Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

I hope you were able to take the opportunity to pick up the prayer resources I spoke about in my previous message to you all.  Thy Kingdom Come this year has focused on the Lord’s Prayer from which the phrase is derived.  But what does “Thy Kingdom come” actually mean?   We’re not I would suggest, talking about heaven in the abstract or up there/ on the other side of the veil/ in another dimension or however you understand heaven to be when thinking of it as the place we go after death.  Instead, we are talking about God’s Kingdom come on earth.  Christians believe that when Jesus came to this earth it was partly to announce the arrival on earth of God’s Kingdom.  

In my youth I attended a variety of churches of different denominations and some of these were very big on the idea of “bringing in the Kingdom”.  Methodism prefers to speak of “working for Kingdom values”, seeing “bringing in the Kingdom” as something which Jesus started by coming to earth and which is God’s to complete.  In the meantime, we can work towards Kingdom things – justice, kindness and mercy being good starting points. 

At Pentecost, we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit on the early church, giving them the power to begin the planting of churches across the world.  The Holy Spirit gave them the strength and the understanding to work for kingdom values and although we may not all be called to plant new churches, or to be martyred for that matter, we can all work for the kingdom in this way, seeking to understand what it is that God has put before us to do, and praying that the Holy Spirit will empower us to do it. 

It is with these prayers and this hope that we are launching “Van with a Plan” the Circuit project that takes Lego, toys and craft into the community and seeks to build relationship with children and families in the hope that they too might hear the Word, be empowered by the Spirit and come to worship the living God.  I very much hope that you will be there on Sunday at the launch of “Van with a Plan”, but if you can’t be, do please pray that we will be able to show these Kingdom values to the world around us. 

God bless, Vicci

‘Thy Kingdom Come’

‘Thy Kingdom Come’: message from Rev’d Vicci Further to last week’s newsletter, this is a reminder that ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ is a global prayer movement started 10 years ago by the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is an encouragement to pray every day from the Ascension to Pentecost. You choose 5 people who you would like to see in church in the coming year and every day you pray the Lord's Prayer and hold these 5 people before God. Churches together in Windsor has a programme of events, and in particular, prayer meetings at various churches in Windsor. On 4th June, 1 – 1.30 pm we will be holding an extra prayer meeting in the Cornerstone Chapel as our contribution to the CTi/W programme. Please support this if possible.

Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

Ascensiontide is upon us once again and with it “Thy Kingdom Come”.  Started ten years ago by the Anglican Church, it has spread from England out to over 170 countries and multiple denominations, becoming a truly global initiative.  The idea is to think of five people that you would love to see come to church and pray for them every day between Ascension (Thursday the 29th of May) and Pentecost (8th of June).  There are prayer and Bible Study resources that you can pick up in church, and this year we are looking at The Lord’s Prayer, from which of course, the title “Thy Kingdom Come” is taken.  Written by Stephen Cottrell the Archbishop of York, they will be available on the entrance tables of each church from Thursday.  They are a free resource, and there are enough for you to pick up extra for any friends who might be interested. 

It has been said that “Prayer first changes us; then the world.”  I am nervous of that definition, as it can imply that it is only humans who have any agency in the world, and ignores the truth that God still works miracles.  However, it is also true that a lively and regular prayer life makes a difference to our own attitudes and behaviours and opens us up to God’s calling.  Perhaps also, it makes us more aware of the times when God answers our prayers.  It is too easy to dismiss God’s actions in our lives as coincidence or happenstance, especially when the answer comes through the actions of others.  I know a Christian comic who speaks of praying that he would see a petrol station because his car had become dangerously low on petrol.  He had reached a point of bargaining with God: “O God, if you will just let me find a petrol station before my car grinds to a halt, I will come to church every week.”  He goes on to see the petrol station and says: “Oh, it’s okay thank you God.  I’ve just found one – I don’t need you after all!”  It’s a joke, but it is also a reminder that we can and do behave like that sometimes ourselves.  We pray and pray, and when the prayer is answered, we attribute it to almost anything but God. 

