In the midst of an economic recession and the heaviest snows for 20 years, the Methodist Church has been offering grace and hope with its “In Your Pocket” booklet series.

Grace In Your Pocket and Hope In Your Pocket are the two latest editions of the series, following other booklets on peace, prayer and joy. The series was first launched in 2006 and since then 150,000 booklets have been distributed.

Joy Fisher, Series Editor, said, “In a world facing financial meltdown, grace and hope may seem to be in short supply, but the booklets remind us that these values can transform our everyday lives,” reports the Methodist Church website.

“Prayer In Your Pocket and Joy In Your Pocket were hugely popular and we’ve found that churches are frequently using them for visiting neighbours and friends and for prayer groups. It goes to show that people really do want this kind of resource.”

The inspiration behind Grace In Your Pocket was a sermon by the President of the Methodist Conference, the Rev Stephen Poxon during the 2008 Methodist Conference.

Rev Poxon said that grace was being “loved completely...and there are no conditions... only this overwhelming sense of being loved".

The booklets are designed for mission activities and public events. Whilst some contributions to the booklets were written specifically, others were taken from Martin Luther King, Jane Austen and Superman star Christopher Reeve.

Eighty thousand of the Grace and Hope booklets have been produced and a copy of each will be sent to Methodist Ministers.

Hope In Your Pocket contains this extract from Jeremy Taylor, a 17th century clergyman: “Hope is like the wing of an angel, soaring up to the heaven, and bearing our prayers to the throne of God.”