Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

On the 14th of July 1865, the British climber, Edward Whymper reached the top of the Matterhorn – the first ever to do so.  He was part of a team of six and it was his eighth attempt.  The upward ascent was surprisingly easy, but after an hour of enjoying the magnificent view under a wind-whipped shirt (they had forgotten to bring a flag!) the group decided it was time to turn homeward.  On the way down, things were much tougher, and the mountaineers roped themselves together.  When one slipped, the back three, Whymper and two guides, were able to secure themselves.  The front four however had no chance when the rope snapped, and they went sliding down the mountain to their deaths. 

The event was seen as the end of the “golden age of Alpinism” which up until then had seen very few deaths.  Thus the great achievement became also the great ending, although such is human nature that when Queen Victoria, who had lost a relative in the accident, declared that no-one of royal blood should attempt the climb ever again, every Tom, Dick and Harry wanted to have a go at the previously unconquerable mountain. 

Why did they climb it?  There is something is there not, about going somewhere where others have never been, climbing something that is so difficult that when you get there, you really know you have done something? 

In the story of the Tower of Babel, told in Genesis 11:1-9, humans wanted to climb all the way to heaven.  Building a tower that they hoped would reach to God, they were struck down: the tower broken, the people scattered and for the first time, they spoke multiple languages, so that it was harder for people to understand each other.  Perhaps we have always longed for the heights in one way or another.

The faithful following of a path of simple, loving discipleship is not a glamorous climb, but a hard slog.  Following, fully following, the way of Christ, demands that we test each step: Is this truly loving?  Does it exclude anyone?  Is it at odds with what I understand the Bible to say?  If so, what do others say that the Bible means when it says this thing?  There is risk, but there is also joy and whatever happens, for good or for ill, we can know that while we remain tethered to the Lord, the rope that holds us will never break.

God bless, Vicci

ALIVE! To Tell The Story! – your feedback

This was a truly wonderful, well attended performance. Those of us fortunate enough to be present were amazed by the talent of the choir, soloists, and performers from across our circuit. We are very grateful for the professionalism of Rev’d Vicci leading this, and all the hours of rehearsing put in by the singers and actors. Thanks to everyone involved and a special thanks to Jane for all her delicious home-made cakes and scones served during the break - enjoyed by all!

Friends

This Sunday, the 30th of June, marks the anniversary of the launch of the first ever emergency number.  The 999 number was introduced in London after a house fire in Wimpole Street in 1935 in which five women died.  Launched in 1937, it was later extended to the whole country.  When 999 was dialled, a buzzer sounded and a red light flashed in the exchange to attract an operator’s attention. 

When the new service was launched, a notice in the Evening News advised the public how to use it:

“Only dial 999… if the matter is urgent; if for instance, the man in the flat next to yours is murdering his wife, or you have seen a heavily masked cat burglar peering round the stack pipe of the local bank building. 

If the matter is less urgent, if you have merely lost little Towser or a lorry has come to rest in your front garden, just call the local police.”

There are many things about this story that might interest us: the comparatively short length of time from the fire in November 1935 to June 1937 is one.  In this 18-month period, the powers that be decided that they must stop the repeat of such a tragedy; figured out what to do about it; invented a system; and then launched it.   I also love the Evening News advice – how much less burden there would be on our own over-stretched emergency services if people paid attention to when it was an appropriately serious event to dial 999 for.

As Christians however, we have an additional service to draw on, whether we want a cosy chat, or to send up emergency flares.  We call it prayer.  The wonderful thing about prayer is that it’s not us who have to decide whether or not to call.  God is available to us 24/7 and although he decides when to respond, he listens instantly.  God may sometimes say “No,” or “Not yet,” to a request, but he never says: “You are held in a queue; the operator will be with you as soon as possible.”  He never says, “That is not something you should have dialled this number about.”   I very much hope that this is not a week in which you have to dial 999 on earth or in heaven, but I also hope it is a week in which all of us remember that the lines to God are always open.