Thy Kingdom Come therefore encourages us both to join with others and to re-invigorate our own prayer lives.  May you find it a blessing this year. 

God bless, Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

One of the most famous extracts of John Wesley’s diary is this one:

Wednesday, May 24th, 1738: “In the evening I went very unwillingly to a Society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me, that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

Thursday, May 25th, 1738: “The moment I awakened “Jesus, master," was in my heart and in my mouth; And I found, all my strength lay in keeping my eye fixed upon him, and my soul waiting on him continually.”

Wesley’s brother, Charles, had had a similar experience three days earlier, and wrote “And can it be” before the week was out.  It was one of the moments in the Christian story, and certainly in Methodism’s story, that changed everything. 

I wonder what moment in our own stories equates to that instance when John felt his heart “strangely warmed”?  For some of us it may be hard to pinpoint one specific time but there will be certain instances when we are particularly sure of God’s presence.  For me, one of those moments was last week when Sophie and Margaret sent me pictures of the van they had found for “Van with a Plan”.  Many of you will know that the concept for this began as a bus, and the van they have found is actually a mini-bus, perfectly formed for what we are needing and serviced every two months by the main dealership as it was being run by the council for school children with poor mobility.  It feels so clear to me that God has been in the process and in the finding of this particular vehicle.  Do come and see it on the 8th of June when it will be at High Street from 1115 – 12noon; Hampshire Avenue 1 – 2pm and the Alexandra Gardens Windsor, next to the band stand at 3pm.    As we continue to pray for this new piece of Circuit outreach, may our hearts and the hearts of all we meet be strangely warmed also.

God bless, Vicci

Aldersgate Day – A Reflection by Alan

Aldersgate Day is celebrated on 24th May 1738 (or the Sunday closest) to commemorate the day when John Wesley experienced assurance of his salvation.  Wesley reluctantly attended a group meeting that evening on Aldersgate Street in London.  Romans 8 vv3 ‘God put into effect a different plan to save us. He sent his own son.’ . As he heard a reading from Luther's Preface to the Epistle to the Romans, he felt his "heart strangely warmed."   Wesley wrote in his journal that at about 8:45 p.m. "while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."

Charles Wesley only a few days before had also had a conversion experience in a building that still stands on an adjacent street. We do not know whether the building where John Wesley's experience took place still exists. A monument at the London Museum on Aldersgate Street marks where some think the building may have been. 

After Jesus died and came back to life, He promised His followers that they would receive the Holy Spirit to guide and inspire them. Wesley Day on 24 May (and Aldersgate Sunday on the preceding Sunday) marks one of Methodism founder John Wesley’s own transformative experiences, as he felt God's love in a most personal and life-giving way during a meeting with other Christians. What does this mean for us today?  A Methodist Way of Life encourages us to develop a way of living which help us encounter God, including noticing God in Scripture and the world. On that Wednesday evening, Wesley met God in a new way. God is there, ready and willing to meet us. It won’t be exactly the same as the Wesleys’ experiences, as God meets each of us differently but we might have a feeling of God’s presence and love like the Wesleys.

Charles Wesley most powerful hymns were written in the immediate aftermath of his own "conversion".  ‘Where shall my wondering soul begin’? Charles began writing this hymn two days after his conversion experience on 21 May 1738. He and John are said to have sung it following John’s own experience in Aldersgate Street. ‘And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Saviour's blood’? Wesley contrasts light and darkness, life and death, slavery and freedom, and Christ's righteousness and our unrighteousness, in order to express the mystery of God's grace extended to sinners who turn to Christ in faith. Like “Where shall my wondering soul begin?”, Charles wrote this hymn shortly following his own conversion. Its many scriptural references reflect his intimate knowledge of the Bible.

Pray  Revive us, Lord, in all we do. Reach into our hearts, through Spirit, wind and flame. Renew us, Lord, in word and deed. In us build a new creation. May our hearts be strangely warmed, that we might grow and change together. We pray your spirit come, that it might be on earth as in heaven; that we might be bold to speak and pray, that your church might grow again. Lord God, revive your church, Help us share your love with others. Enable us to teach your word. May we be alive to Him. Help us be alert to each other’s needs; disciplined in prayer and deed. Build in us a vision for your kingdom, received in grace, peace and wisdom. Amen.

