Monthly Archives: November 2021

St Mary’s – A very special place

St Mary’s is a member of the Small Pilgrim Places Network which is a group of special places where anyone can find a place of quiet reflection in a busy world.

In recognition of more than 20 years work the group produced a book this year which includes details of the ‘places’ and contains inspiring and comforting words and descriptions from an eclectic mix of sources. There is something for everyone.

See the image above to read the entry that highlights the essence of St Mary’s.

Call into St Mary’s at Billingsley to reflect and also enjoy reading the book which is on display for all.

To find out more about the network and perhaps plan your own pilgrimage visit www.smallpilgrimplaces.org

 

Thought for the week 27th November; Advent 1955 and now

 

Advent begins this Sunday. John Betjeman wrote this poem in 1955; as I gear up to write my Christmas cards, it speaks to me….

The Advent wind begins to stir
With sea-like sounds in our Scotch fir,
It’s dark at breakfast, dark at tea,
And in between we only see
Clouds hurrying across the sky
And rain-wet roads the wind blows dry
And branches bending to the gale
Against great skies all silver pale
The world seems travelling into space,
And travelling at a faster pace
Than in the leisured summer weather
When we and it sit out together,
For now we feel the world spin round
On some momentous journey bound –
Journey to what? to whom? to where?
The Advent bells call out ‘Prepare,
Your world is journeying to the birth
Of God made Man for us on earth.’

And how, in fact, do we prepare
The great day that waits us there –
For the twenty-fifth day of December,
The birth of Christ? For some it means
An interchange of hunting scenes
On coloured cards, And I remember
Last year I sent out twenty yards,
Laid end to end, of Christmas cards
To people that I scarcely know –
They’d sent a card to me, and so
I had to send one back. Oh dear!
Is this a form of Christmas cheer?
Or is it, which is less surprising,
My pride gone in for advertising?
The only cards that really count
Are that extremely small amount
From real friends who keep in touch
And are not rich but love us much
Some ways indeed are very odd
By which we hail the birth of God.

We raise the price of things in shops,
We give plain boxes fancy tops
And lines which traders cannot sell
Thus parcell’d go extremely well
We dole out bribes we call a present
To those to whom we must be pleasant
For business reasons. Our defence is
These bribes are charged against expenses
And bring relief in Income Tax
Enough of these unworthy cracks!
‘The time draws near the birth of Christ’.
A present that cannot be priced
Given two thousand years ago
Yet if God had not given so
He still would be a distant stranger
And not the Baby in the manger.

 

Thought for the week 20th November – Christ the King

 

The 3rd Sunday in November (21st this year) is celebrated in the churches year as the festival of “Christ the King”; a time we acknowledge that Jesus is the ruler of what he called the “Kingdom of Heaven”. In his lifetime, people struggled to make sense of Jesus; they thought he might be the much anticipated “messiah”, the ruler sent from God who would finally set the Jewish people free, but they really did not know what that ruler would look like. Would he be a political revolutionary, a soldier, a priest? At the end, it seems that the Jewish religious authorities tried to persuade the Romans that he claimed to be a king who threatened their rule. In his Gospel, John has an exchange between the Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor and Jesus, where Pilate appears baffled by Jesus, who in one breath says that he is a king and then that his kingdom is not of this world. But Pilate was, indeed is, not alone in being puzzled. Throughout the ages, Christians have had to live with the tension in Jesus’s words; his Kingdom is not of this world, but we live in this world; he rules over the world, but he is not of the world. At the heart of this is Jesus’s insight that the world as we live in is not how the world is intended to be; through his life and death, he shows us what our world and indeed ourselves should be. That is a world lived out in love, not coercion; a world of self-giving, not self-gain. It is a pattern for living that I doubt any of us achieve, but Jesus shows us what it looks like. That is why Christians acknowledge him as King; but perhaps it is so counter to the world we live in that it is not surprising Pilate and the authorities of his day could not understand his authority.

 

November events and services at St Mary’s Billingsley

10.55am Sunday 14th November; Act of Remembrance

There will be  short act of remembrance in Billingsley Church. For those who want a full service, this will take place at Glazeley.

10.30am Sunday 28th November; Forest Church

An outdoor event of music and words, to mark the shortening of the days and the coming of the winter season.

8.00am Sunday 21st November; Holy Communion

A simple service of Holy Communion to start the day

 

 

thought for the week 13th November – Remembrance

A prayer for remembrance, for Sunday and for any time:

God of all nations, active throughout history and in our own world, we remember those who serve or have served in our armed services. We hold before you all who have been killed in action, or by disease, the bereaved, the lost, the families which have been shattered, the wounded, maimed and injured, those who held or still hold in silence unspeakable memories of warfare.

As we remember those who fought in the past, those who serve at present and those who remained or now remain anxiously at home, let us pray that God will heal all memories, speak a word of peace, and bring us his healing. Amen

The 100 Club November draw results

The November draw was held today, Thursday 4th. Thanks go to Win who made the draw. Number 76 was drawn first winning Rebecca £53 and numbers 27 and 24 both worth £26.50 each means that cheques are on their way to Julie and Les.

Next month all subscriptions will go into the prize pot which will double the value of the prizes to be won. There are numbers available and if you wish to be entered into the December bonus draw go to the 100 Club webpage to download or print an application form. To qualify for the bonus draw you are asked to subscribe for 3 months.

Thought for the week 5th November – Blah, blah, blah

The teenage climate activist, Greta Thunberg, spoke before the current climate meeting about her fears, most notably that all we would hear would be “blah, blah, blah”; the sound of talking to mask the lack of any action. As a person who hates meetings, I have some sympathy with this view. One of the great advantages of the current fashion for meetings held by computer is that I can join, then switch my camera and microphone off and do something more productive, or at least more enjoyable, with my time. However, I am also aware that it is only by hearing others speak that I can begin to understand their views, to hear their arguments and perhaps see my own position in a new light. On a PCC, the most valuable comment is often “Yes vicar, but have you thought about….”. The Bible has accounts of what seem to be have been very lively meetings. Perhaps some of the best are where God seems to be having an argument with someone praying to him; not always getting the better of the exchange and so changing his mind. Words can be blah, blah blah if one, or all parties to a conversation do not listen to what is being said, but they also have immense power to transform if they are properly heard. That is the pattern we see in the Bible and perhaps is what we have also witnessed in Glasgow this week.

 

Thought for the week 30th October – Habukkuk and COP26

Not, until this afternoon, I don’t think I had read Habakkuk either; in fact if you had asked me if there was a book bearing his name in the Bible, I might have struggled to give an honest answer. He is what is known as a “minor prophet” and the name says it all. It is a short book, buried in the middle of the Old Testament surrounded by other books that rarely get read.

The book was written in response to a great catastrophe that was about, or had just, befallen the Jewish nation; probably the destruction of Jerusalem. But Habakkuk did not just see this as the fall of a city or even a nation; he saw it as the destruction of all of creation, the end of the natural world;

“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls”

In spite of this, he had hope:

“yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Saviour. The Sovereign Lord is my strength;  he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights.”

Habakkuk had faith, that God would provide the resources for his people to rise again.

Today, his fears sound particularly appropriate for the climate crisis we are facing, where trees do not bud, crops fail and livestock dies. But just as in the days of Habakkuk, God does not abandon us. As in those days, he gives us resources, human ingenuity to devise solutions. But just as in the days of Habakkuk, this relies on us taking advantage of those resources.