God bless, Vicci

A Reflection by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

During the course of the church year, we celebrate God the Creator at Harvest, we celebrate God the Father and Jesus the Son at Christmas and at Easter, we celebrate God the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and finally, on the Sunday after Pentecost, we celebrate our belief that God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are both three distinct expressions of God and also one. The Holy Trinity, three in one and one in three. Over the years, artists, writers and theologians have tried to express this, and every year, preachers lay out our doctrine, with varying degrees of success. Sometimes of course, people are just happy to take it as we say it, without needing to understand it, it just is.

Whoever you are, on what I expect is a sliding scale between the two positions rather than one thing or another, it is true that we are unusual in our affirmation of a God who is three in one and one in three. One of the classic ways of explaining this is to ask someone to stand in front of the congregation and to ask them what they do; who they are to various people. They may reply: “I am a wife, a teacher, a church organist,” as I did when a long-ago preacher asked me to help them in that way. It was a good answer and allowed the preacher to point out that I was indeed one woman, who was expressed in three different ways. All fine and dandy, until the next day when my daughter was asking me to do something while I was doing something else and I said, “I will do it in a bit. Right now I am doing this, and I can’t do two things at once.” To which she replied, “Well, Ian says you can do three things at once!” Not perhaps the message that he had intended to give in his lovely all age address!

However, it is true that we all live multiple lives and do multiple things, and many of us find that to be life-enhancing and energising. It is how we build our community. For others of us, it has become exhausting, and we need to lay down at least one of our multi-faceted beings. On the 14th of June at Windsor Methodist Church, 6pm – 7:30, we are having a fun look at some of the roles in church and circuit using a “speed dating” model. Hosted by our youth group, it will be a lot of fun, even if you don’t need (or want!) another role in the church. Come and see as we continue to grow our community and to serve each other.

God bless, Vicci

A reflection by Rev'd Vicci

Dear Friends

I don’t know about you, but I love it when I learn a new word or expression.  The new one I learned this week was “desire path”.  A desire path is a path that has been created by numbers of people walking where they want to go sufficiently frequently for a path to form in the grass or woodland.  Of course, in the days before the Romans gave us roads, most footways were desire paths, but it reminded me of a book I have on my shelves called “We make the road by walking” by Brian McLaren. 

The book reminds us that none of us, however old, are “done” yet.  We continue being sculpted until the day we die.  As individuals and as communities, we have the option to move forward if we choose and also the freedom to stagnate and regress.

The Bible too speaks of such things, most specifically in that wonderful imagery of the potter and the clay that is found in Jeremiah 18:2-5 when God tells Jeremiah: “’Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message’.  So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel.  But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.”

God doesn’t make us walk in one particular way, nor does he force us into one particular shape.  In the same way, the Romans brought roads to Judea, but Jesus and the disciples walked along desire paths at the edge of the desert, in the hills above Galilee, on the Mount of Olives.  Just as Jesus lived in occupied territory but walked in his Father’s way, so we live in a time and place occupied by all the worries, concerns, determination to acquire power, money or things that this life demands of us, and yet we are called, if we choose to follow, to avoid worldly roads, and walk instead upon desire paths leading always towards Jesus and his Father, empowered for the journey by the supporting presence of the Holy Spirit.   

God bless

Vicci

A reflection by Rev’d Vicci Davidson

The lectionary for this Sunday morning includes Acts 10:44-48. In the time from Easter to Pentecost, we hear some of the occurrences in the Acts of the Apostles, reminding us what the Holy Spirit did for them and what we are therefore offered. This little short reading is located in a much wider sweep of story that involves Peter being offered a variety of food in a vision and telling God that he cannot eat it because it is unclean, with God telling him that if he tells him it is now clean, then of course he can eat it. Challenged by this thinking, Peter is then faced with the household of the Gentile Cornelius who has felt called by God to ask Peter to come and explain the Gospel to them. Ultimately, this leads to their baptism as they are filled with the Spirit. “While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been pouted out on the gentiles, for they heard the speaking in tongues and extolling God. Peter said: “Can anybody withhold the water for baptising these people, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?

It is always a shock when people who we have declared or felt to be “other” than us turn out to have our gifts. How can that be? How can “they” who grew up in a different country, on a different continent, who wear different clothes or eat different food or have had a different education or have a different accent or sense of humour, how can they have our gifts?

