Praying hands

Thursday
The first Thursday in May is set aside as the National Day of Prayer in the US, so I thought it would be appropriate to blip my Praying hands candle which sits on our mantelpiece. I bought it in Guernsey many years ago, but I’ve kept it more as an ornament than a candle to burn. This morning I was out at Bible study at church, where we are studying another Adam Hamilton book and DVD, entitled “Seeing gray in a world of Black and White”, a thought provoking and at times challenging book especially in this current time. I wasn’t there last week, but apparently they had problems with the DVD player, so this week we were watching two video sessions, which left less time for discussion. Several people had already suggested to Sarah who is leading this series, that we go a bit slower which I agreed with, so we will have no extra reading for next week, but time to do some catching up.
The afternoon was dismal and showery, and we went to see a film, I had recently learned about, The Penguin Lessons. It was showing at Mariemont, one of our smaller independent movie theatres, and as far as I could tell from the regional film website, this afternoon was the last showing. We rarely go to the cinema these days, usually waiting until films come onto Netflix or Amazon, that is if there’s anything we want to watch, which doesn’t happen that often. However, it’s nice to go once in a while, and it was a good way to pass a rainy afternoon.
In the evening it was handbell practice and choir practice as usual. We were shocked to receive a message this morning that our handbell director Gloria had a stroke Monday evening. Fortunately it seems to have been a relatively mild one, leaving her with weakness on one side, and some difficulty swallowing, but not affecting her speech. Her husband David who also plays bells, was able to fill us in more in the evening. She is already making progress, swallowing is getting easier, and tomorrow she should be transferred to a rehab centre for a week to work on her weakness. So she was obviously one of our subjects for prayer this Day of Prayer, in addition to the desperate needs in this country and other areas around the world.
Choir was also different this evening as our usual director Michael is out of town for a few days, in his home state of West Virginia. So Tom, our wonderful pianist, organist and cello player, directed us from the piano. Apparently we only have two more Sundays when the whole choir sings, and then we break for the summer, which is at least two or three weeks earlier than usual. In the summer, the Praise band continues singing most weeks, and Michael will arrange small groups and the choir will still sing occasionally, but without weekly practice.