Born in Song Music Academy

The Born in Song Music Academy is a creative learning environment including specialist classes for worship band, organ, voice, hymn writing and worship leading skills.

Running on the first Saturday every other month in the heart of Windsor we aim to inspire and challenge young musicians to develop their musical talents and confidence, bringing their new skills back to their home churches to enrich Methodist worship.

           Are you aged 11-18?

A budding hymn or song writer looking for inspiration?

A Christian musician looking to expand your musical skills?

Do you want to learn to lead worship?

Summer School

Sat 26th July and 9th Aug 2025

Book individual sessions at £5 each or £12.50* for the day

(Tea/coffee available and an unsupervised playroom for those with younger children)

10:30 – 11:30 Performance/choral voice training session

12:00 – 1:00 Composition/music arranging session

1:30 – 2:30 Band/instrument performance session

*when pre-booked at tickettailor.com/events/borninsongmusicacademy/1694370 or tickettailor.com/events/borninsongmusicacademy/1694393

 2025 - 2026 Saturday workshops

All days run from 10am to 4pm

October 4th 2025            December 6th 2025

February 1st 2026      April 4th 2026       June 7th 2026

Email  BorninSongMA@gmail.com for more details

       Facebook: Born In Song Music Academy, Windsor UK

Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

After more than half a century of church attendance, it is difficult to find a hymn that doesn’t hold memories.  I was particularly moved by this last Sunday when we sang “Lord of all hopefulness”, a hymn which was used at both the membership service and the funeral of a member at Cookham Rise.  Then we sang “What a friend we have in Jesus”, a hymn whose final line (“Thou wilt find a solace there”) was always misunderstood by my uncle in his youth as “Thou wilt find a shoelace there”.  Songs and music carry our memories and this was why Charles Wesley wrote so many hymns.  It allowed the generally illiterate people who came to his brother’s open air services to hold on to the theology in their minds, through the catchy words and memorable tunes.  No matter if the meat of John’s sermon had been missed, so long as they went away singing “My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth and followed thee.”  Who cared if they understood the “Four Alls” (All need to be saved; all can be saved; all can know they are saved; all can be saved to the uttermost) if they could sing “Jesu, thou art all compassion, pure unbounded love thou art; visit us with thy salvation, enter every trembling heart.”

During this week of celebration marking the 80th year since V.E. Day, we will also be hearing many songs: “We’ll meet again”; “There’ll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover”; “There’ll always be an England” and so on.  The Bible is full of stories about warfare, land and the importance of freedom and home.  As in our own time, we see times when this is good and important, and times when it leads to xenophobia and hatred of “the other”.  Not for nothing does the Bible repeatedly tell us to care for the stranger and the foreigner in our midst, often linking it to captivity in Egypt by adding “for you yourselves were strangers in the land of Egypt.” 

The second world war was a time of destruction, fear and difficulty for many nations, including our own.  It is right that we mark its ending and the great sacrifices that were made.  Let us however, never let that celebration, or any other that focuses on national pride, tip over into lack of care or expressions of hatred, for those who are foreigners among us.

God bless, Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

Don’t you just hate it when there are road works on the A4?  Tonight I was stuck in a tailback that hardly moved at all for nearly 20 minutes.  It’s hard to focus on the road in those circumstances and I found my eyes drawn to the verge, where a very young rabbit had hopped out to have a nibble at the grass on the side of the pavement next to the road.   I couldn’t quite believe that he dared to be so close to the cars.  Then I realised that what to me was only three feet of grass verge, to him was perhaps seven or eight times his length.  If it had been me, the road would have been 40 or 50 feet away and the grass a good 5 foot high.  I would have had no reason to be afraid of the road had I seen it from his perspective. 

