Hello everyone,
Welcome to the latest issue of our church newsletter. Our newsletter is sent out regularly to share reflections from services, Bible readings and church news with our church family. You can find previous issues on our church website here.
We would love to hear from you and are always looking for uplifting and encouraging content to share in future issues of this newsletter. If you have any ideas or content that we can share, please do email them to Louise (publicity@christchurchuxbridge.org.uk)
Opening Prayer
Lord Jesus,
yours is the picture we will put in the frame of our lives;
yours are the promises we will trust and believe;
yours is the kingdom we will pray for;
you are the king we will serve faithfully,
with all our heart and mind and strength,
for you are the king who loves and calls us.
Alleluia! Amen.
(Taken from Roots)
Reflection from 17 November
Reading – 1 Samuel 1: 4-20
At work, I have the privilege of leading a team of about a dozen or so consultants spread across London, Paris, Hamburg, Munich, Rome, Milan, and shortly to be Dubai, actually seven women and five men, and typically with each team member I do a one-to-one meeting each week to check in on how they’re doing and to see how I can support them. Only once in my career of leading teams have I heard a team member crying in a regular one-to-one. It’s really unusual, but it happened a few weeks back and it’s quite striking that it was one of the men, a tough guy who had played elite sport for his country, and yet he was crying on a video conference call with me. He was sharing that he and his wife had been trying to conceive and it had gone badly and that they tried IVF. They’d been advised that after three rounds of IVF there was a 90% probability that you’d be pregnant if you were going to get pregnant. They weren’t and they did another three rounds. He had just learned that day that the sixth round had failed. Six rounds of IVF had failed and they were desperate and sad that their plans were going to come to nothing.
In today’s Bible reading, the main character, Hannah, is struggling to have children and we read that she was barren, that the Lord had closed her womb, that she was desperate. We can’t know the modern medical equivalent of Hannah’s circumstances other than she had a closed womb and she failed to have any children, unlike her husband’s other wife, Peninnah, who managed to conceive many children. Maybe she’d had many embryos that hadn’t implanted in the womb, maybe she’d suffered miscarriages, we don’t know, but we can know her desperation.
Only this week there was a news article which struck me about a woman called Rachel Carlson who’d had five miscarriages in 5 years, saying that the psychological impact is not to be underestimated and that she felt she was suffering from trauma and talks about her world falling apart. I’ve actually found that infertility related trauma may be far more prevalent than people have thought with 60% of women saying at some point that the care they received caused or amplified trauma. Rachel Carlson thinks we need to have fundamental changes to our health system to prevent other women experiencing what she did. She had to go to the maternity ward for her appointments with the incredible pain of sitting in a room with women going in and coming out happy and her having the very opposite experience, a sense of deep desperation.
There’s an apocryphal story that the late Ernest Hemingway, the American novelist, a novelist known for his economical, understated style was challenged to write a novel in six words. He came up with: “For sale: baby shoes. Never used.” If you look at that, in less than perhaps a hundred bits of information, or if we stored it on a file in a computer less than 40 bytes, somehow we’ve got a profound story of a child expected, a loss, and a life never lived.
I think that captures a bit of Hannah’s state as well. Hannah was the first wife to Elkanah. Maybe because she didn’t have any children, he took a second wife Peninnah, who was then bountiful with sons and daughters. Worse than that, Peninnah tormented Hannah because she was childless. We read that her rival provoked her severely to irritate her, and then year after year as they went up to the temple, as often as they went provoked her. Hannah was beside herself so after they’d all gone to worship, she went back to present herself before the Lord. I get the sense of a personal time without her husband, away from the second wife, to meet and cry out to God.
Maybe, like me, sometimes you’ve gone off to the wood or the forest to cry out to God alone, but we hear again her refrain. “As the deer pants for the water, so my soul longs after you.” A desperation, a longing for water to survive, a need to connect with God. Hannah cried out, she was deeply distressed and wept bitterly, so much so that Eli the priest took her for a drunkard. I think Hannah coloured outside the lines. It wasn’t the done thing to be seen to be so visibly distressed, it wasn’t for a woman to sob before the Lord at the temple, to mouth words without sound, but God met her.
