Thoughts for the week by Rev’d Vicci Davidson

Brothers and Sisters

“The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” (Luke 3: 4b – 6)

In the middle of the Lamlash village green where I grew up, there is a small hillock. It makes no sense – the rest of the green is flat – and apart from small children climbing to the top and rolling down, it has no function. Or so we thought. Until one night a local farmer who was plagued with a pointless hole in the middle of a field that was almost exactly the size of the hillock came and took it away smoothing down the green and simultaneously removing the enormous pothole in his own land.

The valley was indeed filled and the hill made low. However, the ensuing furore was immense. We may have all thought that it was a pointless hillock, but actually, it was the vantage point from which the local minister had blessed those about to sail to Canada in inadequate ships having been forced to emigrate by English landowners during the time of the clearances, when small-scale tenant-farmers were thrown off the land to allow for sheep to be farmed. The little hillock was representative of a massive mountain that these people had to climb in order to survive on the other side of the world. The farmer had solved the visible problem – the lumpy green and the holey field – but the underlying history of a people who were dispossessed because of greed could not be dealt with by removing the memory. Such things need long healing and careful conversation, repentance, sorrow and a determination to learn from the past. The promise of Jesus is like this: The valley will be raised up and the hill be smoothed over and the road will become easier, but not in a casual, fly by night sort of way, but through the long care, the self-sacrifice, the determination of a caring God to bring redemption and healing to those who would turn away from greed and love of power and towards his kingdom values of mercy and justice and a humble walk with a loving Father. May this Advent be for us a time to understand this truth more deeply than ever before as we prepare for the coming of our Lord.

God bless,

Vicci

Thoughts for the week by Rev’d Vicci Davidson

Brothers and Sisters At this time of year, with Advent calendars being opened and Christmas trees going up in at least some homes, with early Christmas celebrations vying with Advent we are perhaps more aware than any other time of the cost of everything. The presents, the food, the crackers, the extras, the parties and the staff lunches, the Christmas cards or the notice on Facebook to tell all your friends that you are not sending cards this year but have instead purchased a flock of chickens or a goat for a family being supported by Oxfam. It all costs, and we complain or at the very least note, that the cost of living is going up and up.

The cost of a life in the time of Jesus was 30 pieces of silver – that’s why Judas was paid that much, 1600 years earlier in the time of Joseph, his brothers sold him for 20 shekels of silver. A shekel was worth around 60p and a piece of silver was around £18 so over 1600 years, price had gone up from about £12 to about £540. When we look at the lives of so many of our brethren who are being impacted by deforestation, by flooding, by lack of water, we may want to say that the cost of living has indeed gone up, but the cost of a life has never been lower.

Over the next few weeks, as we consider how to celebrate with and for our own loved ones, we can perhaps also wonder about how to speak to the value of every life in this world. It may be that we choose to shop from one place rather than another, or to adopt an animal or support a village or one of the other myriad ways in which we can try to make a difference. Perhaps most importantly though, we can in our own thinking and conversation remember that all people matter. God made all of us in his own image and that must mean something more than just a saying – it must mean that we treat all people, even those we don’t know, as important.

During this first week in Advent, we remember that the first candle is associated with God’s people and with hope. As God’s people we hope for the promised return of Christ, but also the coming ever nearer of the perfecting of God’s kingdom. A perfection that can surely only be when all people matter as much to us as they do to God.

God bless you this Advent-tide.

Vicci

‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. '

With the permission of Dr Micha Jazz, author of Every Day with Jesus, here are his notes based on Matthew 11:25-30.

‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.’ (v28-29) ‘At times, we feel the weight of life heavy upon our shoulders. It takes the edge off everything. There are remedies, many quite debilitating. Those in management roles tell me they get home and reach for a glass of wine to relax them. I’m not critical, I’ve had my flirtations with alcohol dependence, both the buzz and to quieten my anxiety.

Burden is an idea that originates from the drone we associate with bees. What starts as a background sound we can easily ignore, eventually dominates and becomes all we can hear, interrupting our peace of mind and the focus of every waking moment.

Any of us can be subject to a dominant theme that grows into an intolerable burden to wear us down. Many marriages lose their way, distance grows between child and parent, work pressures no longer lift on our commute home.

Again God invites us to respond to His invitation to lay our burdens on Him. In exchange, we yoke ourselves to God so that now we work in concert in managing them better. Whilst solutions aren’t immediately apparent, we can find confidence, despite our worst fears, and experience inner peace.

