Thought for the Month
Join me each month as I ponder life with all the highs and lows we encounter along the way.
I hope you enjoy my blog whose aim is to raise a smile as well as give food for thought.
As always, I would love to hear from you, so please contact me 01278 781147 c.judson@btinternet.com
God bless you.
Rev Chris
December 2024 ‘Calm and Bright’
By the time we step into December we can be in little doubt that ‘Christmas is coming!’. As Advent Calendars are begun, stepping us day by day toward 25th December, I wonder how you are feeling? December can seem rather pressurised, with lots of social events, services, presents to buy, cards to write and never-ending to-do lists. The idea of creating the ‘perfect Christmas’ appears all over the place, with many different ideas of what that perfection might look like. A sense of things being ‘out of control’, unattainable and/or chaotic can easily pervade – leaving us wanting to scream or ‘run and hide’ or maybe just ‘try to get through it’.
Into this arena come our Christmas Carols which paint a very different picture:
“Silent Night! Holy Night! All is calm, all is bright…..”
This well-loved carol invites us into the still centre of the Christmas story, to contemplate Mary holding the new born Jesus, the Light of the World. The messages we hear from the angels in the Biblical story of Jesus’ birth hold together the need for calm in the present (‘Do not be afraid’…’Fear not’) with the hope of a bright future (‘for you have found favour with God’….’’I bring you tidings of great joy’).
Isn’t this what we truly long for? These two words……calm and bright…..bring together our needs and hopes, our true desires.
This Advent, as Christmas approaches at speed, may you find moments of calm, giving you the chance to pause and think……so that you can then move toward celebrating the real brightness of Christmas – the good news of Jesus, Immanuel, God with us. To help with this, you might like to read or listen to the daily Advent and Christmas reflections from 1 December available through the Everyday Faith app, from the Church of England, which you can download at Everyday Faith app or you might like to come and ‘be’ at one of the Advent Peace sessions in Church, or you might want to simply light a candle at home and take a moment……
May God bless you with peace and joy throughout your Advent preparations and your Christmas Celebrations, and may you know that you are loved and treasured by your maker.
With love in Christ, Rev Chris
Rev Chris
November 2024 ‘The Common Fund’
I can hardly believe that Paul McCartney’s Frog Song, otherwise known as ‘We all stand together’, will be 40 years old this year! If you don’t know it, you’ve definitely missed out – a lack that I encourage you to remedy at your first opportunity. If you do know it, then I probably need to apologise, as the tune is likely to stay with you for quite a while – it is one of those tunes.
‘Win or lose, sink or swim
One thing is certain, we’ll never give in
Side by side, hand in hand
We all stand together.’
This basic premise is true on so many different levels. From the enormity of the climate change challenges (where we all need to work together to halt the damage and avoid irreversible changes), to our local clubs and societies, be they The Womens’ Institute, the gardening club or the choir, where we all have to bend our own will and seek the common good if they are to function well. For our villages to flourish, the same is true across the board, and we are grateful to all who serve the common good in our local communities, who help knit our society together.
Churchwise, Bath & Wells seeks to work in this same way to place Vicars throughout the Diocese. Rather than simply putting Vicars where communities are rich enough to be able to afford them, they seek to help everyone to work together, to support the poorer parishes by means of a ‘common fund’ – formed by every parish being asked to contribute what is called a ‘parish share’. We are currently undergoing some changes in the way that this ‘parish share’ is calculated, to make the system more understandable, transparent and equitable (for more info: www.bathandwells.org.uk/common-fund OR contact me). The basic principle, however, has not changed i.e. seeking to work together to serve the common good. Of course, in addition to covering the costs of having a Vicar, and helping other parishes do this too, our local church also faces all the usual running costs (insurance, electricity, heating etc.), which we are very aware have increased considerably of late. Many of you already support your local church in all manner of ways, for which I am immensely grateful, but if you don’t yet but might be able to, or if you do but might be able to increase your giving, it would be greatly appreciated.
Together we stand, side by side……seeking to serve the common good!
God bless you
Rev Chris