The priest Eli misunderstood the situation and thought she was drunk. He listened as she explained that she’d not consumed any alcohol, but was pouring out her soul to God, and then the priest blessed her and prayed to God to answer her prayer, and in due time she conceived and had a son Samuel. Samuel, the name, means ‘God has heard’ and he goes on to be a priest in the temple and later the first prophet and the last judge for the nation of Israel, but maybe thinking about this story and bringing it to ourselves, firstly, I think we need to remember that we may not know the quiet desperation of one another. Eli didn’t know Hannah’s desperation, but he heard and blessed her.
With other people, with one another, I think we need to be quick to ask ourselves is this all there is to it? Are they colouring outside the lines, are they acting out of character, is there more to it? We need to be accepting of each other, even without knowing the full story. Thinking about ourselves, have there been times when in our lives we’ve coloured outside the lines?
Neil Mackin
Readings for 24 November
Daniel 7: 9-10, 13-14
9 “As I looked,
“thrones were set in place,
and the Ancient of Days took his seat.
His clothing was as white as snow;
the hair of his head was white like wool.
His throne was flaming with fire,
and its wheels were all ablaze.
10 A river of fire was flowing,
coming out from before him.
Thousands upon thousands attended him;
ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.
The court was seated,
and the books were opened.
13 “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.
Further readings from the lectionary this week are as follows:
- John 18: 33-37
- Psalm 93
- Revelation 1: 4b-8
Our worship
We meet at 11am for our Sunday services, which are also live-streamed on our YouTube channel. If you wish to view our services online, you can find them at https://www.youtube.com/@christchurchuxbridge
You can also view a recent service on our church website. Our service this week will be a communion service led by our minister Revd Wilbert Sayimani. You can find the order of service here.
If you are unable to join us in person or online for our Sunday services, but would like to receive a recording of them on a memory stick to watch at home, please let us know.
Forthcoming services
24 November – Revd Wilbert Sayimani – Holy Communion
1 December – Christ Church worship group
8 December – Revd Wilbert Sayimani – parade and gift service
15 December – Christ Church worship group – carol service
Carol services
Christ Church – 15 December
Our carol service this year will be on 15 December. We would like to include carols, readings, poems etc. chosen by members of our congregation. If you have a carol, reading or poem that you would like us to consider including in this service, please speak to Louise or Joanne.
Carols and mince pies – 18 December
This year’s carols and mince pies will be on Wednesday 18 December, 12noon in the chapel.
Candlelight Carol Service, Ickenham URC – 22 December, 6.30pm
We have been invited to join in with Ickenham URC for their candlelight carol service on 22 December at 6.30pm. If you would be interested in singing in the choir for this service, please let Louise know. There will be a rehearsal for the choir at Ickenham URC at 5pm on 22 December.
Communicare Counselling Service
For 18 months Communicare Counselling Service (CCS) was our ‘charity of the year’ and in October the church presented a cheque to CCS for £1,170. It was particularly pertinent as 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of CCS.
In 1983 Christ Church resolved to provide premises and fund the establishment of a counselling service. This was in large part on account of a piece of research into local needs conducted by Martin Eggleton, one of the two ministers of Christ Church at the time.
Derek Strange, the other minister at the time, commented: ‘the proposal for a counselling service is a natural development of the work at Christ Church. It will be an altogether new venture which will enable the church to provide a highly desirable service to the community’.
It was left to Rex and Mary Burrow (two church members) to put this radical thinking into practice and to establish the service and guide it wisely over many years. CCS opened in October 1984 by which time they had been able to attract a group of counsellors from a range of different training backgrounds. It was decided that counselling should be available at ‘an acceptable cost while maintaining the financial viability of the service’. This radical decision allowed people on low income or benefits to come to counselling if they needed it and pay what they could afford.
