Thought for the Week - 3rd March 2024

Dear Friends, 

The season of Lent encourages us to wait and in the Watch and Pray – Wisdom and Hope for Lent and Life booklet produced by the Church of England, we are invited to wait expectantly for God to meet us and sustain us. Drawing on the wisdom of Black Spirituality and particularly the practice of ‘tarrying’ (waiting), we are encouraged to draw closer to Jesus and to each other. One of the ways in our Christian faith we draw closer to Jesus and others is as we gather around the Table of the Lord at Communion, and where we hear the words, ‘For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes’ (1 Corinthians 11:26). Writing in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s 2024 Lent Book, Tarry Awhile, Selina Stone says, ‘To be invited around the Lord’s table is a privilege that none of us deserve. As we gather around the table that is not our own, at which we are guests, we are reminded… of the reconciling work of Christ even while we tarry for this reconciliation in our experience. Of course, we experience moments of this reconciliation in the meantime… Our hope is built up by these moments. The Eucharist… is a time when we accept a gift that tells us a truth that even we might like to deny: that we are all children of God and siblings of one another… it is through Christ’s life, death and resurrection that we have been reconciled to God and to one another.’  

Grace and peace,

Neil

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