This is a process we improve as we move through life. We can learn to exchange fear and anxiety for the presence of God as we are joined in heart with our loving Father.

A prayer to make:

‘Lord, teach me to bring my burdens to You daily, and find my promised rest. Amen.’

Community Youth Worker

An exciting new opportunity has opened up in the Thames Valley Methodist Circuit. Reporting to the Superintendent Minister the prime focus of the role will be to engage with families and young people across the circuit, which covers Maidenhead, Slough and Windsor. This is a part time appointment, averaging 20 hours per week. For further details please see the Church notice board.

Windsor Foodshare:

Because of the increasing demand on Foodshare, our church has restarted weekly collections. The basket can be found at the front of the Church and your contributions will be most welcome.

Thoughts for the week by Rev’d Vicci Davidson

Brothers and Sisters,

Only a few weeks after the brutal killing of Sir David Amess MP, I find myself less inclined than usual to mark Guy Fawkes Day. Part of me enjoys the fun, the fireworks and the opportunity for one last sausage and soup picnic before the year really is too cold, and part of me finds that which we are remembering is too close to the knuckle. Of course, we are celebrating the failure and not the success of Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators, but faced with this recent assassination, with the inevitable memories of Jo Cox and before her of the bombing of the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton, it puts me slightly on edge. And then of course, there are the dogs who are petrified of the “big bangs” and all those who, having escaped to this country from a place where bombing and shootings were commonplace may be re-traumatised by what we see as a celebration.

On the other hand, it is a very British response to tough times. We take them, we laugh at them, we subvert them, we make them into something else. Ring-a-ringa-roses was a song about dying from the plague; Baa baa black sheep was about workers’ rights and Georgie-Porgie, Pudding and Pie was about inappropriate sexual demands made by someone who was too powerful to refuse. Songs that have become children’s ditties were originally reminders, teaching tools and a way of claiming back some power.

This upside-down, back-to-front way of seeing the world is perhaps a reflection of our understanding of the upside-down of Kingdom values; our interpretation of teaching that says “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you”, and takes the cursed death of hanging on a tree, mixes it with the ritual uncleanliness of blood, and declares it to be God’s way of washing clean the sins of humanity. Whether the back-to-front nature of taking the Great Fire of London and writing a song about it to be sung as a four part children’s round is in fact Godly, or simply a particular way of healing difficulty through dark humour, it is true that we are called to live in this strange world of God’s where the first will be last and the last will be first, where it is easier for a small child to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than a rich and educated ruler and where the blind can be healed, but the priests and the Pharisees see less and less of what is going on.

Whatever the case, when we see those sparkling fountains in the night sky, let’s send up after them a prayer of thanksgiving for Jesus, the light of the world.

God bless,

Vicci

Thoughts for the week by Rev’d Vicci Davidson & a request to all knitters/crotchetiers (see below)!

Brothers and Sisters,

This Sunday falls on All Hallows’ Eve or Halloween as it has come to be called. The day before All Saints’ Day on the 1st and All Souls’ Day on the 2nd of November. It ushers in what has become a season of remembrance in the Church with Remembrance Sunday to follow.

In the very early days of the church, Christian martyrs were given a day to mark their martyrdom and so for example, St Stephen’s Day, marking the death of the very first Christian martyr is on the 26th of December, although we more usually call it Boxing Day. Eventually though, there were so many martyrs that we simply ran out of days in the year and so in the 8th century, the 1st of November was declared All Saints’ Day to mark the death of all the martyrs. It was then decided to designate the 2nd of November All Souls’ Day to mark those who had died in the faith. Over the years in various well-meaning sermons, I have heard preachers say that we are all saints and that All Saints’ Day is for everyone. I do believe we are all saints in one meaning of the word, and I do believe that when we sing “For all the Saints, who from their labours rest” we are talking about all those who have gone before us, but I sort of want to reclaim both days, because it is no small thing to have died because of your faith and although we do not usually run that risk in this country, still today there are countries where those who affirm Jesus as Lord are putting themselves at risk.

Perhaps because of Newton’s 3rd law (“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”) when faced with the celebration of All Saints and All Souls, the ancient Celtic tradition that ghosts returned to earth on the 31st of October before their New Year on the 1st of November, was marked by certain people as a time when the fabric between earth and heaven became thin, and people dressed up to scare off the ghosts or perhaps to confuse them. Who is to say? We are faced with the inevitable march of capitalism which requires that any and every day that can be turned into an opportunity to demand money shall do so and we now have the chocolate consuming, zombie-fest that is today’s Halloween. Like it or loathe it, it is here to stay for the moment, but whether we put up a pumpkin and offer the 6-year-old witch some sweeties, or whether we close our doors and curtains and pretend to be away, let’s take some time this week to remember all those who have gone before us and whose teaching and actions has lit for us the path that leads to Heaven.

