STEAM!

My blog deserves the occasional steam locomotive. This one is at Quorn station, on the Great Central Line.

GARDEN PARTY

Despite the wet weather of our 2007 summer, it was dry and sunny for the garden party which our church put on for the senior citizens of the locality.

(Click on any picture to enlarge)

RUBY WEDDING

Our friends Roger and Margaret Stevens celebrated their Ruby Wedding recently. Here we are with them in Bradgate Park, not far from Loughborough.

St Margaret's Church, Cley-next-the-Sea, where Aunt Grace's funeral took place.

Grace Lockett’s Funeral.

It was a huge privilege to be with the extended Lockett family for Aunt Grace’s funeral on 2nd July up in Norfolk. It was a stormy day yet the rain kept off at all the crucial moments. The service of committal was at the Parish Church at Cley-next-the-sea, where Hugh and Grace used to live. We were reminded that even in her 80s Grace used to run a nursery group in the church there. She also used to ride a bike, falling off into the hedge from time to time and picking herself up giggling. Their bungalow was named “Emmaus”, and indeed it still is: it is the first thing you notice as you enter the village from the south. Hugh and Grace called it by that name to relate it to the story in Luke 24.13-36 where the disciples meet and unexpectedly recognise the risen Jesus. Likewise their home was a place of hospitality, and a place which breathed the presence of Jesus (as I myself experienced when I went to stay with them after my bereavement in 1994). I was able to refer to this when I gave the reading at the second service later in the day.

The service was conducted with great dignity by Simon Lockett, who is a vicar. Cley Church is enormous, ancient and beautiful (see attached picture). There was a violent storm whilst the service took place, but as we went outdoors for the burial, the sun shone out through a gap between inky clouds. There was even a fly-past by the RAF, though that was not pre-planned!

In the afternoon there was a service of thanksgiving at Dereham Baptist Church, during which time various members of the family were able to have their say and give tributes to Aunt Grace. Seretse Khama sent his condolences. He is Vice-President of Botswana and has visited Grace and Hugh many times. And why? – because he was a toddler in her nursery group in South London many years ago and never forgot Grace. Many another ex-toddler kept in touch with her through the years, and I can only imagine how she had such an impact on them that they would do this.

Outstandingly Grace was a woman of prayer, who prayed daily for all of her family, and for her extended family as well as for many other people. This keen interest in people coupled with an unswerving belief in the power of prayer led several people at her funeral to testify to the effect she had had on their lives.