The other day, Mark and I were in the kitchen listening to someone on the radio talking about the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe, when he noticed a tiny fruit fly on the window.  Letting it walk onto his finger so that he could throw it outside, he said to me, “This is such a nuisance to us, and yet it’s been perfectly formed over millions of years.  Can you imagine how we would feel about it if instead of finding it in our kitchen, we discovered it on another planet?”  We found ourselves feeling quite emotional about this little fruit fly, although I am afraid that we still threw it out of the window to fend for itself in the great outdoors!  Still, perspective is all. 

Our perspective on Easter, a festival we should be continuing to celebrate until Pentecost, is always different than for those first disciples, because we view it from the other side of Easter Sunday.  However moving the Holy Week services, we always know that Sunday is coming.  Yet if we can try to imagine it from God’s perspective, we are so tiny, no more significant than that little fruit fly, and yet he sent his son to die for us.  Can you imagine choosing to die so that a fruit fly could live?  Yet it’s even more than that, because he cares for us in a relational way.  He knows us.  He understands our lives, our choices, our mistakes, our strengths, and he died so that those would never be lost, so that whatever happened in our time on earth, our soul would survive for all eternity.  It would be a wonderful thing I think, if we could try to see each other from God’s perspective. 

God bless, Vicci

Thoughts for Easter by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

Alleluia!  Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed!  Alleluia

Easter morning has arrived and once again, there are the usual complaints from non-Christians about eggs being nothing to do with Christianity, the resurrection of Jesus or anything else remotely “Easter” like.  They will tell us that we Christians appropriated an ancient pagan festival, that the Easter bunny should be a hare and that there is no correlation at all between the egg and the empty grave.  We hear the same dialectic each year at Easter and at Christmas, and doubtless we would at Pentecost, if only those clever marketers at John Lewis et al had found a way to commodify it. 

The imagery of Easter is two-fold – the cross and the empty tomb; the chicks, eggs and bunnies.  For us, the cross and the empty tomb are self-explanatory, but it is unhelpful to ignore the other imagery as being nothing to do with us, or to let our non-believing friends tell us this is so.  Firstly, the earth and all that is created was created by and belongs to God.  Crafted by his hands, marked with his fingerprints, it is a nonsense to say that anything he has created belongs exclusively to another tradition.  The preponderance of chocolate reminds us that we have been fasting in one way or another.  The sweet things remind us that the days of fasting are over.  The chocolate eggs we give each other are empty – an image of the empty tomb.  However, other eggs are full, full of the potential for life.  At this time of year as lambs, chicks, bunnies and many other animals are born, we are reminded of the new life that Jesus promises and demonstrated through his death and resurrection.  Life that we are promised in a two-fold way: that our lives are renewed when we form them with Jesus at the centre, and that our deaths are merely a swinging door through which we pass to that great country where there is no more sighing, no more pain, no more suffering.  Easter is a promise for eternity, but it is also a commitment to life in all its fullness here and now.  Let us live these Easter weeks in renewed relationship with him who lived and died for us.

God bless, Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends,

“Hosannah in the highest!”

“Hosannah to the Son of David!”

“Hail to the King of Israel.”

“The Messiah is coming, riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, just like Judah Maccabee who threw out the Seleucid overlords and restored worship to the temple.”

“Do you think this donkey-rider will do it for us and throw out the Romans?”

“Hooray!  Hosannah!  Hallelujah!”

We can imagine the joy, the excitement, the sense of hope.  It has been 193 years since Judah Maccabee achieved the unthinkable, overthrowing the Seleucid empire and restoring worship in the temple.   There are none living at the time of Jesus who can remember it.  Nevertheless, the annual festival of Hannukah allows them to relive it each year, and 193 years is not that long.  193 years ago for us would be 1832, a year in which Charles Darwin began to sail “The Beagle” around the world thus developing his thinking towards the book “The Origin of Man”.  In additions, “Les Sylphides”, a romantic opera by Filippo Taglioni premiered in Paris and Donizetti’s opera “L’elisir d’amore” premiered in Milan.  All three works are still with us today.   It is totally believable that the story of Judah Maccabee was at the forefront of the people’s minds as they gathered to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday. 