God bless,

Vicci

Reminder of Rev’d Vicci’s request to all knitters/crotchetiers!

“As we move towards the darker evenings of winter, and thoughts of Christmas with Angel hosts singing of peace and praise, I wonder if members of the congregation would like to create angels to give away, as we did last year. The knitted angel project encourages churches to knit angels, attach a small label saying “A gift from Windsor Methodist Church” including our website, and possibly an invite to bring them to church to be blessed (to be confirmed) and then distribute them by putting them through neighbours doors, and leaving them on walls and trees to be picked up by delighted strangers passing by. So, will you join me in knitting (or crocheting) angels to spread across Windsor this Christmas, sharing once more the Good News that angels first sang to the world. The pattern can be found here:

http://www.christmasangel.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Christmas-Angel.pdf

Brothers and Sisters

The founder of our Methodist movement, John Wesley, considered there to be two types of holiness: personal holiness, which is growing your personal relationship with God and social holiness, which is showing love to others through caring for their physical needs.  This understanding takes very seriously such passages in the Bible as James 2:15-17 – “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?”

I want to both challenge and affirm this.  On the one hand, when Wesley talked about social holiness, he was talking about holiness through worship, partaking in holy communion, Bible Study and hymn singing.  He felt that withdrawing from the world in search of a purely individual holiness was not the way to go.  Yet at the same time, he was passionate about social justice, which is what we have come to see social holiness as meaning.  Wesley and his friends visited the sick, the dying and those in prison, worked for social reform, education, abolition of slavery and against the distillers – not so much because he was anti-alcohol as because they unfairly exploited the poor.  John Wesley was all for social justice, but when he spoke about social holiness, that is not what he meant.

However, language and its meaning changes through the generations as we know.  The important thing is not so much which words John Wesley used to describe it, but what he intended Methodism to be about.  Written into our DNA is the singing, the preaching, the learning but also the caring, the social justice, the determination that we will not rest until our mother’s glib response to our cries of “It’s not fair” with “Life’s not fair” should cease to be true. 

Life at the moment is not fair.  We see it in the fear and the worry in the world around us where we are faced with political assassination, concerns as to rising costs and worries about shortages.  I would suggest however that a Methodist response to the reality that life is not fair, is to figure out why and for whom and dig down into how we change the story.  We will not be able to change it for everyone, but this winter, let’s strive to make life a little bit fairer for those who are put in front of us.  Whether we call it social justice, social holiness or living the Jesus way, it’s what we are called to do and who we are called to be as Methodists. 
God bless, Vicci

More thoughts about holiness from Rev'd Vicci

Brothers and Sisters

Last week, I spoke a little about personal holiness, and today I thought I would write on corporate holiness.  1 Peter 2:9 tells us:

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty arts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.”

This of course has resonances of the promise God made to the Jewish people when he first called Abraham (or perhaps when he called to all people and only Abraham answered him).  Now however, the call to be God’s chosen ones, a holy people set apart, is for all, or at least for all who heed God’s call, who repent and turn to him through the mercy offered by Christ. 

This passage reminds us that all are called and all are welcome, even if not all respond.  But it is also a passage that reminds us that we must not be critical and unkind to our fellow members of the Church.  We are all a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation and we are called both to be holy and to recognise our familial ties to all others who proclaim Jesus as Lord and God as Father.  It’s not that we cannot note or give advice when things are not being done correctly, but it is that we are all grafted into the same vine, which is Christ Jesus, and that the health of each branch affects us all, and so we should and we must care for each branch.

We are all guilty of criticising “The Methodist Church” when we see another set of requirements that call us to be still more professionalised in our response, still more administratively organised, to find still more time to ensure that everything is not just being done, but also being planned and recorded appropriately.  Some days, these requirements can feel incredibly difficult, and I am so grateful to the many people in this circuit who shoulder that burden with good humour and care.   It is not an obvious leap to say that this very activity of form-filling and risk assessing is an example of corporate holiness, and yet it is designed to keep us as a body on the straight and narrow, so that we can be and can be seen to be, a body of people who are doing things as well as is humanly possible and then giving that to God.   

