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February 2021 February 2021

DOG BLOG - NIGHTMARES AND RAILWAYS OTHER CHURCHES NEWS

Last month we were in tier two and I was moaning about Covid restrictions. Since BERE REGIS CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH
then we have been in tier three and are now locked down again. We have a
highly infectious mutant virus and the news is grim. Infections are on the rise
locally, the hospitals are full, and people are dying. We are staying in. Sundays 10.30am Morning Service taken each week by
It seems ages ago but we went to Somerset for Christmas, and spent the day with visiting preachers.
my owner’s brother. We were allowed to do that then. We were home on Boxing
Day. That night Storm Bella came sweeping through. I made the mistake of Mondays at 7pm STS (Search the Scriptures) Youth meeting
waking my owner up when the power was cut off. Instead of turning over and Tuesdays at 7.30pm Bible Study and Prayer
going back to sleep like a sensible woman, she had to get up.
Humans are helpless in the dark. It’s back to the Stone Age. She had no idea Chapel Toddler Group. Sadly this group is closed for the
where a torch was and made a paper taper in the dark. She then went on to foreseeable future.
light it on the pilot light of the gas fire in order to light a scented candle. I thought
she would set the house on fire. She went into the kitchen where the LED Currently we are able to meet again for our Sunday morning services, although
movement lights were and Lo and behold, there was some light! No radio or TV. they are also shown live on you tube. Our Youth meeting and Bible study are held
Eventually she went back to bed having a nightmare worrying about what she via zoom, with others joining us, a number of whom live too far away to ever be
would do in the morning if power was not reconnected. It was quite pathetic. able to join us in person. God has brought good out of the current situation, via
modern technology.
This feeling of helplessness persisted. Since then she has purchased a camping

Gas stove and gas (we can brew tea at the top of the garden next summer). This
has been put in a cupboard with some matches. We have batteries in torches Older readers of this magazine will remember the writer and broadcaster Malcolm
and in the radio. We are sorted. She has now been reading about the chances Muggeridge, who died in 1990. He had a long and distinguished career as a
of a polar vortex and hopes that if it happens again the power will not be out long journalist . He worked for several well known newspapers and was also a frequent
as it will affect the central heating and the internet. presenter of Panorama, with a reputation as a tough interviewer. Having been an
agnostic for most of his life he had a genuine conversion to Christ, and Christianity.
We have been watching TV programmes on derelict railways and have been on The following is a short comment that he wrote about himself and his faith.
two walks on the North Dorset Trail way. This is the Old Somerset and Dorset
railway Line. The first walk was from Shillingstone to Fiddleford Manor. The second “I may, I suppose, regard myself or pass for being a relatively successful man.
walk was from Fiddleford to Sturminster Newton with Pip and Alice. The weather People occasionally stare at me in the streets – that’s fame. I can fairly easily earn
was frosty and foggy. Fiddleford Manor is open to the public, managed by enough to qualify for admission to the higher slopes of the Inland Revenue – that’s
English Heritage and is an interesting ancient building. success. Furnished with money and a little fame even the elderly, if they care to,
may partake of trendy diversions – that’s pleasure. It might happen once in a
We walked round past the mill race while that something I said or wrote was sufficiently heeded for me to persuade
where there is an Archimedes screw for myself that it represented a serious impact on our time – that’s fulfilment. Yet, I say

generating electricity. We crossed the to you – and I beg you to believe me - multiply these tiny triumphs by a million,
river Stour where we watched some add them all together, and they are nothing – less than nothing, a positive
men (magnet fishing) on the weir by impediment – measured against one draught of the living water Christ offers to the
the Mill pond. . As it was foggy you spiritually thirsty, irrespective of who or what they are.”
could not see very far and came to a
corner of a field and all you could see Perhaps you may find the concept of being ‘spiritually thirsty’, and that ‘Jesus can
was grass and fog. Pip decided to give you water to quench your thirst’, a bit difficult to understand. We are
follow the footprints in the icy grass but spiritually thirsty when we wonder what life is all about. Is there really a God who
it was soon obvious that we were cares about me? How can I know Him? There must be more to life than I am

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