The successful uprising that they imagined was not to be.  Instead, there was to be failure, death and the ending of all hope.  Then, of course, came the extraordinary events of Easter morning which re-wrote the script for what a successful “uprising” might mean and changed the behaviour of millions of people for millennia.  In our day of dwindling Church attendance and loss of interest in faith, what might this story say to us about our thinking around “success” and how it might compare with God’s thinking?

God bless, Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

As I write this, I can hear the bin-men emptying the bins along my road.  A report by the BBC over the weekend, highlighting the situation in Birmingham where strikes by refuse collectors have left more than 17, 000 tonnes of waste on the streets, has left me very grateful that my bins are being emptied.  It’s also left me thinking more than usual about the often thankless jobs that people do that help the smooth running of our lives.

One such job that has exploded post-covid, is the delivery driver who appears at the door with a variety of takeaway foods, allowing us to have almost anything we can imagine delivered.  All of this is very helpful on days like yesterday, when an unevenly replaced rack in the oven dropped my casserole all over the kitchen floor and left the manse family all coming into the kitchen saying: “Something smells wonderful… Oh!”   Thank goodness for the option of a quick takeaway!  It’s all a far cry from the days of Jesus when food was much simpler and much closer to the point of production.  Jesus and his followers ate fish they had caught themselves, plucked wheat-heads to nibble on from the fields that they walked through and heard his agricultural parables whilst walking past vineyards, fig trees and olive groves. 

In our day, it’s harder to remember where food comes from, apart from the supermarket or restaurant, and it’s easy to forget that every piece of household waste has to go somewhere.  As an early climate change activist said, “We think that we will throw it away, but there is no ‘away’”. 

Especially on nights like last night, I find myself caught between the dictates of good care for the climate that would deplore motorbikes rushing around to deliver ready-cooked meals to individual families, and the convenience of a quick takeaway when faced with the loss of my lovely casserole.  As the days grow longer and nature shows us all her created beauty, perhaps it’s a good moment to take stock of our buying in and throwing out habits, and to be extra grateful for all those people who do difficult and not always pleasant jobs so that we can enjoy the lives we have.

God bless, Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

Spring has sprung and some of you may have been spring cleaning.  The manse family has – always a big mission for us as we use the opportunity to take stock of our rooms and our family.  Is everyone in the right space for them at the moment?  This year, it has occasioned a significant upheaval as we re-allocate bedrooms to make sense of the growing family.  One of the joys of spring cleaning is that we think about hosting, and inviting visitors into our newly organised space.  The improving weather makes us wonder about the state of the barbecue and I start to think less about cake and more about salad.  (Not really!)

In his letter to the Hebrews, Paul strongly encourages the urge to offer hospitality, opening the 13th chapter like this: “Let mutual love continue.  Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” 

The second Celtic Daily Prayer Book from Lindisfarne quotes an ancient Celtic welcome, found over the door of an old inn in Wales, in connection with this passage:

Hail guest, we ask not what thou art;

If friend, we greet thee, hand and heart;

If stranger, such no longer be;

If foe, our love shall conquer thee. 

Whenever anyone walks newly across our threshold and joins us for Sunday worship, we try to live those words.  We don’t do it consciously, many of you will not have come across these words before reading them right now for the first time, but nevertheless, that is what we are trying to do when we speak our words of welcome, and ask where the visitor is from, and would they like coffee, and how have they found us? 

I take them as an encouragement then, to take these words to heart and to intentionally live them as we welcome visitors and newcomers alike to our churches over the next few weeks of lament and celebration.