For the Jewish people at the time of Jesus, the knowledge that they were God’s chosen people was incredibly significant to their understanding of who they were – their national identity was tied up in it. The idea that started to be developed as the disciples spread out from Jerusalem and told the story to the Samaritans and to the Gentiles, encouraging them to establish churches was potentially frightening to those who had so much invested in the idea that there was one true God, and they had him.

I wonder if we are not sometimes guilty of similar thought patterns, albeit reinterpreted for our own times? The day we truly wake up to the idea that God does not have favourites is the day everything changes.

God bless,

Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

When I was at primary school, we would colour in a piece of paper in thick rainbow colours and then colour that over with black crayon.  Then we would use something sharp and pointed, perhaps the end of a set of compasses, to draw into it, the black crayon would reveal the colour underneath and we would end up with multi-coloured pictures.  When we talk about Jesus dying so that our sins are forgiven, or our being “washed in the blood of the lamb” we are using language that tries to explain that underneath the stuff that gets in the way of God and our relationships with other people there is a beautiful and wonderful person – the Bible tells us that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made”.  The word “fearfully” here means “awe-inspiring” and God is working with us all the time to cut through that crayoned top layer of mess and sin and confusion and get to the beautiful stuff underneath that he knows is there because he put it there.

Sometimes, part of what gets in the way between us and God or us and healthy relationships with the rest of the world, is pain – physical pain, mental pain, the pain of grief.  I am always moved by the many ways in which some people are able to take the pain of grief and cut through the top layer to the beauty underneath it by doing something good in memory of the person who has died.  On Sunday at Windsor, Carolyn Keston from Rosie’s Rainbow Fund will be coming to speak to us during the service and her story is in that mode – I hope that all the Windsor folk reading this will try to attend. 

However, it’s not just the big things that we want God to cut through to but the gentle, ongoing trying and trying again to do our best in the face of difficulty.   In the words of the old hymn: “I trace the rainbow through the rain, and feel the promise is not vain that morn shall tearless be.”  There is a feeling of worry in many of our churches at the moment around dwindling numbers, and so in particular I would encourage you to cut through that by marking in your diaries the next two big circuit events: The Easter Offering Service at 3pm on the 12th of May at Hampshire Avenue and the Circuit Musical production “Alive to Tell the Story” at 3pm on the 23rd of June at Windsor.  Christ is the light in the darkness and the rainbow at the end of the storm.

God bless, Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

I love the gardener in the story of that first resurrection Sunday. Now, I know what you are thinking: “Vicci, there is no gardener! The gardener was Mary’s mistake. She saw Jesus and thought he was the gardener.” But let’s think about that. Mary had been spending considerable time with Jesus who often stayed with her and her brother and sister in Bethany. She knew what he looked like.

When Jesus came out of the tomb, he cannot have been wearing anything. His clothes had been divided among the soldiers and the cloak his mother had woven him was gambled for in a game of dice. The grave clothes which he had been wrapped in were left behind in the grave. Jesus must have come out of the tomb naked. Who did he meet? Well, we know there would have been a gardener around or Mary wouldn’t have assumed the gardener had taken his body. She wouldn’t have assumed that Jesus was the gardener. She would have said, “Wow, you’re a gardener. That’s unexpected!” There was a gardener, it just wasn’t the person that Mary met.

My suggestion is however, that he was the person that Jesus met. Arriving naked from the tomb, walking in the garden as the first man and woman walked in the garden of Eden, “a second Adam to the fight and to the rescue came” as the old hymn has it. Jesus met the gardener who must have said to him something like this: “Mate, you can’t wander around here like that. What are you thinking? It’s not decent!” Whatever Jesus said to him in response I don’t know, but it must surely have elicited the offer of the gardener’s spare gardening outfit. Mary mistook Jesus for the gardener because that was how he was dressed.

