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

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thought for the Week - 18th September 2022

  Dear Friends,  ‘It has felt like we’ve been on a pilgrimage together’ was the comment made from the group of friends who I had made during the ten hours of waiting to file past the coffin of the late Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall last week. And indeed on reflection that is exactly what it felt like. One definition of ‘pilgrimage’ is ‘a devotional practice consisting of a prolonged journey, often undertaken on foot or horseback, toward a specific destination of significance’. We had come to this sacred place where the body of the late Queen lay in this grand and imposing hall that has seen many historical events. In the group I travelled with there were a collection of people of differing nationalities, including a retired Anglican vicar. She and I wondered what had made people come out and queue for hours to walk past the coffin of a deceased monarch. Curiosity, fascination, gratitude, a feeling of being swept along by the emotion were all suggested, and I guess there were
Read more

Thought for the Week - 28th January 2024

Dear Friends, In 1985 the Congregational minister and hymn writer Fred Kaan reflected on ‘For the healing of the nations’ saying, ‘Of all the hymns that I have written, this is the text that has been more widely reprinted and incorporated in major hymnbooks than any other’. It was first used in 1965 and it expresses something of the deep longing and desire for peace and reconciliation, for God’s justice to be known, and for an end to all conflict and violence. Fred Kaan was a committed pacifist and, in an obituary, following his death in 2009 at the age of 80, it read, ‘His theology reflected a God committed to and immersed in a world crying out to be set free from every form of injustice. Fred’s poetry centred on a Jesus who embraced the whole of creation and excluded no one and nothing from his love. In Fred, the Christian peace movement found its voice.’                                      Grace and peace, Neil         1.   For the healing of the nations,                     
Read more

Thought for the Week - 4th December 2022

Dear Friends,  ‘Census 2021 will probably be remembered as the one in which Christianity became a minority religion in England and Wales’, so read the article in a leading UK newspaper. It went onto say that ‘the number of people identifying as Christian dropped 5.5 million in the past decade’ ( The Guardian , 29/11/2022). Responding to the findings the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, said that the country has ‘left behind the era when many people almost automatically identified as Christian’, and that the Christian church would continue its work in the face of both ‘revival and decline’ ( Sky News , 29/11/2022). He went on to say in an interview for BBC News, ‘ It's not a great surprise that the census shows fewer people in this country identifying as Christian than in the past, but it still throws down a challenge to us not only to trust that God will build his kingdom on Earth but also to play our part in making Christ known’. The Bible Society says that the findings of
Read more