God bless, Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

I wonder if you have had those conversations with non-faith friends that say something along the lines of “If God is real, why doesn’t he just do something really dramatic to prove it?”  Disregard for a moment one obvious answer (he did, two thousand years ago) and think for a moment about how God generally acts.  Often the stories of God and of God’s people are stories of ordinary people trying to live their lives in faith: messing up, making mistakes, but upheld by a God who loves them and is faithful to them.  That love is worked out, not through miraculous intervention, but through ongoing faithfulness and events that we sometimes only recognise God’s hand in retrospectively.  How many times have we said, “It wasn’t fun, but what came out of it was really amazing.”  Sometimes we can see that in other’s lives before they can.  Often that it because the thing that happened was too painful, but God doesn’t cause the painful thing to happen, he simply is able to work from within whatever it is to create something good in the end.  When he says, in Jeremiah 29:11 “I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future,” this is not about God planning bad things that he can turn into good ones, but about trusting that whatever happens, God can create good from it. 

It is amazing to me that there are people who can believe that they tripped on a paving stone and broke their arm because they smashed a mirror yesterday, but don’t see the hand of God when a whole series of events then unfolds because of who they meet at the hospital.   Put simply, if we believe that there is a God who loves us, we see his hand in every part of our lives, if we don’t then everything must be down to luck. 

We will probably never convince our non-believing friends through the strength of our own faith – we can only hold to it ourselves, speak of it when the opportunity arises, and pray that God will do the rest.  Nevertheless, God is at work in our lives, and as we draw closer to Easter once more, my prayer is that we will learn not to just to recognise his work of new life in us, but to look for it every day. 

God bless, Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

Impossible though it seems, it is now five years since a global pandemic plunged us into the most tumultuous time that many of us had ever experienced, upending the economy, destroying the mental health of many and stretching a struggling NHS almost to breaking point.  Of the 24,910,387 reported cases, 22,954,691 recovered, but it is the 232,112 who died who leave us feeling so bereft and underline our helplessness in those early days.  By March 2023, according to the House of Commons Library, an estimated 1.9 million people in the UK reported that they were experiencing long covid, and of course, there were all the people who didn’t get the medical interventions and operations that they would have had otherwise.  It was a terrible time and this Sunday, the 9th of March has been allocated by the government as a Day of Reflection to remember the pandemic and its impact on communities across the UK. 

The Methodist Church has offered this prayer to support our reflection:

Holy God, you are worthy of all praise, in times of sorrow and loss as well as in times of joy and celebration.  As we recall and mark five years since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic in the UK we hold before you all who died, often without contact with those they loved most dearly; all who mourned under restriction and limits; all who died in care homes, those who gave birth alone and all those who lost their jobs and livelihoods.

We give you thanks for the selfless care of so many in the NHS and care sectors and local services who supported and upheld us at great cost to themselves. 

We thank you for all we have learned as a consequence of all that was endured: the importance of relationships, the value of touch and face to face contact, and access to green spaces and fresh air.

We pray for all those who live with the impact of long covid, for children and young people whose lives were impacted in so many ways, and for local churches.

Hold us in your love and care, God of love, now and forever.  Amen

Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

I have recently returned from facilitating supervision training for the Methodist Church, a way of ensuring that our work remains safe for us and our congregants.  At its best, it helps all those employed by the Methodist Church, ordained and lay, to reflect on our work and thus to improve it.  It is something which I am proud to be a part of, and that I think we do very well. 

Although the word “supervision” may sound like someone looking over your shoulder in the style of the old “time and motion” people of the 1970’s, it’s not like that at all.  Rather, it is an opportunity to share a piece of one’s own work and to wonder:  “Could I have done this better?”  “What can I do about this in the future?”  The supervisor notices what is said and wonders what might be done, using various tools to explore the question that the supervisee brings.  In so doing, it is possible to help develop people’s understanding of their work, increase learning and heal difficulties or painful experiences.  Supervision relies on the idea that the supervisee has answers that are relevant to them and that these can be teased out by a skilled supervisor.  It is often much more powerful than the sort of response that says, “Well if I were you, I would…” because as my mother always says, “If you were me, you would do exactly what I’m doing.” 