As I said, I love the gardener in the story of that first resurrection Sunday. If I wonder if I too would have fallen asleep on Maundy Thursday while Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, I hope that I would have offered him something to wear when he rejoiced before God in his resurrection. We rarely get to be Jesus to the people in our lives. Even when we try to reflect his light, we often get it wrong. Alas, we are all too human! Yet perhaps on the good days, we too can be the gardener, and offer comfort and dignity to those who are coming through difficult times.

God bless, Vicci

Easter thoughts by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

As you read this, Easter is just around the corner – or may even have arrived.  For some, it may have passed by almost un-noticed and for others, it will have been an opportunity to celebrate with family and friends, perhaps to have an Easter egg hunt with children or just a welcome extra couple of days off.  But for Christians, this is the culmination of 46 days of preparation since we used up our eggs and flour on Shrove Tuesday, reminded ourselves that we are but dust and to dust we shall return on Ash Wednesday and passed through 40 days of fasting and 6 days of Sunday; for Sunday, the day of resurrection, can never be a day of fasting.

Last Sunday we passed into Jerusalem behind the Jesus who for one moment, riding on that donkey to the adulation of the crowds, looked as if he might after all be a warrior king.  We followed him to the temple where he overturned the tables of the money lenders and ultimately to the upper room, where he washed his disciples’ feet and sent Judas on his way, telling him to go and do what he had to do.  After we had sung a song, we passed out with him to the Mount of Olives, into the Garden of Gethsemane and wondered at the sleeping disciples who could not keep watch even for one brief hour, hoping we ourselves would or could have done better if it had been our calling.  The following morning we followed him through sham trials and interviews, torture and degradation, beatings, and a sham coronation with a crown of thorns, the ruby red of his blood more precious than any stone.  We walked with him along the Via Dolorosa as Simon was told to carry the cross for him – a carpenter so broken he couldn’t carry a piece of wood; a man who had walked the Holy Land for three years, so exhausted he could scarcely walk the half-mile from the city to Golgotha.   We stood with his friends at the foot of the cross and we heard him cry “It is finished”.  And from Friday until Sunday in different moods and levels of reflection according to our nature and the world around us, we tried to imagine what it was like that first Good Friday when the Son of God died.

But now comes the morning.  Death has lost, life has won.  Morning, Easter morning, has come.   

God bless, Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

During Lent, however much we recall Christ’s time in the desert in our prayers, readings, Church life and liturgy, in Britain at least, there is far too much rain for us to truly identify with the desert experience.  As I write this, when I am going somewhere where I need to look smart and well-pressed, the rain outside my window is not endearing itself to me.  Nevertheless, there are, and always have been, parts of the world where rain is something to be prayed for and welcomed.

After Easter, when I travel north via my friend in Yorkshire and my Uncle and Aunt in the Lake District, I will enjoy driving through lush greenery and fields of sheep and lambs, all of it courtesy of the rain.  When I arrive at my own home on Bute, the rain there (and it rains a lot!) will ensure beautiful woodland walks and hillside strolls.  We may not love the rain while it is actually raining, but we benefit usually from its results.  (Although of course, when Paul said “Moderation in all things” he may not have been thinking about the weather, but it definitely applies!)

Like our gardens, our countryside and our national parks, our lives too flourish where they are watered.  In the great waiting periods of Lent and Advent, we are encouraged to water our spiritual lives in times of meditation, contemplation and discipline.  Giving something up, hard though it may be, helps us to focus on the spiritual.  As we water our spiritual lives, so they flourish and grow, ready to burst forth into glory at the celebration that follows, whether that be the natural glory of the spring at Easter, or the artificially created decorations of Christmas. 

In these days when shops encourage us to celebrate without preparation and preferably all the time, and life is lived so fast that we struggle to find any time for contemplation, study or spiritual discipline, I wonder if that part of our lives is in a Lenten desert?  If we do not consider the love of God for his creation, how can we care for the environment?  If we do not consider the face of God in all whom we meet, how can we care for those who struggle most in our society?  If we do not have time to consider these things, how can we think of action?  And if there is truth in that thought, how can we water the spiritual element of our lives and the lives of those around us?

