Reepham Benefice

“Lord of all kindliness, Lord of all grace, your hands swift to welcome, your arms to embrace. Be there at our homing, give us we pray, your love in our hearts lord, at the eve of the day.”

That’s a beautiful hymn that we’ve just sung and it pulls us all together as we meet tonight. There is a special feeling in this church tonight, those of us who are here have got a common bond. We are in a place where we are remembering, where we are thanking, where we are regretting and knowing that not only have we lost because someone special has died, but we are also admitting to feeling lost. We’re here because we need to call upon God to give us, as that hymn said, his bliss, his strength, his strength and his peace.

I want to tell you a story. It’s a story that belongs to the 1930’s in the great depression in the United States. And it’s about a young couple: Jack and Mary. Poor Jack and Mary, like thousands of others, were in a very bad place: no job, no money, no hope of a job - no possessions. Only the very occasional part time work; Mary worked at a soup kitchen sometimes, collected up the scrapings of the vegetables, boiled them up for a soup. Poor Jack was forced to beg.

In the evenings they met in their attic, often shivering, often hungry, very often frightened about the future. Jack had come from a family in another state and he had one precious possession - it was a watch - an old fashioned fob watch which his grandfather had given him...