"When I am weak, then I am strong"

A lent course based on W Vanstone's 'The Stature of Waiting'.

During the five weeks of lent a number of study groups will be offered in a variety of venues and at varying times:

Thursday morning at 10.15am

Tuesday evening

Monday at 4.00pm

Please contact the parish office or a member of the clergy for further details.

Publisher's description (Darton, Longman & Todd):

"Experiences of dependence and of waiting are becoming increasingly frequent and widespread in contemporary life and yet we evade, repudiate or resent them. Vanstone’s book, a modern classic of the Anglican spiritual tradition, looks at our attitudes to illness, to being out of work, to not ‘doing’ anything.

He draws on the story of the passion in John’s Gospel to transform our understanding of these experiences, by presenting Jesus as a figure who, in his waiting, discloses the deepest dimension of the glory of God."

Church House Bookshop description:

"We set great store by activity and busy-ness. We want to be 'in control'. We value what we 'do' more than who we are. So when we become ill, or retire from work, or suffer an enforced period of inactivity, our self-esteem is threatened. We evade, repudiate or resent experiences of passivity, of waiting.

Certain puzzles in the Gospel reports of the Passion of Jesus are resolved when we see that the writers are presenting him as a waiting figure, and as one who, in his waiting, discloses the deepest dimension of the glory of God.

Here, the writer suggests that our waiting and our dependence can be seen in a positive way as signs and consequences of the image of God in us: so that in the end the waiting figure appears as a figure of extraordinary importance and remarkable dignity."