God bless, Vicci  

Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

At the Stanley Spencer Gallery this week, we were looking at the picture entitled “Consider the Lilies.” In it, Christ is kneeling down, looking with immense concentration at some daisies, his hands on the ground almost embracing the patch of earth and plants that he is looking at. Spencer painted it in the style of an earlier work where he had observed his daughter as a toddler examining the garden with similar concentration, interest, and love.

We could of course see this imagery as quite frightening. The idea that a large and powerful toddler is paying acute attention to us and might at any moment decide that they were no longer interested, or that it would be amusing to squash, pick, or stamp on us is an awful thought, and it is how the Greeks saw their pantheon of gods who interfered in or ignored the lives of the world’s people on a whim.

The God of the Christians is very different. Wanting to fully understand humanity, he came down to live among us, not to take, to play or to despoil, but to give. He fed, healed, restored and ultimately died for our salvation – the long-term healing of our souls - in an act that prepared us for eternity. As the last verse of “Away in a manger” says “bless all the dear children in thy tender care, and fit us for heaven, to live with thee there.” The long-term healing of our souls is indeed what prepares us for heaven.

You may feel it is slightly odd of me to be speaking in terms of Christmas carols in these weeks where we are rapidly moving through Lent to Easter. But we would not have Easter had we not had Christmas, and Christmas would not have mattered if we had not had Easter – the two are inextricably linked. This week too, we have Mothering Sunday, a day when those in service returned to their Mother Church before going back to the families they worked for. It is perhaps an appropriate time to be thinking of Mary, the archetypal mother.

There is something wonderfully comforting about Stanley Spencer’s picture. Something that suggests that God intimately knows and cares for us, keeping us safe from anything that might come galloping across the lawn, loving us and wanting to understand us better, as we want to understand him. May this Lent continue to strengthen that desire in you.

God bless, Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

This Sunday as we follow our Lenten liturgy, we will place the bag of coins on the cross. The first two weeks, we remember what Christ gave to us: first his body and blood in the bread and the wine, and secondly his loving, servantkingliness as we recall his washing his disciples’ feet with the bowl and the towel. Now we turn from his giving to the human response and the first one is the bag of coins. This represents the 30 pieces of silver that Judas was paid for betraying Christ. Why 30? Well, that was the price of an adult male slave at that time and in that place. So the King of Kings, the Son of God, is sold and the price is the price of any adult male at the time.

We are given so much in our own lives: education, access to healthcare free at the point of need, freedom to practice our faith. The rule of law, public utilities, rubbish collection, fire brigade response to our need and so on are all a part of our lives that is so obvious to us, that we only really notice it when something goes wrong. Yet I wonder whether, in response to all these good things, we too are tempted to sell some people down the river? It is so easy to judge some as not deserving, so easy to be frustrated by other people’s needs, so easy to want to exclude some people from the good stuff.

Jesus will go on walking this uncomfortable path from now all the way to Good Friday. We will remember that after he is sold, he is whipped, tormented and ultimately crucified. It is easy to forget that these things were not unique to him, but are common practices used for millennia to subjugate people and to gain power and wealth through the suffering of others. This story is the story of the Son of God who came to this earth to suffer and die so that our sins might be atoned for, but it is also the story of humanity and our constant need to have more than we deserve and to control the world around us. As we continue our Lenten journey, the understanding that we are as much like the Pharisees as we are like the disciples, unpalatable though it is, is an important one. It reminds us that seeking to walk in Jesus footsteps is not an easy thing to do and that our very humanity draws us towards a more selfish outlook. It also reminds us that we have a pattern to follow and strength to draw on when we seek to follow the Jesus way.

God bless,

Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

“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.” (Jeremiah 29:11)

Perhaps by the time you read this, the sun will be peeping through again, although at the moment my weather forecast app is predicting cloud all week, with the odd interruption of rain.

We had a promise of spring last Saturday. The sun was out, the sky was blue, and although it was still quite chilly there was that freshness that hinted at better weather to come. In the same way, we have experienced times when our churches are thriving and so great has the “company of preachers” been in this circuit that we have been able to offer appointments to others less blessed than us, and then there are times, as in the coming quarter, when we really are struggling to fill the plan.

