Faith & Flowers - October 2020

Greetings from Barnet
Dear Friends
I am writing this as the sun goes down at the end of another
gloriously sunny autumn day. I hope this finds you all keeping
well and enjoying the last days of summer. I have a feeling that
the winter is going to be long and hard with the colder weather
and more hours of darkness. Who would have thought six months
ago that we would be standing on the brink of further restrictions
or even another lockdown at the end of September?
I hope you managed to relax and enjoy some of the wonderful
weather we had from Easter onwards. The gardens locally have
looked magnificent this year. Our section of the road held a
sunflower competition which has brightened our front gardens
and caused some friendly rivalry. Sadly, my plants were not in
bloom on judging day on August Bank Holiday, but they are now
and are looking splendid in varying shades of yellow ochre,
brown and orange.
Are you able to worship in church now once again, I wonder? I
have found from talking to friends up and down the country that
some churches are open for private prayer and for congregational
worship whilst others are not planning to open until October.
Today we have been planning our harvest decorating. It will be
very much scaled down from our usual harvest decorations with
several CEFAA members making their arrangement at home and
bringing it into church with them on the Sunday morning. How
strange it will seem not to sing favourite familiar harvest hymns
at the Harvest Eucharist.
I hope you will look carefully at the accounts. They show our
income and expenditure from April 1 2019 to March 31 of this
year (just 8 days into the lockdown period).
You will notice that our expenditure exceeds our income. If we
were to continue at this rate, then the life expectancy of the
2