In 2005 CCS had grown so much that it was decided that it should become a separate charity with up to four trustees nominated by Christ Church. The first Chair of trustees was Don Steele who was succeeded by Rosemary Moere (both church members) and then Ann Malkin (a senior counsellor within NHS).
To quote from the publication recording the first 30 years ‘CCS has had a positive impact on the lives of many people. It has helped those troubled by difficult events in the past to come to terms with them and move on, it has provided succour and support for the depressed or bereaved, helped those who feel trapped or despairing to find new insight, strategies and hope, those who feel unloved to feel loved, those that did not love themselves to turn that around. It has bolstered and enriched many relationships, saved more than a few and helped others to end respectfully and caringly. It has changed lives in more ways than can be listed here and has probably even saved a few. It hasn’t just helped the clients, of course, but also the counsellors themselves many whom began as students at CCS and have grown into wise and mature counsellors.’
It has been estimated that about 12,000 clients have been counselled since the beginning. It is a venture of which our church should be proud.
Brian Moere
From the Circuit
RAF Community Concert at Ruislip Methodist Church
Tuesday 10th December, 7.30pm
The RAF Central Band will be back at Ruislip Methodist Church performing a free community concert on Tuesday 10th December at 7:30pm. Refreshments will be available during the interval, and people are free to make charitable donations if they wish. There is free parking at the church car park. If you are a wheelchair user please contact Karen Macaulay (A1macaulay@aol.com) and Terry Dean (famdean@blueyonder.co.uk) to arrange accessible seating. All are welcome to come along and enjoy the performance.
DEC Middle East Humanitarian Appeal
Despite extraordinary challenges and risks, DEC member charities, either directly or through local partners, are providing vital aid in Gaza, Lebanon and the wider region to families who need it the most.
In Gaza:
- Action Against Hunger has been supplying fresh and dry food to families and providing hot meals in community kitchens.
- ActionAid has been supporting women and children with dignity kits, food and shelter.
- The British Red Cross working through The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has been providing emergency medical support and is operating medical points and clinics.
- Concern Worldwide has been providing households with access to clean and safe water.
- The International Rescue Committee has deployed emergency medical teams, working in hospitals and with mobile health teams.
- Islamic Relief has been able to deliver vital hygiene, medical and personal items including warm winter clothing, vegetable packs and daily bread.
- Save the Children have trained community volunteers on screening children under five for malnutrition.
In Lebanon:
- Age International has been providing mental health and psychosocial support services.
- CAFOD has been providing health care services and cash so people can prepare for winter.
- Christian Aid has been giving children and young people psychological support to deal with the trauma experienced during the crisis.
- Oxfam has been supporting displaced people living in temporary shelters with clean water, emergency cash and food.
- A local partner of Tearfund has been supporting displaced people at drop in centres with food support and essential items for winter.
- World Vision has been supporting people in collective shelters with the distribution of hot meals and basic household items like mattresses and blankets.
These are just some of the ways DEC member charities and their local partners are providing people with a lifeline of support. They will continue to adapt their responses as the humanitarian situation develops across the region. Thanks to your donations, member charities are able to scale up their response and reach even more people.
Donations to this appeal are still being matched by the UK Government, who will match pound-for-pound up to £10 million donated by the public to this appeal. Every donation makes a difference.
Thank you,
Saleh Saeed, DEC Chief Executive
Children’s Corner
Dates for your diary
| 2024 | |
| 24 November | Congregational Meeting |
| 27 November | Welcome Wednesday |
| 11 December | Welcome Wednesday |
| 18 December | Carols and mince pies |
| 2025 | |
| 8 January | Welcome Wednesday |
| 22 January | Welcome Wednesday |
Praying for other churches
This week we hold the following churches in our prayers
- South Harrow Methodist
- Churches in the URC North Thames area
- Uxbridge Salvation Army
Closing prayer
King Jesus,
may you be enthroned in our lives,
and may we seek to live according to your will,
as members of your kingdom,
this week and always. Amen.
(Taken from Roots)