We can perhaps take comfort in the seasonal nature of life as we look at our churches and wonder about dwindling membership and lack of interest in a life of faith in the wider community. The whole Biblical account from Creation onwards is a story of ebbs and flows. The people defy God, as with Adam and Eve, the building of the Tower of Babel and various events in the desert Exodus, and they ignore God, both in the lead up to the Flood and many times challenged by the prophets in between David and the birth of Christ (about 1500 years). Subsequent to that first heady Pentecost, the Church has continued to rise and fall, and Methodism grew up as a movement to spread Scriptural holiness across the land because it was needed and not just because John and Charles Wesley thought it would be a good idea.

Matthew 24:35 tell us that Jesus said: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” As we journey through another Lent, towards another Easter and another hope for a more normal summer, we also journey in the knowledge that however difficult these times are, God is with us. After all, two years ago, I wrote very similar words as we cycled in and out of lockdowns and now the whole covid experience seems to belong to a different lifetime. God is in his heaven, and although not everything is right with the world, still he cares for us and his love will never leave us.

God bless, Vicci

Friends

Last Sunday I returned to Sunbury Methodist Church where I had been asked to lead worship for their Church Anniversary. This is a bittersweet Sunday to be invited to. On the one hand, I was their minister for seven years and love them very much; on the other hand, I knew that when I walked back into that church after four years there would be people who have moved away and those who have died. There are things that I started that have not continued and new and exciting things that I have not been a part of. This is the nature of the beast for those of us in Circuit ministry.

Sunbury was the largest of the churches that I had responsibility for in my first appointment. You may know (in fact, you should know!) that the 1st of September is the start of the Connexional year and as such, it is the start date of someone’s ministry when they are new to the circuit. When the newness is also that one is a probationer it’s doubly exciting and nerve-wracking. However, the year that I started, the 1st of September fell on a Sunday. This is always a good thing, because there is an element of having to work out what ministry actually is when we start, and at least on a Sunday, the job is self-explanatory! I sat in the pulpit on that first Sunday as the steward introduced me to a packed church – all turned out to see what the new minister would be like – and there in front of me on a little metal plaque were the words from John 12:21 where people come to Philip and say, “Sir, we would see Jesus.”

I was momentarily overwhelmed with the enormity of the job. Yet this little verse was once on all our pulpits across Methodism: a reminder to local preachers and ordained ministers alike that this is our role – to enable people to worship and in so-doing to catch sight of the Son of God. “Sir, we would see Jesus.” It is inevitable that this moment which struck me with such awe and determination that I should indeed be up to the task, should come to mind when I reflect on returning to Sunbury. It is not unique to that church, and yet it was there that it first spoke to me in an unforgettable way. I wonder where you were when you first knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that God was speaking to you? It is a question worth reflecting on in this tiny period of time between the ending of the Covenant season and the beginning of Lent. What did God say to you? Did you answer? Or is he still saying it?

God bless,

Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

It’s been a stressful week at the manse, for reasons with which I will not bore you.  However, one of my habits when things are stressful is to reach for one of my vintage copies of “The Friendship Book of Francis Gay”.  There’s something that I find very comforting about these terribly old fashioned “thoughts for the day” written by a long-gone Methodist.  Today, I pulled down my oldest copy which is from 1950 and read the following story which I found very comforting and which I hope you do too. 

Just after the first world war, a Yorkshireman called Eli came back from fighting overseas to his old job in a woollen mill.  Twelve months later the mill closed down and Eli was out of work. 

The news reached him at noon one Saturday.  Being a Methodist local preacher, he was to take a service the following Sunday evening.  He intended preaching on the line of a famous hymn: “God Moves in a Mysterious Way”.

“It’s no good, Annie,” he told his wife.  “This news has knocked me out.  I can’t preach tomorrow.”

“But you will, lad,” said Annie. 

Because she insisted, Eli did.

After the service a stranger talked with him, and before ten that Sunday evening, Eli (who knew nothing of the motor trade, then in its infancy) found himself manager of a new garage.

“It’s a wise man who does as his wife tells him,” Eli maintained; and then: “And God does move in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.”