God bless

Vicci

Thoughts for the week by Rev’d Vicci Davidson

Brothers and Sisters, I have, incredible though it seems, been writing these “thoughts for the week” for a year now and thought that I would do a short series on holiness. I will look at personal holiness this week, corporate holiness next week and social holiness the week after. (Then I’m going on leave for a week to recover!)

The meaning of the word holy is “set apart or consecrated to God” and personal holiness therefore means the idea that we set ourselves apart for God. It requires that we ask God to receive our lives as a gift for him to use as he will, and it is a returning to God that which he gives us by giving us free will. We say that we recognise and are grateful for our free will, but we choose to use that free will to do the things that we believe God wants us to do so that as we read in 1 Peter 2:5: You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

The problem is that to do that really well, we would need to be aware every second of every day that this is the goal and dedicate every second of every day to God, and that is not an easy task. As we seek to put into place in our lives patterns of prayer, Bible Study and attendance at worship, we are more able to stitch the reminder that this is what we have offered God into the fabric of our lives, but it takes these disciplines to remind us, and they themselves can fall by the wayside if we are not careful. Personal holiness requires a decision to go deeper in our discipleship, to leave the nets and the fishing behind us and follow Jesus.

As we watch the news trumpeting the contents of the so-called “Pandora papers” we see illegal behaviour, but legal behaviour that just feels unethical in the face of the great inequalities of the day. Personal holiness is about taking a decision, not because it is the law, but because it is the right thing to do. I have never forgotten my mother telling me of the time when, as a young nurse, she asked her father’s advice about joining her colleagues in strike action. He advised her that she should do what her conscience dictated, but that if her striking colleagues won extra pay or better conditions, she could not accept what others had fought for if she had remained at work herself. Personal holiness is about taking the Jesus-road, even when that is a tough decision. May you be blessed in your seeking of that path this week.

God bless,

Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev’d Vicci Davidson & Celebration of the Victorian Revival

A wonderfully different service led by Rev’d Vicci to celebrate the Victorian Revival of Methodism in Windsor, many of the congregation dressed in styles of the Victorian era and enjoyed singing some of the beautiful old hymns and listened to a sermon by ‘Gypsy’ Smith. Cake and conversation followed this special time, if you missed it this year not to worry as it will be repeated!

Thought for the week by Rev’d Vicci Davidson

I wonder how many of you remember the old hymn:

When we walk with the Lord in the light of his Word

What a glory is shed on our way

When we do his good will, he abides with us still

And with all who will trust and obey.

Trust and obey, for there’s no other way

To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.

It hasn’t made it into the new hymn book – perhaps the sentiments are too Victorian – but I have been thinking about it quite a lot this week as we have seen the fuel shortage problem roll out across the country. There was an initial breach of confidentiality in the leaking of the story anyway, but from then on, a lack of trust in government voices telling us that there is enough fuel if we just continue to buy as normal, and perhaps lack of trust in each other, since we can see people are not buying as normal, has resulted in massive queues at the pumps. Even where we are not looking to buy petrol at all, journey times have been exaggerated to the point that a trip that should have taken me between 15 and 20 minutes on Saturday morning ended up taking me 80 minutes as I got caught in successive tailbacks.

This is not the place for commentary on contemporary British politics, but God’s Kingdom demands of us that we trust his Word and are obedient to his counsel. I am lucky in that I had just filled up my car a couple of days before all of this started and so am able to hold the line and not join the panicstricken fuel buying, but I can see that it is hard to trust that things will be okay quickly and my family are getting increasingly concerned about how they get to work if it carries on for much longer. Yet we know we can trust God’s word, that we are loved, that we matter, that the world matters and that there is enough – enough to eat, enough to drink, enough to wear and enough worry for the day, but not to borrow worry from tomorrow. As many of you will have learned it in the King James version: “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” or as the NRSV has it: Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. (Matthew 6:34)

God bless,

Vicci

Words from John Wesley and a Reflection from our own minister Rev'd Vicci Davidson

On 24th May, 1738 …….. John Wesley said, “I Felt My Heart Strangely Warmed 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. ………………… “ And founded the Methodist Church. Thanks be to God!

Inspiring words by Rev’d John Wesley: “Give me your hand. I do not mean, ‘Be of my opinion.’ You need not: I do not expect it or desire it. Neither do I mean I will be of your opinion. I cannot. Keep your opinion; I mine; and that as steadily as ever. You need not endeavour to come over to me or bring me to you. Only give me your hand. We must act as each is fully persuaded in their own mind. Hold fast that which you believe is most acceptable to God, and I will do the same. Let all these smaller points stand aside. If your heart is as my heart, if you love God and all humankind, I ask no more. Simply, give me your hand. John Wesley”

Thought for the week by Rev’d Vicci Davidson

When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see… In Exodus, we read of Moses and the burning bush. It is one of our seminal stories and we are very familiar with it. Moses sees a bush burning without being consumed by the fire and he wonders how that could be. So he stops and goes and has a look and “When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see” he spoke to him and nothing was ever the same again. The story of the Jews and their relationship with the land to which Moses led them has resonated throughout the histories of Jews, Christians and Muslims and through the Middle East, America and Europe ever since.

