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Welcome to St. Andrew's Church, Taunton, UK
We hope that
you will enjoy looking around our website, and will come back often, as
the site is updated every week. Our aim is to capture the spirit
of St. Andrew's Church online - our faith, our worship, our people, and
our community.
Our church is
first of all a spiritual centre, a place where people can find God, be
nourished in their spiritual journey, and grow in their life of faith.
If you could come along to one of our services your presence would be a
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Again,
welcome and thanks for visiting our site.
New on our website this
week:
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Hot Topics -
Archbishop's interview on
The
Good Childhood Inquiry
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Church News -
An invitation to
'Encountering Advent '
with Alan Cook
of St. Andrew's Church |
Church News -
Bible Study +
Come along to our
Welcome Evening |
News from St. Andrew's
The Jailbreak Experience
by Alison Perry
of St. Andrew's Church |
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Colour
Supplement -
Review of
Oliver Stone's 'Heroes'
by John Petrakis |
Colour Supplement -
Depression part 8 -
The emotional journey
by Gordon Atkinson |
Colour Supplement -
Green Muscle -
by Jason Gardner
of LICC |
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Hot Topics -
Fifth anniversary of 9/11
terrorist attacks -
Archbishop of Canterbury on BBC R4 Thought for the Day |
See previous weeks' editions of our
Colour Supplement |
See previous weeks'
editions of our
Homepage |
Even Christians deserve a day
off
I find that holidays
provide the space and time for mulling things over. It's sometimes only
when you put some distance between yourself and the quotidian stresses
of work, church and home that new perspectives and priorities can
emerge. For me, this is rarely an intellectual process of planning and
prioritising, more, allowing things that have been submerged to bubble
to the surface in their own time. This seems to happen quite
naturally when the most important decision to be made is whether to have
red or white wine with the next meal!
So holidays are a privilege
and a blessing, they create space in the midst of busyness. A
pause during which God can gently point out the areas of our lives which
need attention. Without fail I find myself wondering about how to
maintain some of that sense of space and peace which they provide on the
return home.
So it seems appropriate
that the commitment arising from this latest holiday is for Katharine
and I to set aside
Saturdays as a day to kept free from commitments and chores. We're not
part of a society that honours this type of observance. It is easy to get into the habit of
non-stop doing - careers, writing, housework, shopping, church,
family etc etc. Like many churchgoers we find that whilst Sunday may be
the Sabbath, active involvement in a church brings with it
responsibilities and pressures of its own, so it is hardly a day of rest
in the manner that God originally intended.
A few years ago I came
across a book called 'Soul Feast' by Marjorie Thompson, and in it she
expresses well the challenge that faces many busy Christians:
"The Sabbath command is
especially relevant to contemporary life. How difficult it is for people
in our achievement and production-obsessed culture to rest. Keeping
Sabbath means trusting God to be God, recognizing that we are not
indispensable. When we refuse to take a single day a week for genuine
refreshment and rest, we try to outdo even God! In the light of God’s
rest, our anxious, compulsive activities may be exposed as little more
than efforts to stay in control, or to fabricate life’s meaning out of
constant activity. The purpose of Sabbath rest is to free us inwardly
for full-hearted worship. Genuine worship flows from a heart that trusts
God to uphold the universe. Rest and worship are expressions of deep
trust."
So we plan for Saturdays to
become our day of rest. Just how this will work out in practice
remains to be seen - I suspect it may require considerable discipline to
stick to it in the face of a lengthening 'to do' list. Past holidays
have resulted in me and Katharine making small but enriching changes in
our lives that we have sustained over the years, so I am hopeful. Maybe, as Marjorie Thompson suggests,
setting aside a time of rest on Saturday may help to "free us inwardly for
full-hearted worship" the following day.
Now wouldn't that be
something?
With blessings from all of
us at St. Andrew's Taunton.
Adrian
Webmaster
NOTE: I am the webmaster of
St. Andrew's Church, not clergy or a reader. I write as 'a man in
a pew' and so you should not assume that I necessarily know what I'm
talking about, or that what I say reflects the views of other people in
our church.
To read previous weeks' FWIWs please click here.
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