This time of year, when there seem to be so many funerals and weather and health are not supportive of joyful feelings, it’s worth remembering that verse that many of you will have memorised at Sunday School: “And we know that God works all things together for good for them that love God and are called according to his purposes.” 

May you know the truth of that this week as we continue to remember that in all things, however difficult, God is with us in love and sends his Holy Spirit to sit with us to comfort and guide. 

God bless, Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev’d Vicci Davidson

Friends Cookham Rise is finally accessible again as the floods have receded and the road across the moor is once more passable. I am reminded of my time on the Fens as a student, when they would deliberately open the floodgates at Welney and let the Wash run free if the weather warranted it, leaving a much longer route as the only way in. Then there was the time when no-one had told the new ministers about the annual London bike ride that closed the roads around Hampton and Molesey. The superintendent had to be fetched by the Hampton steward in a canoe. Luckily the superintendent at the time was a fit and energetic marathon runner and the steward an award-winning canoe tutor. Jesus of course, was himself no stranger to storms and floods, although, having taken up with fishermen, had easy access to a good boat.

There are four key passages involving Jesus and water. At his baptism, he walks down into the River Jordan and the Spirit of God descends on him like a dove. We hear God’s voice “This is my Son, in whom I am well-pleased. Listen to him.” Jesus passes safely through the water. At the wedding at Cana in Galilee, Jesus turns the water to wine to help out an under-prepared wedding couple. Jesus controls the molecular structure of the water. Jesus is woken from a deep sleep by the disciples when they are on the water and a storm blows up. He calms the storm and shows that he controls the activity of the water. Finally, Jesus comes out to them from the shore to the boat, walking on the water. Jesus, like the Spirit of God at Creation, moves across the water.

As we continue in this Ordinary Time between Epiphany and Lent, it is worth reflecting on the storms and floods in our own lives that threaten to rise up and overwhelm us: because there is too much and it engulfs us; because there are too few resources and we worry they will run out before we reach the end; because the issues which surround us to do with health, family, work are not under control and we feel the storm within and about us.

In all these situations, Jesus comes to us, moving on or through the water, offering us the calm that we need, the resource that we need, the power that we need. As we draw towards the end of this season of Covenant when we promise “Not my will, but yours be done” it is worth recalling that God is faithful in return. The Covenant moves in two directions. The storms may come, but the Creator helps us move through or over them.

God bless,

Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

Once more the Christmas decorations have returned to the attic, the Christmas cards have been noted and recycled, the midnight bells have sounded and a new year has dawned.  The wise men have journeyed to Bethlehem and met with the child and his mother, gifts have been given and we are once more in Ordinary Time – that time that is known in Godly Play as “Great, Green, Growing Time.” 

My mother once told me that she loved raspberries best when she was eating raspberries and strawberries best when she was eating strawberries, and I understand that because I love the Great, Green, Growing time of the Ordinary Seasons best when I am in them, and the wonderful excitements of the Holy Days when I am in those. 

We have a very short period of Ordinary Time this winter because Easter is early, falling as it does on the 31st of March and Ash Wednesday clashing whti Valentine’s Day on the 14th of February.

But before then, in these next few weeks of Ordinary Time, disciples will be called, unclean spirits will be cast out, sickness will be healed, and a preaching tour begun, as we hear the old, familiar stories of the early ministry of Jesus.  The speed of the story will be at odds with the news in our own times, when newspapers report that there were fewer people in church over Christmas, and we share our frustration at the impossibility of getting a G.P.’s appointment or the wait for a hospital visit.  While ministers and preachers speak of their busy-ness, the idea that someone might have the time to go on a preaching tour seems laughable.  Yet in these five weeks of story, we hear our own history reiterated, not just as Christians, but as Methodists.  We too have been called to be disciples and with that calling came the in-dwelling Holy Spirit that leaves no space for spirits of other sorts.  John Wesley, one of our most significant founders, wrote a book of homeopathic medicine because he wanted to give access to healthcare to those who could not afford to pay for doctors, and our system of local preachers and itinerant ministry is rooted in the idea of a preaching tour round the circuit for local preachers and round the Connexion for ministers.  As we journey through Ordinary Time, we journey through our own history as “the People Called Methodists” and we hear again the great call to go into all the world and share the Gospel story. 