And I have a question. What if the bush had been burning for some considerable time? What if several shepherds had passed by but it was only Moses who stopped to have a look? What if God is constantly calling to multiple people but only some of them ever stop to listen? What if you or I, our attention momentarily caught by some anomaly, stopped and went close – turned aside to see – and said, “Lord, was that you?” What might we hear?

As I write, there are only four more days until I can finally let my granddaughter move the symbol on her picture calendar from summer to autumn. The hedgerows and the trees through which we drive, or walk will shortly start to change colour and briefly before they drop, we may have a moment when, catching early morning or late evening sunlight through golden leaves, we too might wonder if it is aflame. Perhaps it is a moment in which we are called to pause, to send up that quick prayer: Lord, are you calling me?

Or perhaps more truthfully: Lord, I hear your call. To what are you calling me? In his book “Called or Collared?” Francis Dewar makes the case that we are all called, and that sometimes people, sensing the call, assume it is to ordained ministry because that is what they associate with vocation. But actually he says, we are all called to something and finding out what that something is can be the work of a lifetime.

As I look around the churches in which I serve and see the dedication and the vocation of so many, I am in no doubt that many are responding to the call. Nevertheless, perhaps the autumn, with its flame-filled trees and bushes, is a challenge to us all to turn aside for a moment and say “What would you have me do Lord?”

God bless,

Vicci

Every Day with Jesus

With the permission of Dr Micha Jazz, author of Every Day with Jesus, here are his notes for Sunday 19 September based on Ecclesiastes 7:8-9.

‘The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride.’ (v8) ‘My many years serving as a mediator gave me the privilege of being brought into diverse disputes. From commercial disagreements to relational breakdown, most people are captured by their past and present, rather than their future.

Ending well is something Jesus illustrates perfectly. Yielding to His call and refusing to be bated by the insults of His enemies or the disappearance of His friends. Hanging on the cross, He calls upon His Father to forgive all who reject Him, even though they casually get on with their own lives, still ignoring the suffering servant (Luke 23:24).

Jesus was incarnate for the long game, turning a lost people back to God and re-establishing friendship forever. Obviously, there was a need to recognise and repent of past faults, yet the reason was never for what lay behind but for as your unrealised possibilities.

Too often, past and present experiences can blind us to tomorrow’s opportunities. We find ourselves making little progress along perpetual culde-sacs because we’ve failed to consider the nature of the context in which we find ourselves. Mediators speak of ‘win-win outcomes’, reminding conflicted parties that there is a price attached. Jesus knew the price tag – and paid it. Will we respond and live for all the future opportunities available to us within the conflicts we face, both internal and external?

Related scripture to consider: Psalm 32; Isaiah 44:21-23; Matt 5:21-26, 6:5-16.

An action to take: Are there unresolved issues that disturb your peace of mind? Ask God how you might best respond and let go of the past to take hold of your future.

A prayer to make: ‘Lord, forgive me, and in owning my past, help me to walk into my future hand in hand with You. Amen.’

Thought for the week by Rev’d Vicci Davidson

My diary is full of extra visits and services for baptisms and funerals at the moment, and I am made freshly aware of the cyclical nature of life where we celebrate birth and death. In the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, in the order for the burial of the dead, we have these words: “Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower, he fleeth as if it were a shadow and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life, we are in death; of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee O Lord, who for our sins are justly displeased?” They are words from a Mediaeval anthem, which itself takes words from the book of Job. As I was thinking about the cyclical nature of things, and those words “Even in the midst of life, we are in death” I realised that what we are currently seeing is a reversal of this: Even in the midst of death, we are in life. I have baptised more babies in the last year than in the three previous ones; the Circuit has received the news of the closure of two of its village churches with sorrow, and yet five new Fresh Expressions congregations have started or are about to start: Lego Church with Margaret at Colnbrook and Poyle; Gospel Church with Anne at St Andrews; Breakfast Church at High Street; Prayers and Bears at Cookham Rise and Teatime for the Soul at Windsor with me. We had five teens and tweens at Life, the Universe and Pizza, led by Elanor on Friday and 12 under-12s at ALOUD!! the singing and ukulele group on Saturday.

