Monthly Message from our Rector

Summer Holidays

Perhaps like Cliff Richard, you are going ‘where the sun shines brightly… (and)...where the sea is blue’ or maybe you are simply staying put. But either way, for many people the Summer is seen as a time to slow down - a time to rest – perhaps even a time of ‘no more worries for a week a two’.

Holidays, of course, can be equally full of an impossible desire to see and do everything, that simply translates our everyday problems to a different time and place. We might just replace one overfull schedule with another and one set of worries with another.

Truly stopping, ceasing and resting has become increasingly important, as well as increasingly difficult. We live in a world where everything moves faster and faster and where regular rhythms of rest might seem part of a bygone era. I wonder if holidays have become ever more desperately needed as a weekly sabbath disappears from the life of many people.

I don’t believe that one or two week breaks can replace the weekly rhythm and pattern of rest that God invites us into. Rather this needs to be the starting point, just as the sabbath – a time of rest - needs to be the starting point of the week. Sabbath is not something we earn if we have achieved everything, but an essential foundation to how we live.

Our English word holiday is derived from the old English word that meant Holy Days – extra or extended sabbath days, festivals that focused on worship, praising and thanking God with others, stopping and resting from daily work and drawing the whole community together. Even the list of appointed feast and festivals for Israel in Leviticus 23 starts with the sabbath (as does a similar list in Exodus 23).  

What might it look like for us to start with the Sabbath?

It might help to reflect on the following questions:

Is there anything you need to stop or reduce?

What in your daily or weekly schedule draws you closer to or further away from God?

Are you just carrying worries or handing them over to Jesus in prayer? (you might find Lectio 365 Evening Prayer helpful to do this) 

Where in your week are you slowing down and spending time with God in his word (whether reading, studying, meditating or memorising)?

I pray that this Summer you may know God’s rest and peace. 

Revd Peter Francis
Rector Rodborough, Woodchester & Brimscombe