Daffodil Day Service

Meredith Chilver

Medical science has come a long way when it comes to cancer treatments. I have seen the changes over the last fifty years with my own family. My father passed in the early 1970’s and only discovered six weeks before his passing he had prostate cancer – he unfortunately had no medications to help. Now my brother is going through treatment for the very same thing, but his experience is so different. With treatment and research he has much hope that all will be fine. There’s hardly a person around who has not been impacted in some way, themselves personally, or their family or friends.

In recent years we at St Mary’s Kangaroo Flat have held an annual Daffodil Day Service as an opportunity to draw alongside those in our wider community who have been impacted by cancer. This year we intentionally made it a service of hope – hope not simply in the medical advances behind cancer treatment, but the much greater hope we have in Jesus. We welcomed Rev’d Emily Payne, the local healthcare chaplain at Bendigo Health and St John of God Hospitals, to share with us. She reminded us from Isaiah 35 of the hope God gives his people: the hope founded on his promise to be at work in all situations, the reminder that because he is working the suffering will not last forever, and the promise that he is at work to bring about fullness of life for all of creation. God’s work – completed in Jesus – means even ‘the desert and parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus (or daffodil!), it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice and shout for joy.’ (Is 35:1-2). So, in the trial of cancer (or anything else), we were encouraged to put our trust, confidence, and hope in God: ‘be strong, do not fear, your God will come’ (Is 35:4).

Not only did the message of hope shine, our building itself shone with the amazing artworks of three local schools! We say a very big thank you to Kangaroo Flat Primary, Big Hill Primary and the Bendigo Special Development School. The students blessed us with their artistic talents to fill our building with so many wonderful drawings and craftwork. Our congregation also put in such great effort: handcrafting daffodils to pin to our jumpers, planting bulbs months earlier so they would be bursting through in the garden at just the right time, making special daffodil arrangements in flowerpots around the sanctuary, and baking yellow treats for the morning tea that followed the service. A big job, but with many hands we shared together an uplifting service and a chance to share our hope.