As I prepare for a service at Windsor next week to celebrate the lives of those who died during the preceding lockdowns, we are already looking forward to growth and development around the Circuit. We serve a risen Saviour and on days like today when I have met still one more delightful baby waiting to be baptised and heard at the Circuit Leadership Team the work being done in all our churches I am so aware of it. Today we can look forward with worry, concerned that we will once more be locked down, that our freedoms will be taken from us and that fear will win, or we can look forward with hope and wonder that Christ Jesus lives today and walks among us on our streets, in our congregations and in the stillness of our hearts.

God bless.

Vicci

Every Day with Jesus & local news update

With the permission of Dr Micha Jazz, editor of Every Day with Jesus, here are his notes for 2 September, based on Psalm 89: 1-4 ‘I will declare that your love stands firm for ever, that you have established your faithfulness in heaven itself.’ (v 2)

Paul, writing to the Corinthian Church, states that ‘love never fails’ (1 Cor: 13:8a). Unfailing love can and will outlast everything. A church as fragmented as that in Corinth needed to heed his reminder to express such love.

Today, our model is Jesus, who emptied Himself to live on earth and whose love did not fail throughout all the agonies of injustice and execution He experienced. In moments of intense pressure, we need both to know the reality of, and invest our hope in, the unfailing love of God.

We seldom go to bed imagining that whilst asleep the world will radically change. There is some comfort in the regular rhythms offered by the seasons. Indeed, we navigate our days by the celebrations that mark out our year. Such rhythms give order and confidence to our daily lives.

When such rhythms are broken, through the loss of a loved one or the terror of a global pandemic, we can experience a rapid rise in stress. It’s important, therefore, to remind ourselves of God’s permanent and unfailing love, even as we feel blown this way and that by forces beyond our control. In it we discover the strength to go on.

This is why we declare our confidence in God’s never failing presence each and every day. Our verbal affirmation resonates throughout creation in affirmation of the Lord of the universe.

Related scripture to consider: 1 Kings 4:29-34; Psa. 62:1-8; Luke 1:46-55; 1 Cor. 2:1-10.

An action to take: Establish daily rhythms with God, in your prayer and Bible encounter, for only by standing on the rock, who is Christ, will we endure uncertain times (Matt. 7:24-29

A Prayer to make: ‘Lord, in peace we shall lie down and sleep, for You alone make us dwell in safety. Amen.’

Windsor ChurchFest took place last Sunday afternoon and was a great success for us and for the organisers, Churches Together in Windsor. Rev’d Vicci thanks everyone for their part in supporting this fantastic achievement. Those of us present felt that Vicci really put WMC in the spotlight for her brilliant concluding Service.

Church Fest this Sunday afternoon from 12.00 - 6pm

At Clewer Memorial Recreation Ground (aka Pirate Park) Each church in Windsor will be providing an activity to enjoy on the day. Bring your own picnic.

Each church in Windsor will be providing an activity to enjoy on the day. Bring your own picnic. The event will conclude with Community Worship led by our own minister, Rev'd Vicci Davidson. Please come and support our church and enjoy this family day out.

HELP NEEDED PLEASE! If you are able to help for an hour or two by manning our tent and handing out leaflets, balloons etc with a smile, please contact one of the Leadership Team

Thought for the week by Rev’d Vicci Davidson

Friends

2 Corinthians: 4 – 16 – Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.

Are you a glass half-empty or a glass half-full sort of person? Do you read this and think “Every day I become a day older” or do you think, “Every day, I become a day wiser”? There is of course a third option: you could ask for a smaller glass, tip the contents into it and claim your glass is full to the brim. Many of us will remember singing the children’s chorus:

Running over, running over

My cup’s full and running over

Since the Lord saved me,

I’m as happy as can be,

My cup’s full and running over.

I am going to be away on leave from this Sunday until the 26th of August and, having had no leave yet this year, I am looking forward to it very much. For some of us, this summer will bring holiday and rest, and for others a slow return to work or normal life, and still others some fear still that the virus is out there, and life is not easy or normal and may not be so again, at least for a very long time.

