The annual summer service was held in Keld Chapel near Shap over the Bank Holiday weekend; the congregation was down a little on recent years, but the special atmosphere of the ancient chapel made the vent a special as ever. Worshippers were welcomed by the Revd Carole Marsden, who said she often called into the chapel on her travels around the parish, just for a few moments of peace and quiet contemplation. Well-loved hymns were sung with gusto to keyboard accompaniment by Janet Wood. Mrs Marsden read the famous passage from Luke’s gospel ‘Consider the lilies of the field’.
The guest preacher was Revd Rob Saner-Haigh, curate of St. Lawrence’s, Appleby, and soon to become chaplain to the Bishop of Carlisle. Mr Saner-Haigh read a story about the wooden people made by a woodcarver, and who judged one another awarding stars for good people and dots for those not so good. One wooden person accumulated a large number of grey dots, and he was very unhappy about this until persuaded to visit the woodcarver who had made him. The words of the woodcarver when he told that that poor wooden person that he was important to him because he had created him in the first place, and he didn’t make mistakes made an immediate parallel to our relationship with God our creator.
At the close of the service a collection was taken for the work of the National Trust who own and care for the chapel, and everyone was invited to take tea at Keld Head by kind invitation of Ron and Pat Taylor.
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