God bless, Vicci

Thought for the week by Rev'd Vicci

Friends

Happy New Year to you all!  I hope that it has been a good Christmas period for you and I expect that you and I both are settling down to that period of time in the New Year where the holidays have passed, but we are still occasionally caught out and end up writing 2023 when we meant 2024. 

Over the Christmas holiday, I have been reading a book called “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman and I have been particularly interested in what he calls “brain priming”.  This works on the idea that our brains work differently depending on what we set them off thinking of.  So for example, if I talk to you about the importance of washing and ask you whether you prefer a bath or a shower and then show you the letters “S O – P” you are more likely to think that the missing letter is “A”, whereas if I talk to you about lunch preferences, you are more likely to think that it is “U”.  It’s the same phenomenon that means if you ask someone to spell “toast” three times and then ask them what you put in the toaster, they will usually say “toast” whereas the answer is “bread” or if you ask them to spell “milk” three times and then ask them what cows drink, they will answer “milk” whereas the answer is “water”.  Brain priming has been understood as mediated through jokes/brain teasers like these for years, but perhaps only now has it been scientifically observed and analysed.

What it means for us as Christians is, I think, quite significant.  If we start the day with prayer and Bible reading, and the week with worship and listening to a thought-provoking sermon, we prime our brain to be open to the activity of God.  If spelling “milk” three times makes us more likely to assert that “milk” is what cows drink, think how more keyed in to the presence of God we are likely to be if we have started our day and week with thinking about him.  The more we pray, the more we are opening our minds to both ask and answer the question: “Where was God in that?” 

I don’t think that it is helpful for us to suddenly embark on a two hours a day prayer and Bible Study habit if we are used to the occasional prayer time and some quick arrow prayers in times of need, but I do think that the concept of “brain priming” does help us understand one of the reasons why it is good to try to pray more, to read our Bibles more, to go to church as regularly as possible. 

God bless, Vicci

Thank you!

Thanks to all those who took part or supported our Live Nativity event, we couldn’t have done it without you! And let’s hope we spread a little of the real Christmas spirit…………..

Thought for the week from Rev'd Vicci

Friends

Those of you who came to the concert on the 2nd of December at Windsor Methodist Church would have heard me read that wonderful series of letters imagined by the hilarious John Julius Norwich and suggesting the reality of being on the receiving end of the gifts of the 12 Days of Christmas.  Having been really rather pleased with the five gold rings (“lovelier in a way than birds which do take rather a lot of looking after”) our heroine, Emily, becomes increasingly distressed with cows chomping on the herbaceous borders and leaping Lords chasing dancing ladies all over the lawns, until she is forced to require the help of a firm of solicitors. 

We all enjoy a rendition of the 12 Days of Christmas, but the song, and the comic book, reference a more serious point which is that Christmas is a 12 day feast from Christmas Day itself until Epiphany on the 6th of January.  Yet so often, once we have done with Christmas Day, we don’t quite know what to do with the odd in-between-time that leads up to New Year and never quite feels like proper days – we often forget which date we are on in that week – and then there is New Year and with a sigh of relief we get back to normality.  We probably spent too long doing Christmassy things in Advent and are all Christmassed out. 

Yet that was not how it once was.  Advent was a serious time of waiting and preparation, sombre, thoughtful, Christmas Eve was a day of fasting and then Christmas Day itself was the beginning of 12 days of feasting and of present opening.  It never was that all the presents would be opened in one fell swoop, but instead a present a day over the twelve days.  It is hard to maintain the “not Christmas yet” feel of Advent when I keep being asked to go to Christmas parties and tell the story of Christmas at schools etc. but somehow this year, with all the political and financial difficulties, and the uptick in international violence, Advent has felt more solemn, more serious, less Christmassy.  My prayer is, for all of us, that this will increase our sense of joy when Christmas arrives and that we might even be able to celebrate the season as it was in days of yore when for 12 days we would feast and rejoice that a virgin had conceived and born a son and that his name was Emmanuel: God with us. 

Wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. 

God bless

Vicci