Paul, in his writing to the early Christians at Corinth, recognises many of these issues. Life in every time and place has its own challenges, and for some those are very difficult indeed. Yet he writes with hope, and more with faith, of the inward renewal by the Holy Spirit, through our relationship with Christ. So let us this summer seek renewal and refreshment in our outward lives as we perhaps enjoy meeting with friends, or the beauty of parks and gardens, and our inward lives as we pray and read our Bibles and meditate on the word of God. Perhaps also, we might wonder whether part of what the last 18 months have given us is an understanding that a smaller glass can be full all the way to the top and that simply wanting less can allow our needs to be filled fully.

Inwardly, we are being renewed day by day. What a hope, what a faith to draw on.

God bless,

Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev’d Vicci Davidson

Friends

In Isaiah 40:30-31 we read this: Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.  They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. 

It is a reminder to me, this verse, that I have not become quick-tempered, fractious and incautious with my words overnight; instead, a year without time off has caught up with me.  We all need a rest, and I am greatly looking forward to my leave in two weeks’ time. 

Outside my window sometimes, I see red kites flying, high up above.  They are a success story of returning wildlife to places where it has died out.  And they remind me of this verse.  I grew up on the West Coast of Scotland, on the Isle of Arran.  I have seen the eagles soar, and I know that they may have to work hard to fly up to find the wind currents, when they find the right place they no longer need to flap, or make any effort really, instead they spread their wings and the wind takes them as they rest on it, swooping and wheeling and soaring in apparent effortlessness. 

I dream sometimes of flying, but more often, when I realise I am flying, I fall.  My brain, becoming aware of the dream as an impossibility, jerks me awake in that sudden jolt of adrenaline that means sleep will be some little time coming again. 

And yet…

The Holy Spirit is likened to wind.  We don’t know where it comes from or where it is going to, but we hear it, we feel it, we see the results of it passing.  For me this verse from Isaiah and these red kites flying remind me, yes of the importance of holiday rest, but also of the importance of just resting in the Spirit sometimes, of letting go and letting God take us where he will, high or low, to feel the presence of the Spirit.

Even eagles cannot soar for ever.  Nests must be built, food must be caught, chicks must be hatched, guarded and taught.  The basic stuff of life is the same for all living things.  But sometime this summer, let us take ourselves somewhere quiet and make a date with the wind of God, that we too may soar like eagles, resting in his presence, and born up by his Spirit. 

God bless, Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev’d Vicci Davidson

Friends

Well, the long-awaited moment has arrived and this Sunday we can sing again in church. Freedom though has come with more of a whimper than a bang and although we travel hopefully, we know that it’s not all over yet. I am telling my children to remember this because in fifty years’ time their local primary school will be asking them to come in and tell the children of the day all about the great COVID lockdown of 2020 and how it went on into 2021 and the terrible shortage of eggs and flour and how Amazon and Zoom between them took over the world. And yet, even as I note the A to Z inherent in that flippant statement, I am reminded that it is God who said: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”

As we seek to find God in COVID and in these days through which we live, we are reminded that the faithful have lived through plague and war, fear and triumph for two thousand years and will likely do so again. I was fascinated to read in Jean Kirkwood’s wonderful little book “The Centenary Story” that “..throughout the country, the non-conformist churches lost ground in the early 1850’s and membership of the Wesleyan church slumped particularly. 100,000 members had been lost in the five years 1850 to 1855 and the Home Missions Department was created in 1856 to meet the challenge. Various reasons have been suggested why this might have happened ranging from emigration to the poverty caused by the Crimean War and in Wesleyan Methodism following unfortunate internal wrangling, but there was also an increasingly secular use of the Sabbath.” Jean goes on to speak of thousands of people on excursion trains to London and shops open and tradesmen doing business and all of these things that were concerning the churches in the 1850s continue and have their impact today. There is truly nothing new under the sun. The penultimate paragraph of Jean’s book says this: “Our church still stands on the corner of Alma Road …the symbol that in his strong compassion, God stoops from his everywhere down to our here. Because there were always men and women who did not lose heart when the going was tough and did not become slack when the going was easy.” May it be so for us in our time.

God bless,

Rev’d Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev’d Vicci Davidson Friends

“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” Matthew 4:4. I wonder how many of you, like me, learned this in Sunday School and can still remember it, if not chapter and verse, then certainly remember the words.

I wonder how many of you noticed that it started “Man” as opposed to “Humanity” or “People”? I wonder of those of you who noticed, how many thought it mattered? I am of a generation where it was still totally normal to learn these verses in the King James version and completely understood that “man” used in this context, meant humanity. It didn’t really bother me that much, although there were times when the easy assumption of my peers that I couldn’t do something because I was a woman was an irritant and the Anglicans lost me in 1990 because my Vicar wouldn’t allow me as a woman to train as a lay reader. Now of course, that would be unlikely to happen, but I am a Methodist through and through.

