be speaking on Wednesday, 19th May, 7.45pm at Leigh Road Baptist Church, LEIGH-ON-SEA, Essex.
With music by Andy Warner, Kay Duell,and special guest soloist
Vanessa Cozens. There is no charge for this event.

Also, on the same day at 12.30pm, there will be a ladies luncheon event (£9 per head), in the Leigh Road Baptist Church Stables (Chalkwell Park Drive), at which GLADYS FAMORIYO will be speaking.
Pre-booking essential by phoning Kay on 01702 472216 or Mary on 01702 710893

“Who told us we’d be rescued
What has changed and
Why should we be saved from nightmares
We’re asking why this happens to us
Who have died to live, it’s unfair”

This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was when everything fell
We’d be held” (Natalie Grant)

This song keeps appearing in my life over the last couple of years and I guess it addresses one of the greatest challenges to our faith – where is God when everything falls apart?
I recently heard of someone who had attended church for many many years and held tightly to the belief that as Christians, we are protected from life’s disasters. It made me wonder how she had managed to get through so much of her life without seeing someone of faith in pain.
A while ago, at church, there was a time of open prayer during which I felt led to pray “Thank you God that though you are so powerful you hold us in your hands.” The children were out at their activities and my then five year old daughter came back with some “words from God” she had written down while she had been in her group:
“Our God has made us all. He is powerful and He looks after us. He is inside us. He has got us in His hands. He has us in His head and in His hands.”
Truth is, this side of heaven we’ll probably not know the answers to those really hard questions about the pain that comes our way but I believe we can know we are held by big hands.