Thought for the Week by Rev’d Vicci

Friends

The long six weeks of Easter are nearly over.  On Thursday the 14th the Church marks Ascension Day, and then next week is Pentecost when we hope to see you at Pentecost in the Park, the Churches Together in Windsor picnic and hymn sing in Alexander Gardens where we will remind ourselves and passers by of the joy of our faith.  

I wonder what these six weeks will have been like for the first disciples.  Not knowing how long they would have Jesus back for must have been confusing in itself.  Did they think that everything would just carry on as it had pre-crucifixion and they would go back to walking the highways and byways of ancient Israel-Palestine, healing and teaching as they went?  Surely they realised that change had come – but what change and what would it mean?

For us, at our end of history, the confusion is not gone.  We too wonder each year what we are supposed to do with this knowledge that “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.”  Often, we eat our Easter eggs, enjoy the bank holiday weekend and then get on.  There is so much to do, we are so busy, and we don’t quite notice that we are still in Easter or know what difference it makes if we do.  

Yet to be an Easter people in the place and time in which we are set requires just as much thought and work as it did to be a disciple in those early years.  What,if anything, can we do against the rising cost of living, the rising tide of hatred, the drop in interest in the things of faith or the gathering together in community?  How can we love our neighbour, when our neighbour scarcely looks up from their mobile phone to notice we are there at all?  How can we strengthen the fainthearted when our own hearts are troubled, support the weak when we have little strength of our own, help the afflicted when we are struggling to put food on our tables, show love to everyone when we ourselves feel criticised and unloved?  In seeking how to answer that question by using the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we become closer and closer to the people that God calls us to be.

God bless, Vicci