However, whatever our position on these things, the Methodist Conference has asked us to be very intentional about using inclusive language. As the mother of a female mechanic, I understand that there is a need for this. I recognise that a company proud of having female mechanics can quickly become one that singles out the one or two they have in a field where it is still rare, and I also recognise that this can be embarrassing and belittling, as if somehow it is the fact that Sophie is a woman, rather than her top marks at college that make her of interest to the company.

In Galatians 3:28 we hear “In Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female for all of you are one in Christ.” We will not always be perfectly right as we seek to be inclusive, but let us try to be as careful of each other as we can so that no-one feels excluded, and when we notice someone else getting it wrong, let us also be understanding of the ways in which old habits die hard and the King James verses that we learned with such discipline as youngsters still roll off the tongue. Let us be kind both in our trying to be inclusive and in our trying to understand each other’s history.

God bless,

Rev’d Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev’d Vicci Davidson

Brothers and Sisters

The weather really has changed and as we get out our sandals, we also start to experience something of the dirt and the dust on our feet that would have been the daily experience of Jesus and his contemporaries. That dust, in a world where walking was the usual way around, was inevitably uncomfortable, and so the rules of hospitality involved bringing a bowl of water and a towel to wash your guests’ feet. When Jesus visits the home of Simon where his feet are washed and anointed by a woman who dries them with her hair Jesus points out that she has only done in an exaggerated way, what Simon should have done as a matter of course.

By and large, our feet remain quite clean. The roads of 21st century Britain are not as dusty as 1st century Palestine and we walk far less than our far-off ancestors. I wonder what our equivalency might be? That regular gesture of hospitality which, when offered in kindness and care shows regard for the needs of those who visit us at home or at church. Perhaps it is the regular coffee, tea and biscuits that are our equivalency, or perhaps in such weather as this, we could offer fruit juice as a refreshing alternative after church as an extra touch of hospitable thinking.

More than anything however, I would suggest that when Mary Magdalene, noticing that an act of hospitality had been omitted, made up for it with shameless generosity, she was modelling something very important. The jar of nard was often worn around a woman’s neck, added to whenever possible, developing a pension pot for future need. This was not a premeditated action perhaps, but instead a wiping out of the rudeness by treating the slighted Jesus with extra love and extra care, using what was to hand.

How wonderful to spot that something has been left out, someone has been hurt or treated with disrespect, and without saying anything to anyone else, to make up for it a thousand-fold. Next time we realise our feet are particularly grubby after a day in sandals, we might use it as a chance to reflect on how best we make sure that no-one in our church feels left out, hurt or treated with disrespect. To notice and repair the hurt is surely part of our calling as the followers of he who washed his disciples’ feet two thousand years ago.

God bless,

Rev’d Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev’d Vicci Davidson

Brothers and Sisters

After Jesus had been raised from the dead, he appeared to the disciples on more than one occasion. In the Gospel of Luke we read: Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised: so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.

” Just as Jesus asked his disciples to wait for Pentecost, so we too wait. Perhaps this year that waiting is more potent than ever before, because for the first time we are waiting for something that is more than just a special service in our churches. We are waiting in some cases for our churches to re-open, we are waiting for a tomorrow, when our lives as we remember living them start to return, we are waiting for an opportunity to move forward into the dynamic outreach that we have been planning for over this fallow period. And so it was for the disciples. The ministry of Jesus on earth had come to a dramatic full stop on Good Friday, an extraordinary – some would say unbelievable – resurrection on Easter morning and then he had left them, returning to heaven with a promise that if they waited, he would not leave them alone.

What did they think he meant? The writers do not record it. What we know is that on that first Pentecost something happened – something which was inexplicable, and which changed the disciples from nervous people hiding away to confident evangelists, spreading the news of the Gospel to the four corners of the world. As we celebrate Pentecost this year, let us pray that we too should have the confidence in our faith to share it when we feel called to do so, and the power in our words that allowed Peter to preach for ten minutes and have three thousand added to their number.

Now of course, I understand that we don’t have space for another three thousand just now, but let’s step out in faith and in hope to share the love of God in our communities this year.

God bless,

Vicci

Prayers for India and Brazil

We continue to lift up those around the world who are greatly affected by the Coronavirus pandemic especially in India and Brazil. We pray for peace, comfort and strength to all who are struggling at this time. We also pray for wisdom and access to the right resources for leaders to meet the needs of the people. Lord please keep them in your care.

Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ. Galatians 6:2.