Dear Brothers and Sisters It feels counter-intuitive does it not, that having had such a curtailed Christmas, and receiving the news that the vaccine has not just been discovered but is now rolling out across the country, we should have to shut the church again. Yet we have grown up knowing the saying “the night is always darkest towards the dawn” and can perhaps understand the need.
My father, who had been a military man and then a light-house keeper and had therefore extensive experiences of night watches, used to complain about the verse in the hymn
“O God, our help in ages past” that says: “
A thousand ages in thy sight
Are like an evening gone
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.”
He would say that anyone who had experienced a night watch would know that the watch that ends the night drags at snail’s pace and feels twice as long as any other watch. He would grimace or refuse to sing it, depending upon his mood. My Grandmother on the other hand, objected to verse 6:
“Time, like an ever-rolling stream
Bears all its sons away
They fly forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.”
She said that God remembered everyone and that therefore it was a nonsense verse and she would not only refuse to sing it, but would glare around the congregation in a flat fury that anyone would so far forget their theology as to sing it at all.
They were an eccentric family, and you really did not want to be in the congregation for “O God our help in ages past” if they were both there! But in the end, Isaac Watts had the right of it, if not in terms of night watches and the forgotten of the world, then in this; that God has been our help in ages past and is our hope for the years to come; our guardian in life and the home to which we will return. In the words of John the Gospel writer, “We have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”
I pray that whatever Christmas brought you this year, you did indeed see His glory and that in the year to come, if the final watch of this dark COVID night is not short, it will at least be blessed with the knowledge of the presence of God and of the light that came into the world and that the darkness could not overcome. (2) May you have a blessed New Year, may you stay safe and come to spend time with all your loved ones, and as we look forward to Easter, may it be a time when the Gospel story of resurrection resonates through this whole country in a way that is more powerful and more real than we have yet experienced in our lifetimes.
God bless Vicci’
Christian Aid – update re the Windsor Carolathon
Congratulations and thanks to all those involved in any way with organising and contributing to the Windsor Carolathon on December 20th. It was an uplifting event which raised £2,020 (ironic for the year 2020!)
Words of Encouragement:
“A new year is usually a time for good resolutions, sometimes serious, sometimes frivolous. This year it is not so easy when we are in the middle of a pandemic, uncertain about the future and distanced from our normal support groups. We could perhaps make a list of things (and people) to be grateful for, make more use of modern technology to contact friends and family, some of whom may have had a rather bleak Christmas, and be more assiduous in prayer and Bible reading. Sometimes a sentence from the Bible will leap out with new significance. Above all, let us trust God and stay positive.
One of my favourite texts is from 2 Timothy 1 v. 7 (A.V.)” ‘For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power and of love and of a sound mind.’