Dear Friends,
Strictly come dancing
with the Lord of the Dance!
YOU can do anything with the right people around you is a lesson that was reinforced for me as I watched the final of Strictly Come Dancing. YOU can also be one of the right people that encourage someone to do something they never thought they could two. It takes two to tango!
When I dance, or try to, people look and laugh. When I sing people listen and squirm. My dancing is worse than my singing, I have been told, so, if you have heard my tuneless voice, you can imagine how bad the dance might be.
The advantage with bad dancing is that people can look away and ignore the spectacle. The song must be tolerated or somehow silenced. The alternative for both, of course, is to support, encourage and nurture the tiniest seed of potential. We ALL need someone alongside us to encourage us: A teacher who IS a Lord of the Dance who will dance with us when all seems lost and the whole world seems to be against us. The public don’t want to see us anymore so we have to dance off to save ourselves and then the same happens the next week, as it did with Maisie. For Jamie it happened four times and Bill didn’t look as though he would survive a week with an embarrassing low score and feet that refused to obey the brain! They needed someone to lift them up, to teach them and lead them in something they had never done before and never thought they could do.
It takes two to dance and we need people to take our hand and lead us when we feel the challenge is beyond us: “Dance, then, wherever you may be,” said he. “I am the Lord of the dance”, said he, “and I’ll lead you all wherever you may be, and I’ll lead you all in the dance”, said he! It’s a song I won’t sing, because people tell me I can’t, and I’m not going to dance, because I get the same message. You can’t do it, so I tell myself, I can’t!
I was told at school that I couldn’t sing so was silenced when I needed someone to teach me that I could. I didn’t want someone to TELL me that I could and then leave me to embarrass myself, but a mentor, friend, teacher or leader who would show me what to do. In the beginning, for many, it was Strictly NOT dancing, but the dance went on and people who thought they couldn’t discovered that they could!
Life is like the dance and when we feel we can’t live it anymore we need those people who will lift us up and show us how we can do what we don’t think we can! The news is depressing. It’s as though we have been voted into the bottom two again and again, and yet again, so we need to lift each other up so we can do what we don’t think we can do. How can we dance through the loneliness, or the fear of unemployment, or the depression, or the sickness, pain and grief. We don’t only need to be told we can, and then left to sink or swim, we need people who will be with us through the challenges showing us how to swim, or dance, or sing.
When Jesus sent people out two by two it was so that they could encourage each other when they confronted the ‘wolves’ or were rejected in the towns so I hope we can find our dance partners who will have faith in us so that we can achieve together what we don’t think we can possibly achieve.
Is there someone you can tap on the shoulder with your voice on the telephone, or words in a text or email, knock on a door or face at a window, that will say “can I dance with you?” Then stick with each other however bad the dance may be!
YOU can do what you don’t think you can do because the Lord of the Dance is always with you!
For many people this Christmas it will be difficult to see any good news that will bring joy, but together we can find it and share it so “don’t be afraid”.
The Christmas greeting we send comes with a postcard from the charity, ‘Faith in Later Life”, with our own words that you “may travel in Hope with Peace in your mind that gives you a Joy in your heart so that you can share the gift of Love that will be the LIGHT in the dark.”
May you find the new life
and take it with you
from this year to the next!
A Zoom service on Christmas Eve will be followed by an open air carol service on the Village Green from 8pm. The service plans for BOTH these services can be found as attachments at the end of this letter.
I will remind you of this information and future service plans in a letter on Thursday.
If you plan to attend our service at the United Reformed Church at 1030 on Friday morning please let me know so that I can plan the seating arrangements.
Susan Nuttall sends her special Christmas greetings from Cavendish Park Care Home and we pray for her, the residents and all the staff.
We can also pray for all the care staff, nurses and doctors who will continue to work through Christmas providing hope and healing and comfort for all who grieve.
Hold in prayer all who are feeling lonely and isolated this Christmas because of the Covid restrictions.
Please pray for Alice and her family who we delivered a food hamper to on Friday. Remember the many in Broadway who need to support this Christmas to provide food and presents.
Continue to pray for Laura’s grandson, Ollie Kath Hancock Pam June and John Naomi and family Nancy Vicky Michael Eden
Pray that this week’s Carol services by Zoom and on the Green will be a blessing for the community.
Pray for the outreach of our churches — Dominique and the work she does through the Catholic Church and as Chairwoman of Churches Together in Broadway.
For the work of Shellie at St Michael’s and Israel with the Methodist Church and the members of all the churches. May we look forward to a New Year in which we can be the Light of Christ together!
God Bless, Richard