Thinking about these things puts a new slant on some of the questions that Jesus asks: “If you love only those who love you, what reward do you have?  Don’t even the tax collectors do the same?  (Matthew 5:46)

Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your lifespan?  (Matthew 6:27)

Why do you notice the splinter in your sibling’s eye, yet fail to perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?  (Matthew 7:2)

Why are you so afraid?  (Matthew 8:26)

As we wrestle with these questions, and others like them, I would argue that we draw nearer to God.  In the same way, my colleagues and I seek to understand his will in our vocation as we work through our own questions in supervision.

God bless, Vicci

Thought for the week by Alan

Friends

We know so little about Christians in the Middle East. There is a silence about the Christians who live and worship there. Reading Revelations 8 vv 1 ‘when he opened the seventh seal there was silence in heaven for about half an hour’.

 The origins of the Christian communities in the Middle East are rooted in the birth and first development of Christianity in the old cities of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Damascus. Several million Christians continue to live in the Middle East at the beginning of the twenty-first century; most are scattered in Egypt (3.5 million), Jordan (150,000), Israel (105,000), the Palestinian territories (76,000), Syria (950,000), Lebanon (1.35 million), Iraq (615,000), Turkey (115,000), and Iran (150,000). Although their numbers have declined considerably in modern times, these communities represent an autochthonous Christian presence whose origins date further back than the birth and spread of Islam in the Middle East. Most Middle Eastern Christians are Arabs or, to a lesser extent, belong to such long-established groups as the Assyrians or the Armenians.

Middle Eastern Christianity is characterized by a plurality of churches, bearing witness to the rich cultural and religious life and the historical evolution of the Christian communities of the early centuries. In the nineteenth century, due in part to the increasing political and economic presence of the European states in the Middle East, many more Protestant and Latin missionaries arrived. The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem was restored in 1847, and at the same time Eastern Protestant communities were formed. After twenty centuries of historical evolution, the Eastern churches have been divided into four great families.

The various churches have their own institutions, including eparchies, community councils, various kinds of pastoral structures, ecclesiastical courts, and schools (in countries where confessional schools are allowed). One church's institutions often extend into the geographical regions of the other churches. The desires of individual churches to maintain their own identities and liturgical traditions has not prevented ecumenical activities, which led to the formation of the Council of the Churches of the Middle East (CCME) in 1974. All Middle Eastern Christian churches participate in the CCME, which helps to promote a more unified approach to the problems and issues facing Middle Eastern Christians. The prospect of ecumenism, even if it is sometimes difficult to achieve in concrete terms, is one of the few remaining sources of renewed energy for the Arab and Eastern churches in the long term.

Iran's Christian minority numbers are mostly ethnic Armenians and Assyrians, who follow Armenian Orthodox and Assyrian Church of the East Christianity respectively.

There are at least 600 churches serving the nation's Christian adherents. In spite of the fact that every country in the Middle East has at least a small number of worshippers of Christ and in spite of the fact that the vast majority of native Christians are Arabic speakers themselves, Christians in the Middle East are often isolated.

Prayer: O Lord our God, who brought your people into a good land, and sends showers of blessing that the earth shall yield its increase; flourish within us your gift of faith that, in our worship, our churches, our communities, and our lives, we may honour and renew your creation and join in obedience with the wind and the waters, the wilderness and the desert, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea, and all created things to give glory and praise to the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation, Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.

The Van Project update

The launch date is Pentecost (8th June) when we will be expecting to take the bus to three different locations (Maidenhead, Slough and Windsor). Exact venues are still being worked out. Any submissions for the name of the project, or volunteers to take part should be sent to the circuit administrator (thamesvalleyadm1n@gmail.com) in the first instance. Volunteers will meet the van at an agreed location, serve light refreshments and chat to the children and adults who come.

Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

One of my favourite hymns is “The right hand of God is writing in our land”.  At 715 in the hymnbook, it is one of the ones I looked for when Faith and Worship came out; I’m sure lots of us trawled the index to make sure that our own particular favourites had made the cut!  I first heard the hymn the second or third time that I went to worship in a Methodist church, and I found it very moving.  “If this is Methodism,” I thought, “then this is where I want to be.”  Written by Patrick Prescod for the inaugural gathering of the Caribbean Conference of Churches in 1973, it signifies God’s active presence and power working in the world, and specifically at that time, in the Caribbean.

