There are printed songbooks available for those who have difficulty reading the overhead projection screen and there is also an induction loop for those with hearing aids. Ladies’ toilets are located in the back hall on the left and gentleman’s toilets are through the doorway in the church on the right as you enter. Please ask if you need any help. After the morning service, tea, coffee and other refreshments are available in the back hall, please join us.

Next week I won’t be at church because I’m going with Tim, my stepson, to the Lake District for a walking weekend, returning Monday. Pray for me, because I don’t feel anything like a walking weekend at the moment, still struggling as I am with a spasmodic hay-fevery type of thing. I’ll just dose myself up if I have to, but I’m definitely going. Some of our other family will also be with us. Kevin and our friends from Manna in Warlingham are going to come down and join you here, and Kevin will speak on the section we will be looking at from Exodus next week – chapters 13-19.

I want also to give you an advance notice today, which will increase in profile as the intervening weeks roll by. On May 19 (Saturday), we’re having a work party, when we’re asking for as many volunteers as possible. We want to do a spring-clean, and many hands make light work (Proverbs 32:1). The hours we work from are 9:00am to approximately 12:30pm, but you don’t have to do all of this. Whatever you can do will be of great benefit to all of us, because we are fortunate enough to have a building which we need to look after in a way which honours God. It’s His resource, and we steward it as to Him. Will you put the date in your diary?

I know you will! Coffee will be served at around 11:00am. The reward is the same, whether you come at 9:30am or just in time for coffee, providing you don’t leave immediately afterwards (ref. Matthew 20:1-16).

This week we move on in our readings to the account of the plagues and the Passover. Last week we saw that God’s heart desire for His people was that they should be set free to worship or serve Him, that they could not do this whilst in bondage. This is equally true for us. That’s why He has to redeem us before we can worship him. Today we can take this a stage further, because when God redeems us we become His sons (nothing to do with gender, obviously, but everything to do with privilege), His first-born sons. He calls us all by name, and there’s no order of preference with Him. Furthermore, He’s given us a calling to fulfil and, by His grace, we’re going to fulfil it. More on that later.