It draws on biblical imagery of the hand of God signifying power and support.  Thus we read in Isaiah 48:13 “My hand laid the foundation of the earth and my right hand spread out the heavens.”  In Isaiah 41:13 we read, “For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you ‘Fear not, I am the one who helps you.’”  And in Ezra 7:28 we read, “I felt encouraged because the gracious hand of the Lord my God was on me.”

Inspirational and comforting though many have found such verses over the years, still we return to our calling as Methodists to be the right hand of God for others.  As Teresa of Avila said all the way back in the 16th century:

Christ has no body but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on the world,

Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,

Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body.

Christ has no body but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on the world,

Christ has no body now on earth, but yours.

God bless, Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

I woke up this morning to a mixed sense of curiosity and concern.  What is Donald Trump doing now?  What are the latest executive orders?  Can he really pardon all those people involved in the Capitol Hill riots?  In four years’ time, will he have somehow enacted a law that allows him to govern for even longer?  What effect will any of this have on the rest of the world?  What about climate change and the World Health Organisation?   

However, I cannot possibly continue to get on with life with one eye on Donald Trump, and anyway, I have no control over what he says and does.  As I gave myself a strong talking to this evening along those lines, I suddenly realised that if I had been scouring my Bible every couple of hours as avidly as I had been scouring the news for the next bit of information to come out of the White House, it would have been much more to the point. 

Karl Barth said, “Take your Bible and take your newspaper and read both.  But interpret newspapers from your Bible.” 

American politics is not our hill to climb.  However, we can note that Leviticus 19:33-34 says “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them.  The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born.  Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.  I am the Lord your God.”  As we read, we may re-confirm our own commitment to welcoming the asylum-seeker, the refugee, the migrant worker.  We can note the many, many verses on healing in the Bible and do everything that we can to ensure that healthcare remains accessible to all who need it, both in this country, and internationally.  We can read Amos 5:24 “But let justice roll on like a river, and righteousness like a never-failing stream”  and vow to make it mean something, at least in our own lives.

It is not our job to critique the politics of another nation, but discernment is considered to be a spiritual gift, and we should exercise it.  Carefully checking the ideas we are hearing on the news against our Bibles, our reason, our tradition and experience, we can ensure that we will know the things that we would not want to let go of in our own political discourse. 

God bless, Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

I have had an unusual number of encounters with ambulances over the last few days.  I always feel a moment of heightened adrenaline as I try to assess where the siren is coming from, and which manoeuvre I can most helpfully make.  Pulling over to the side is often the right decision, but you can risk damaging your tyres on unfamiliar verges.   Sometimes as well, you are better off getting out of the way entirely and that was the decision I took today when the lights had changed and I felt (correctly!) that I had time to turn across the junction before the ambulance got to it. 

As I looked in the rear-view mirror with some sense of satisfaction, I saw the ambulance tear across the junction a good five seconds after I had decided to cross.  I wondered, how often do I get out of people’s way spiritually, and how often am I tempted to stand in the middle of the road and encourage them to think what I think.

Jesus rarely told people what to think.  He told the disciples sometimes, when he felt they should have known better, and perhaps the Sermon on the Mount can be seen as quite prescriptive, but often he would simply tell stories and then get out of the way so that people could do their own thinking about what those stories meant.  I wonder what is more important to our development as Jesus’ people: the full theological understanding of the meaning behind the parable of the Good Samaritan, for example, or the wrestling with what it might mean from our own understanding, and therefore what it tells us about God.  After all, however thoroughly we understand the idea of the ambulance service, it’s only when we dial 999 and the paramedics show up that we start to have a real experience of what their response is all about.  Based on that experience, we either believe the ambulance service to be a good thing, or a bad thing, but it’s the experience that counts. 

Wrestling with the meaning of the parables by interpreting them through the lens of our own lives is how we really come to know and understand God, and that means sometimes we have to step aside from the clever and the learned and get out of our own way so that we can hear God speak. 

God bless, Vicci